Violent Alternatives to War

Justifying Actions Against Contemporary Terrorism

Jean-Francois Caron

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9783110730005
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

When we take a look back at the way Western states have fought terrorist organizations in the last 20 years, it is difficult not to think that these alternatives to war might have been more ethical than the decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and in 2003. These cases speak for themselves as they have both led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, which is highly paradoxical in light of the logic that supported these interventions. There is a need to think of alternatives to war that will imply the legitimization of proactive sets of measures that would allow states to effectively prevent terrorist attacks through the use of kinetic force in a limited extent as a way to avoid the terrible and unpredictable effects of wars.

Violent Alternatives to War: Justifying Actions Against Contemporary Terrorism engages in a moral discussion of the challenges associated with violent alternatives to war when confronting terrorism and suggests a comprehensive approach to how this form of violence can be legitimized and how it ought to be used against this contemporary threat.

Chapter 1: Understanding Contemporary Terrorism

According to international law, there are two ways of understanding violence: either as a legitimate action when used for self-defence or an illegitimate action when used to unjustly attack another political entity. Following this approach, states can rightfully resort to violence only when they have a just cause, which can only be the case when their sovereignty has already been violated or when it is about to be violated by another state. However, this conceptualisation of legitimate violence that emerged from the Second World War is now problematic and has demonstrated its incapacity to successfully meet the challenges of contemporary conflicts (Gross, 2010). The quintessential example of this shortcoming was the inability of the international community to stop the mass violation of human rights in Rwanda and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. These terrible crises led the international community to enlarge its notion of legitimate violence by creating the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, which now allows the violation of another state’s sovereignty in the case of mass murders of civilians.

The complexities of contemporary terrorism have also showed the deficiencies of the post-1945 Westphalian order. The problem is two-fold. Indeed, it is very difficult – if not impossible – for states to foresee when these groups will attack them, which increases the vulnerability of their citizens. In this regard, one approach has been the waging of preventive wars against entities suspected of collaborating with terrorist organizations. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, which had numerous tragic consequences, namely political instability in the region, civilian deaths, and an incapacity to fully eliminate the terrorist threat, is the best example in this regard. At the other end of the spectrum, once states have suffered an attack, their reaction has been to wage a full-scale war against their enemy. The consequences of such actions, namely in Afghanistan, have been as tragic as those in post-war Iraq. There is, therefore, an obvious need to find a more efficient way of facing this menace in a manner that will simultaneously prevent innocent civilians from being killed by these organizations and avoid the devastating effects of a full-scale war on civilians abroad. In other words, as was the case following the mass violations of human rights in the 1990s, we must revise the concept of legitimate use of force against terrorist organizations.

But the first challenge is obviously to define terrorism. Although scholars have debated this question for nearly 50 years, no widely accepted definition of this form of political violence has emerged⁵. In this sense, I am totally aware that my definition of this phenomenon will be contested by many who might see it as too limiting or as an attempt to justify some forms of political violence that I will refer to under the umbrella of ‘guerrilla warfare’⁶. I nonetheless believe that my definition allows for the establishment of a difference between the so-called ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of terror in a way that helps explain the shortcomings of the moral criteria that ought to justify violence against contemporary groups such as Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

1.1 Terrorism and the Indiscriminate Use of Violence

A lot has been written about the nature of modern terrorism, but many of these works have not been able to specify its true nature. More precisely, its main characterizations are usually thought to be the large number of victims, transnational actions, and the sacred role played by religion that leads to the rationalization of even the most immoral actions (Rapoport, 1984). However, such an assessment of the uniqueness of this contemporary form of violence is misleading. Firstly, emphasizing the role played by religion in contemporary terrorism neglects the fact that it has been a key factor in the mass murder of individuals for centuries. Indeed, it has been estimated that the Thugs – whose actions were designed to please Kali, the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction⁷, as a way to keep the universe in balance (Sedgwick, 2004, p. 798) and who operated largely in present-day India – killed an estimated 500,000 to one million individuals during the last three centuries of their history⁸: a conservative estimate that is beyond the combined number of people killed by contemporary terrorist organizations. Secondly, if Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Islamic Jihad are undoubtedly animated by unnegotiable religious dogma and by the transnational nature of their actions, the same could have been said about the Thugs, the Assassins, or the Zealots-Sicarii. More precisely, the Thugs and the Assassins moved constantly across borders, while all three of these movements were driven by an uncompromising willingness to achieve their religious goals. Therefore, if there is a difference between old and new forms of terrorism, it must be found elsewhere: religion is not in itself a novel aspect of terrorism.

