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Introduction
This special edition of Defense & Security Analysis (DSA) focuses on terrorism, terrorists and circumstances under which terrorist attacks may be mitigated. It follows the special edition of DSA in December 2005 with articles on terrorism and missile defense. Around that period there were terrorist attacks in the UK and Spain and various international meetings with security personnel and police were held to discuss the evolving situation. The articles in the 2005 edition on terrorism contributed to that discussion.
In August 2006 in the UK, the British Security Services and her Aviation Authority imposed a strict ban on carrying liquids aboard aircraft, which led to major disruptions to air travelers originating or transiting the UK. The ban on quantities of liquids canned aboard aircraft spread quickly to the USA and other countries. Tourists planning to travel by air had to make other arrangements. This ban was prompted by a realization that small quantities of certain inert liquids could be mixed together and used as explosives in binary weapons so that if detonated aboard an aircraft in flight the damage caused would surely lead to the aircraft's destruction.
As background and context for this current edition of DSA we quote from the Editorial for Vol. 21, No. 4 (December) 2005.
This edition of Defense & Security Analysis comes more than four years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City and Washington DC. Those attacks and the anthrax incidents in September and October 2001 in Florida and Washington DC had as a result the United States declaring a global "War on Terror."
Since those devastating attacks, we have seen other terrorist bombings: in Madrid, on 11 March 2004, in London on 7 July and 21 July 2005, and other attacks in Iraq using explosive devices and occurring at this time almost on a daily basis. Thus, terrorism is at the top of any agenda on defense and security analysis and it plays a special role in our thinking about ways to deter and disrupt terrorists' activities. Of the articles published in the 2005 edition, one stands out today for the importance of the subject of its analysis: Matenia Sirseloudi's article on predicting terrorists' attacks which considers this extremely important problem from a sociological point of view.
With the terrorist attacks at the Boston Marathon in April and in Benghazi in 2012, we consider this edition to be both timely and an important contribution to the subject of terrorism at the international and domestic levels.
Investigations into attacks try to answer all relevant questions about when, where, why, who, what and how it happened and whether there are future implications about security. In the case of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate have held extensive hearings on the nature of the attacks by terrorists and that of the responses by the USA and Libyan governments both during the attack and afterwards in an attempt to establish causes, blame and future implications for security. This case is not closed.
The more recent Boston Marathon bombings present an ongoing investigation with serious domestic security implications, especially in light of the use of "pressure-cooker" bombs filled with explosives allegedly obtained from fireworks purchased from different sources over several months. The two young men who became "radicalized" sufficient to perpetrate such atrocity were later matched by, again, two "radicalized" young men who in broad daylight hacked to death, in the name of Islam, a young soldier outside the Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, London.
We have seen immediate effects of terrorist attacks such as the ban on carrying liquids onto aircraft and removal of shoes prior to passing through security screenings, both of which were due to attempts to blow up aircraft using chemical explosives, either by mixing liquids on board the aircraft in flight or by detonating a "shoe bomb."
This edition opens with Allan Orr's philosophical ruminations on the subject of terrorism and the distinctions between it and the many manifestations of war in general. This is followed by Alastair Finlan's detailed analysis of the problems facing those responsible for public safety and security against terrorists drawn from the experience of the London Metropolitan Police that led to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent man. Along similar lines, the article immediately following, by James Hasik, considers organizational learning as an important ingredient for success in counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations.
Following the counterinsurgency theme, Danzell and Zidek consider the effect of substantial funding in the USA and the UK in their fight against terrorism. These were two examples of increased funding but, as they demonstrate using data drawn from 34 other countries, increased spending does not necessarily reduce either the incidence or lethality of terrorism.
The next two articles focus attention on terrorism as perpetrated by Muslims leading many in the West, especially, to see the potential for a "clash of civilizations," to paraphrase Professor Samuel Huntington. The general public understanding in the West of the Muslim world is scant indeed and colored by terrorist incidents over the past decade perpetrated in the name of Islam and accentuated by the actions of terrorist groups such as Al Quaeda and pronouncements of Osama bin Laden. Shireen Burki's article is a very valuable survey from Islamic literature of what lay behind these incidents and the meaning of jihad, as holy struggle, or qatal, as murder. Her contribution helps understanding the actions of Boko Haram and the problem it presents to the Nigerian government and population, the subject of Samuel Oyewole's timely and relevant article.
Julian Palmore
Martin Edmonds
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Terrorism: a philosophical discourse
Allan Orr
School of Political & Social Inquiry, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Though it is nigh on 12 years since 9/11, there is still no agreed definition of terrorism. Indeed, the original nations of the "Coalition of the Willing," who previously pursued a "War on Terror" so vigorously (Australia, Britain and the USA) have come full circle now to disown entirely the very notion of a "War on Terror." A key stumbling point towards a definition remains whether terrorism should be classified as an act of crime or of war. The two conceptualisations are philosophically and fundamentally opposed and inevitably from each flows entirely different strategic prescriptions to counter the phenomenon. If policy is to be guided adequately, let alone optimally, the philosophical arguments of each camp must be thrown headlong into one another, with the last philosophy standing the victor and then claiming the policy spoils.
