Terrorism

A Philosophical Investigation

Igor Primoratz

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745651446, 9780745651439
• eBook ISBN: 9780745663432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is the first comprehensive study of the core philosophical questions posed by terrorism such as: How should we define it? Is it morally distinctive? Can it be morally justified?

Igor Primoratz seeks to overcome relativism and double standards that often plague debates about terrorism. He investigates the main ethical approaches to terrorism: in terms of its consequences, rights and justice, "supreme emergency," and the collective responsibility of citizens. The book provides a rigorous, yet accessible analysis of a range of moral positions, from the acceptance of terrorism when its consequences are good on balance to its absolute rejection. Primoratz argues that terrorism is almost absolutely wrong. It may be morally justified only when an entire people is facing a true moral disaster, and this should be understood in a highly restrictive way.
Conceptual analysis and normative arguments about the practice of terrorism are complemented with case studies of terror-bombing of German cities in World War II and the role of terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Terrorism: A Philosophical Investigation will be essential reading for researchers and students of philosophy and politics, and the general reader seeking to understand and evaluate acts and campaigns of terrorism.

1

Defining Terrorism

Ordinary Use

What is terrorism? Current ordinary use of the word displays wide variety and considerable confusion; as a result, discussing terrorism and an array of moral, political, and legal questions it raises is difficult and often frustrating. Only two things stand out clearly in most instances of this use: terrorism is, or has to do with, violence and terror, and it is a bad thing, not something to be proud of or to support. Virtually nobody applies the word to their own actions or to the actions of those with whom they have sympathy or whose struggle they support. As the cliché has it, one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. This suggests that in discussions of terrorism, as in so much public debate, a double standard is at work: one of the form “us vs. them.”

Another type of double standard, less obvious and thus perhaps even more of an obstacle to coming to grips with the notion of terrorism, is the tendency to accuse insurgents who resort to violence of resorting to terrorism, without pausing to take a closer look at the type of violence employed and just who its victims are, coupled with an unwillingness to mention terrorism when talking about violent actions and policies of a state, especially one’s own state – even when what is done is the same. This indicates a double standard of the form “state vs. non-state agents” – the assumption that, whatever it is, terrorism is by definition something done by insurgents, and never by the state.

Much of this is apparent in the public debate about the use of terrorism in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, for example. Both Palestinians and Israelis are committing what many among the uninvolved would call terrorism; both sides deny that they are engaging in terrorism; each accuses the other side of doing so; and both attempt to justify the violence they employ, wholly or in part, by the terrorist acts of the other side. Palestinians claim that theirs is a just struggle to put an end to occupation and oppression and to attain self-determination. We are morally and legally entitled to use violence to this end, they say. That is not terrorism, but rather fighting for freedom. Israelis retort that the state of Israel is certainly not engaging in terrorism. It is rather facing a terrorist onslaught, and is merely doing what any state in such circumstances would be morally and legally entitled and indeed obligated to do: it is using its armed forces and security services in defense of the country and the security of its citizens.

Those speaking on behalf of Palestinians are thus assuming that the decisive criterion of terrorism is the ultimate goal of the agent who resorts to violence. If it is a legitimate goal, such as national liberation, that cannot be terrorism. From their point of view, “terrorists fighting for freedom” is a contradiction in terms.

A classic statement of this position is given in Yasir Arafat’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on November 13, 1974:

Those who call us terrorists … seek to hide the terrorism and tyranny of their acts, and our own posture of self-defense. The difference between the revolutionary and the terrorist lies in the reason for which each fights. For whoever stands by a just cause and fights for the freedom and liberation of his land from the invaders, the settlers and the colonialists, cannot possibly be called terrorist; otherwise the American people in their struggle for liberation from the British colonialists would have been terrorists, the European resistance against the Nazis would be terrorism, the struggle of the Asian, African and Latin American peoples would also be terrorism, and many of you who are in this Assembly Hall were considered terrorists. [Ours] is actually a just and proper struggle consecrated by the United Nations Charter and by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As to those who fight against the just causes, those who wage war to occupy, colonize and oppress other people – those are the terrorists, those are the people whose actions should be condemned, who should be called war criminals: for the justice of the cause determines the right to struggle. (Arafat 1995, pp. 334–5)

On the other hand, those speaking on behalf of Israel typically assume that it is the identity of the agent that determines whether some act or policy of violence is terrorist or not. This is apparent in the policy of both government spokespersons and the media of portraying as terrorism all violence on the part of Palestinians, whether directed at common Israeli citizens, at holders of high political office, or at members of military and security agencies. If an act or campaign of violence is carried out by insurgents, then it is terrorism; if by the state, then it is either a policing action or warfare. From their point of view, “state terrorism” is a contradiction in terms.