There is no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been for many people one of their most traumatising memories and these images that many of us still have in mind should provide us with an understanding of what terrorism refers to. Witnessing these planes crash live on TV into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and some of those trapped inside jumping out of windows to escape the terrible blaze that resulted from the 10,000 gallons of jet fuel scattered inside the buildings by American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 was a haunting experience. If it was not already the case, terrorism became in many people’s minds a synonym of total war and of a profound lack of respect for human life. It must, however, be mentioned that this means of warfare by some groups is unique in light of the long history of terrorism. Indeed, most of the groups described as ‘terrorist’ have been very respectful of the principle of discrimination between non-combatants and the people they believed were legitimate targets. This is no longer the case. For Walter Laqueur, the preeminent historian of terrorism, this way of fighting constitutes a revolution in terrorism. If their predecessors were rational and calculated in their use of violence, the perpetrators of this new form of terrorism know no limits in terms of who deserves to die and the sorts of weapons to be used (Laqueur, 1999). As such, this leads to two major consequences. Firstly, if terrorism refers to these sorts of actions and that they represent a shift with those that we have witnessed in the past from individuals and groups that have been labelled as terrorists, there is a need to refer to these latter actors with a different word. Secondly, this shift in the means of warfare used by some terrorist organizations is the fundamental reason why we need to rethink the legitimate use of force against them as it impairs states’ most basic obligation – to protect their citizens from harm.

But before going further, we first need to talk about one major misconception people have about terrorism. As argued by Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin, the terrorist phenomenon is a complex one defined through the lens of an ideological filter that has tended to make it the exclusive practice of non-state actors (2015, pp. 13 – 26) who use indiscriminate means of violence (Primoratz, 2013, p. 15). This is why it is usually considered an immoral technique that is solely used by rogue insurgents. This may explain why many would be tempted to define terrorism as a political method used by non-state actors to force states to pursue a course of action they would otherwise not follow. This is especially true with the 1983 definition of terrorism by the US Department of State which reads as follows: “terrorism is premediated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience” (US Department of State). This definition, which has been privileged by the international community, unfortunately cannot capture the true essence of terrorism. Indeed, this definition is based on a double standard regarding the use of violence, deemed legitimate when used by state actors but terrorist actions when used by non-state actors. Undoubtedly, this definition has a rhetorical purpose, as it allows states to demonise those they are fighting as immoral terrorists which, consequently, may also be a way to justify all actions against them. This double standard is not only problematic because of its potential consequences regarding the ways we fight these groups but also because it is fundamentally untrue, since indiscriminate use of violence can also be a tactic used by states.

In fact, it is a mistake to think of terrorism and its indiscriminate use of violence only as the purview of non-state actors⁹. In history, what Chaliand and Blin (2015, p. 21) have labelled ‘top-down terrorism (terrorisme d’en haut)’ has actually led to exponentially more deaths than ‘grassroots terrorism (terrorisme d’en bas)’. If it is possible to talk about state-sponsored terrorism (as was the case with Libya under Gaddafi or Iran, which have directly or indirectly engaged in violent actions against citizens or other states), we should not neglect the fact that totalitarian states have made terrorism a core feature of their domestic politics¹⁰. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the word ‘terrorism’ derives from the French word terreur and refers to the period from 1793 to 1794, when the Jacobins imposed on France a regime of systematic terror that spared no one. To be more precise, the word was openly used by members of the Convention nationale who declared terror ‘an order of business (à l’ordre du jour)’ on 5^th September 1793, which was followed a few days later by the adoption of the Law of Suspects that allowed the state to arrest anyone based on broad and imprecise criteria¹¹. Saint-Just, one of Robespierre’s fiercest henchman, provided the basis of arrests in a speech on 10^th October in which he said:

We will not have prosperity as long as the last enemy of freedom will breathe. You must punish not only the traitors, but also those who will not be bothered; you must punish anyone who is passive in the Republic and who does not do anything for her. Ever since the French people has decided to show its will, everything opposed to it ought to be considered as its enemy. We must govern with an iron fist and we must not hesitate to oppress the tyrants (quoted in Chaliand & Blin, 2015, pp. 146 – 147).