Introduction
The Prussian military philosopher Carl Von Clausewitz wrote in his timeless tome, On War, "War is the continuation of politics by other means." Technically, what Clausewitz opined was that war is the continuation of "political intercourse" by other means. "Other means" here meaning predominantly coercive means:
War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale. Countless duels go to make up war, but a picture of it as a whole can be formed by imagining a pair of wrestlers. Each tries through physical force to compel the other to do his will; his immediate aim is to throw his opponent in order to make him incapable of further resistance. War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.1
Before Clausewitz's time, wars were predominantly political in an "age of reason." Religious fundamentalism was largely absent on the Continent, in Britain and the New World - at least so far as the implementation of state sanctioned and conducted violence was concerned. In the modern age, religiously inspired violence has entered a renaissance and so any discussion of terrorism as contained herein must move past purely political definitions to encompass religious, ethnic and other ideological motivations at once. According to Ellis:
The development of religiously motivated terrorism, described in the literature on the subject by the concept of the "new terrorism", has increased the complexity of the terrorist phenomenon. We are now faced with a wider range of actors with a wider set of motivations, strategies, tactics, organizational structures and goals. We are also confronted by a wider range of threats along the technological spectrum, from low-end conventional weapons, the gun and bomb, to weapons of mass destruction. The overall result is that we face a much more complex phenomenon than ever before.2
Thus, if war is the continuation of political intercourse by other means, the "new terrorism" must therefore be, ineluctably, the continuation of ideological intercourse by other means. This definition is as simple in concept as it is far-ranging in its implications that terrorism has been, by any measure, overanalysed in the modern epoch, particularly post 9/11. A plethora of definitions, actors and motivations has ensured the field to this day lacks a universal definition, as noted.
Terrorism is most definitely an act of war, whether it be conducted by foreign or domestic agents, foreign visitors or citizens of the state. Terrorism is an act that is conducted by self-declared enemies of the state, who place an ideological viewpoint before considerations of national citizenship. It is a zero-sum act conceived to compel an "enemy" to do one's will, a modus operandi utilised to forcibly wrench an ideological outcome, to change a particular policy or to alter the very character of the targeted polis. As surely as conventional, high-intensity wars waged between states are fought using violent means for political/ideological ends, so too is terrorism pursued and enacted. The only pertinent difference here on the warfare continuum is the operational intensity and imbalance of strength between the belligerents, where state forces typically, or at least initially, enjoy a preponderance of military might over a cellular terrorist enemy.
Warfare intensity spectrum
Terrorism — insurgency — conventional war — total war — absolute war
Since "terrorism" per se has yet to gain a universally accepted definition, each expert in the field (bona fide and charlatan alike) has felt it necessary to posit their own often cumbersome definitions. As such, so also does this article feel so compelled, feeling it necessary to sally forth its own definition for conceptual clarity, so far in terms of the musings herein. A review of the literature addressing the definition of terrorism reveals the difficulty in advancing study of the subject at the base level.
First, there is little consensus on the definition itself. For example, terrorism has been defined as: politically motivated violence by small groups; covert violence by a group for political ends; political violence that includes a "climate of terror" and a "synthesis of war and theatre ... perpetuated on innocent victims ... in the hope of creating a mood of fear, for political purposes." While many definitions contain similar elements and references (often "inbred" re-references - "politically motivated violence" - "violence perpetrated toward innocent victims," etc.), a precise or measurable definition is lacking.
Each definition usually carries with it a normative judgement on the part of the writer and/or reader that inevitably leads to the oft quoted cliché - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. In certain instances, to the extent that a "great deal of time and effort has been expended in tiying to make the truly reprehensible politically respectable." The result, as Schultz points out, is a field of literature that is "descriptive, prescriptive and obliquely emotive in form."3 Consider the following definitions of terrorism:
- The use or threat, for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological course of action, which involves serious violence against any person or property (British Government).
- Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups of clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience (US State Department).
- The calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies as to the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological (US Department of Defense).
- The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives (Federal Bureau of Investigation).
- International terrorism is the threat or use of violence for political purposes when (1) such action is intended to influence the attitude and behaviour of a target group wider than its immediate victim and (2) its ramifications transcend national boundaries (Peter Sederberg).
- A strategy of violence designed to promote desired outcomes by instilling fear in the public at large (Walter Reich).
- Contributes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent people are targeted (Walter Laquer).
- The use or threatened use of force designed to bring about political change (Brian Jenkins).
- The deliberate, systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear in order to gain political ends ... Terrorism ... is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil (Paul Johnson).
- [Terrorism] is ineluctably about power, the pursuit of power, the acquisition of power and the use of power to achieve political change (Bruce Hoffman).
- [Terrorism] is a tool to be employed, a means of reaching a goal, for many types of political actors ... terrorism is always a method, but under some circumstances in some groups or movements, it is something else ... the means becomes an end (Michel Wievorka).4
In a single book, Whilaker presents 12 tenets that define terrorism:
- It is a premeditated, politically motivated use of violence or its threat to intimidate or coerce a government or the general public.
- It is a strategy of violence designed to achieve desired outcomes by instilling fear and insecurity.
- There is an unlawful use or threat of force through sustained campaigning or sporadic incidents.
- There is a calculated use of violence against civilian, non-combatant targets
- Power is intrinsically at the root of political violence - its acquisition, its manipulation and its employment to effect changes.
- Revolutionary terrorism aims at bringing about complete change within a state.
- Sub-revolutionary strategies aim at political change without collapsing a political system.
- Generally, there is clandestine activity which is carefully planned as to goals, means, targets and access.
- Goals may be understood generally as political, social, ideological or religious, otherwise terra lists would be thought of as delinquent criminals.
- Terrorism is usually earned out by sub-national groups, occasionally, by dedicated lone individuals.
- Maximum publicity is normally an important objective for terrorists.
- Zones of action, hitherto a specific country or locality or s...