Moreover, this game of denying that one’s own side is guilty of terrorism while accusing the other side of resorting to it, in a conflict in which both sides engage in the same type of violent activity, suggests that an additional assumption may be at work. Both sides may well be assuming that, if there is a violent conflict between two parties and one is guilty of terrorism, the other party is thereby absolved of the charge. If they are terrorists, we cannot be.

Efforts by the United Nations to develop a definition that could be accepted universally and open the way to dealing with terrorism by means of international law seem to have fallen victim, at least so far, to the same sort of relativism and confusion. Trudy Govier describes the impasse these efforts have reached:

The United Nations has been trying to define terrorism for some thirty years, and has given up in its quest for a definition that everybody can agree upon. A major problem is that Western governments wanted to make sure that state agents could never be considered terrorist, while Islamic countries wanted to make sure that national liberation movements in the Middle East and Kashmir could never be considered terrorist. (Govier 2002, p. 89)

Once they are brought into the open, none of the three assumptions seems plausible. There is no reason whatsoever why two parties to a conflict cannot both be using terrorism, just as two criminals can be at each other’s throats, or two states at war can both be waging an unjust war, whether in terms of jus ad bellum (justice of going to war) or jus in bello (justice in fighting) or both. The bias in favor of the state and against insurgents will not withstand scrutiny either. Although there is much to be said for having a state rather than living in a “state of nature,” that is not to say that, in any conflict between a state and an insurgency, we should be on the side of the state. We sometimes find that an insurgency is morally justified and the attempts of the state to put it down are not; this is typically the case in a struggle for national liberation. Even in such a struggle, however, not every means will do, morally speaking. We sometimes have much sympathy with a people fighting to push out the occupying power, but still object if its fighters seek to achieve that by attacking enemy civilians rather than the military.

These remarks suggest that we will be in a better position to understand and therefore also to evaluate terrorism if we discard all three assumptions and try for a definition that does not define terrorism in terms of the agent or the agent’s ultimate goal, and which allows for the possibility that victims of terrorism might themselves make use of it in response. Such a definition should focus on just what is done and what the proximate aim of doing it is, and put to one side the identity of the agent and their ultimate and allegedly justifying aim.

Terrorism and Violence

Etymologically, “terrorism” derives from “terror.” Originally the word meant a system, or regime, of terror: at first that imposed by the Jacobins, who applied the term to themselves without any negative connotations. Subsequently it came to be applied to any such policy or regime and to express a strongly negative attitude, as it generally does today. Since I am seeking a definition that will cover both a single act and a policy of terrorism, I propose to put aside the notions of “system” and “regime” but preserve the connection with terror. Terrorism is meant to cause terror (extreme fear) and, when successful, does so. But if someone did something with a view to striking terror in the hearts of others with no further aim, just for the fun of it, I think we would not see that as a case of terrorism. Terrorism is intimidation with a purpose: the terror is meant to make others do things they would otherwise not do. Terrorism is coercive intimidation.

This is just the definition offered in one of the early philosophical discussions of the subject, Carl Wellman’s paper “On Terrorism Itself”: “the use or attempted use of terror as a means of coercion” (Wellman 1979, p. 250). Wellman remarks that violence often enters the picture, as it is one of the most effective ways of causing terror, but hastens to add that “the ethics of terrorism is not a mere footnote to the ethics of violence because violence is not essential to terrorism and, in fact, most acts of terrorism are nonviolent” (ibid., p. 251).

The ethics of terrorism is indeed more than a footnote to the ethics of violence, but not for the reason given by Wellman. Moreover, it seems to me that it does not make much sense to speak of “nonviolent terrorism” (taking this to exclude threats of violence as well). Wellman has three counterexamples, none of which strikes me as convincing. One is a judge who sentences a convicted criminal to death in order to deter potential criminals. I should think that execution is one of the more violent things we can do to a person. Then there is blackmail, in which the prospect of exposure is used as a means of intimidation and coercion. I think we would need to know just how serious the harm caused by the exposure would be in particular cases. If the harm threatened were great, and if we understand acts of violence as acts that characteristically inflict great harm in a striking manner, as Wellman does, then such instances of blackmail might indeed qualify as threats of violence. Finally, Wellman says:

I must confess that I often engage in nonviolent terrorism myself, for I often threaten to flunk any student who hands in his paper after the due date. Anyone who doubts that my acts are genuine instances of the coercive use of terror is invited to observe the unwillingness of my students to hand in assigned papers on time in the absence of any such threat and the panic in my classroom when I issue my ultimatum. (1979, p. 252)

This seems quite fanciful. But if Wellman’s students were indeed as given to panic and terror as he suggests, and if to be failed in his course was indeed such a great and dramatically inflicted harm that their reaction becomes understandable, then his threat was a threat of violence after all. It was not terrorism, though; nor is blackmail, or the meting out of the death penalty to a convicted criminal – but not for the reason adduced by Wellman.

A more radical version of Wellman’s position on the definition and moral wrongness of terrorism is offered in Robert E. Goodin’s book What’s Wrong with Terrorism? While Wellman’s understanding of terrorism is broad enough to allow for both political and nonpolitical terrorism, Goodin emphasizes its political role. He finds both its “analytic core” and its “core wrong” in the use of terror as a means for achieving a political purpose. Terrorism, he writes, is “fundamentally a political tactic, involving the deliberate frightening of people for political advantage. That is not the worst thing that terrorists commit. But it is the distinctive wrong that terrorists commit, making them terrorists and not mere murderers” (Goodin 2006, p. 49). On Wellman’s account, one can commit an act of terrorism without using or threatening to use violence and without inflicting any great harm in some nonviolent way, merely by threatening to inflict such harm (see Wellman 1979, pp. 253–4). On Goodin’s account, one need not even make a threat of any sort: one acts as a terrorist merely by issuing a warning about the acts of others that is meant to intimidate and thereby procure one’s own political advantage. Thus Goodin casts his net widely enough to catch both many of those who would be generally perceived as terrorists and a relatively small, yet highly significant group of those who would not be so perceived: those who do not engage in violence of any sort, but do engage in the politics of fear. Accordingly, “if (or insofar as) Western political leaders are intending to frighten people for their own political advantage, then (to that extent) they are committing the same core wrong that is distinctively associated with terrorism” (2006, p. 2). When committing this wrong, they stimulate visceral responses instead of rational thinking, and thereby undermine democratic self-government. This is “a capital crime against democratic politics” (ibid., pp. 179–80). Osama Bin Laden is guilty of this crime; apparently, George W. Bush, too, should be charged with it. For, in many of his speeches, he was “clearly himself acting with the intention of instilling fear of terrorism to advance his own political agenda” and, on Goodin’s definition, “that would count as an act of terrorism in itself” (ibid., pp. 169–70).

Now it is one thing to argue that deliberate generation of terror (great fear) is one defining trait of terrorism, and another to argue that doing so for the sake of coercion (Wellman), or for one’s own political advantage (Goodin), sufficiently defines terrorism. The latter claims are quite implausible; they confuse terrorism and terrorizing. But, while terrorism is meant to terrorize, not every type of terrorizing with a view to coercion or to gaining political advantage is tantamount to terrorism. The terrorizing must be achieved by violence, whether actual or threatened. From the point of view both of history and of current use, “nonviolent terrorism” looks much too odd, and neither Wellman nor Goodin give us good reason to think of terrorism in a way that allows for it.

Whatever else it is, terrorism is (a type of) violence. But the notion of violence is itself in need of clarification. Just like “terrorism,” “violence” has no universally accepted definition and tends to be used in a string of different senses. Just like “terrorism,” “violence” is very much a contested concept, and its ordinary use often indicates confusion and displays double standards. This is not the place for an extended, systematic discussion of the subject; for the purposes of this chapter (and the book), some brief remarks must suffice.¹

One characteristic way of defining violence is in terms of force. Of course, a simple equation of the two will not do: we do not want to say that every use of force is an instance of violence, and therefore also prima facie morally wrong. We can act firmly yet gently to restrain someone from doing something desperate, thus using force, but not violence, and doing the right thing under the circumstances rather than something wrong. Therefore we might define violence as “the illegal use of force, or threat of such force, against person or property” (Miller 1984, p. 403). But this implies that, whatever state agents do, as long as they are acting within the bounds of law, they can never be charged with violence – surely an unwelcome implication. A street brawl will count as violence, but a war between two states will not. Replacing “illegal” by “morally illegitimate” does not help. Given the amended definition, a fight between two persons that is clearly violent in the usual sense of “violence” cannot be described as such; we must find out first who is attacking and who is merely defending himself. Only the former is using violence, whereas the latter, while giving as good as he gets, is not. The same goes for war: the side fighting an unjust war is using violence, while the side fighting a just war is not. Both “legalistic” and “legitimist” definitions of violence are overly narrow, run together conceptual and normative considerations, and are bound to generate much too much relativism in discussions of the subject.

