The truck at the site of the attack in Nice, July 15, 2016. Luca Bruno /Press Association. All rights reserved.The news of yet another terrorist attack by ISIS or by its sympathizers on European soil in a few years, this time woefully claiming the lives of more than 80 people in the French city of Nice, confirms for Europe what has been a reality for some time now in other parts of the world, including Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia: armed groups willing to resort to terrorist tactics are a real and ongoing threat for international security in the twenty first century.
The fact that they have been able to pull off these attacks in the heartland of the undefeated North Atlantic Treaty Organization makes the threat a considerable one from the standpoint of international security, beyond the obvious human rights dimension of the problem regarding the life of victims worldwide. It appears that the Islamic State has managed to harvest the yields of global terror without even having to sow them directly.
The historian Plutarch narrates how Cato the Elder, after a lifetime of service to the Roman Republic, spent his last days warning Roman senators about the latent threat of Carthage. Although defeated in the Second Punic War, the economic prosperity reached by Carthage in following decades prompted deep concern in Cato, who took it upon himself to close every intervention at the Senate with the call “Besides, I think Carthage must be destroyed” (“Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam” or “Carthago delenda est”). At last, at the behest of Cato, Rome understood the risk that had been growing overseas and defeated Carthage for good in the Third Punic War.