There is a different and broader approach to violence – broad enough to include a wide range of oppression and injustice in society. It is argued that these should count as violence because of their consequences. These consequences are not less damaging, and tend to be more pervasive and long term, than the application of brute physical force, which is commonly taken as the paradigm of violence. The fact that they are less dramatic, indeed less palpable, should not make us blind to the fact that they are often as pernicious as violence in the more usual, narrow sense. Thus John Harris argues that, when people are injured or made to suffer, it does not really matter just how that is done; what counts is the result, the injury or suffering caused. He proposes the following definition: “an act of violence occurs when injury or suffering is inflicted upon a person or persons by an agent who knows (or ought reasonably to have known) that his actions would result in the harm in question” (Harris 1980, p. 19). It is not important even whether people are injured by someone’s action or as a consequence of failure to act; accordingly, the word “actions” in his definition is to be taken broadly enough to include omissions as well. This helps highlight “the violence of normal times” or “structural violence,” the type of violence that is impersonal and psychological, rather than personal and physical, and results largely from people’s inaction rather than from their positive actions. In this way, it may be possible to conscript the widely felt repugnance towards, and opposition to, “rape, murder, fire-and-sword”-type violence in the struggle against “structural violence” involved in injustice and oppression. That, indeed, is the main point in adopting a broad conception of violence.

However, it is not clear that much will be achieved along this path. Murder and rape, on the one hand, and injustice and oppression, on the other, are similar in that they are all brought about by human action (or inaction) and that they are all great wrongs; but they are also dissimilar in some important respects. For one thing, there is not only general agreement that murder and rape are wrong, but also a wide consensus on what clear-cut cases of murder or rape are. There is general agreement, too, that injustice and oppression are wrong; but there is very little consensus on what clear-cut cases of injustice or oppression are. Some would go further and say that both “injustice” and “oppression” are essentially contested concepts, and that we should not expect ever to reach much consensus on their application (see Gallie 1956). This makes the prospect of any great advance in eliminating or greatly reducing injustice or oppression by this particular method rather dubious. Moreover, we can run together things such as murder and rape, on the one hand, and injustice and oppression, on the other, under a single conceptual and moral heading of “violence” only if we ignore the distinction between acts and omissions. But it is not clear that we should do so. Surely there is a moral difference “between what is done, on the one hand, in stabbing a beggar to death and, on the other hand, in ignoring his plea for assistance” (Coady 2008, p. 31).

Yet another way to understand violence is to focus on the notion of force and qualify it in terms of its direct effects rather than, as in the first approach, in terms of its legality or moral legitimacy. Definitions along these lines reflect common use much better than the previous two approaches, and accordingly are often found in dictionaries. Thus the Oxford English Dictionary defines “violence” as “the exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on or damage to persons or property.” This is on the right track, but it raises two queries. Are the words “so as” to be taken in an objective sense, as “apt to,” or in a subjective sense, as “meant to”? It seems to me that, if someone were to exercise physical force of the sort likely to cause injury or damage upon someone else, and did so without meaning to do so, that would still count as violence. If the idea of unintended violence makes sense, we should take the words “so as” in the objective sense. The other query is: Must violence always be physical? It would seem not: one can readily think of cases where injury or damage to a person is done by forceful psychological pressure rather than by physical force.

One type of such psychological violence is bullying at school or in the workplace; another is psychological battering that characterizes some intimate relationships. When the OED definition is amended to allow for such cases, it reads: “the exercise of physical or psychological force so as to inflict injury on or damage to persons or property.”

Unlike definitions produced by the first approach, this one does not preempt ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Defining Terrorism
• 2. State Terrorism and Counterterrorism
• 3. Complicity of the Victims
• 4. The Consequences of Terrorism
• 5. Terrorism, Rights, and Justice
• 6. Terrorism, Supreme Emergency, and Moral Disaster
• 7. Is Terrorism Morally Distinctive?
• 8. Case Study: Terror Bombing of German Cities
• 9. Case Study: Terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Summing Up
• Notes
• References
• Index