Shortly after came the establishment of revolutionary tribunals, that were not bound by any procedural rules as they were able to sentence individuals unable to prove their innocence against the charges brought against them. The fact that thousands of people – a very vast majority of them being totally innocent – were sent to the guillotine shows the terroristic nature of Robespierre’s regime. However, the revolutionary tribunals also had another purpose, namely to spread fear throughout French society. Igor Primoratz writes in this regard:

(…) the trials and executions were also meant to strike terror in the hearts of all those in the public at large who lacked civic virtue, and in that way coerce compliance with, and indeed active support of, revolutionary laws and policies. (…) That is what makes the “Reign of Terror” a case of state terrorism. Jacobins believed such terrorism was a necessary means of consolidating the new regime. As Robespierre put it, terror was “an emanation of virtue”; without it, virtue remained impotent. Therefore the Jacobins applied the term to their own actions and policies quite unabashedly, without any negative connotations (Primoratz, 2013, p. 33).

This logic prefigured what was to happen in the 20^th century in all totalitarian states that used similar methods. For instance, Lenin did not hesitate to order his subordinates to resort to the use of indiscriminate violence against the civilian population¹². Similarly, many were tried and sentenced by puppet tribunals under imaginary accusations in Nazi Germany. These two systems of terror were reinforced by the presence of a powerful and arbitrary secret police that had the right to arrest individuals for any reason, which resulted in the destruction of social capital. This is why Hannah Arendt (1958, p. 464) came to the conclusion that ‘terror is the essence of totalitarian domination’ and why Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski (1965, p. 169) wrote that ‘total fear reigns’ in these regimes.

Moreover, state terrorism has been the appanage of democratic states that have not hesitated to proceed to indiscriminate means of violence. For instance, the decision made by Winston Churchill and Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris, the commander-in-chief of the Bomber Command during WWII, to proceed to ‘area bombings’ of German cities – a euphemism for the large-scale indiscriminate bombings of cities with the sole aim of terrorising the population and crushing morale – was clearly a case of state terror¹³.

Therefore, defining terrorism as a tool used solely by non-state actors is misleading. History has shown us that the indiscriminate use of violence has also been a feature of state actors that has in fact led to a significantly greater number of deaths than when this method has been used by non-state actors. It is also a mistake to restrict the logic of terrorism to non-democratic states as democracies have also resorted to this type of violence in the past. This is why it is semantically and historically more accurate to define terrorism as the deliberate use of violence against innocent people for the purpose of forcing an entitiy to pursue a specific course of action¹⁴. Such a definition not only allows us to make a clearer distinction between the forms of violence that can be used by states, but also by non-state actors. It also allows to distinguish between non-state actors that ought to be labelled as “guerrilla groups” whose methods are based, similarly to state actors waging war, on a distinction between combatants and non-combatants from those that are refusing to do so by resorting to indiscriminate forms of lethal measures. When it is the case, such individuals or groups ought to be labelled as terrorist. Although we cannot ignore that this latter form of violence has been the privileged method of some individuals and organizations in the past, it has nonetheless remained a marginal pattern throughout history. In fact, when thinking about the history of non-state political violence, guerrilla appears to have been the norm while terrorism is rather the form of violence that has marked the last 20 years. In this sense, the opposition between “old” and “new” forms of terrorism should rather be understood as a shift from guerrilla tactics to the indiscriminate use of violence because, in itself, the essence of terrorism has remained the same over time.

The fact of the matter is that if trying to cause the death of hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians may have been the modus operandi of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, this method of warfare cannot be extrapolated to all other organizations that have been labelled ‘terrorist’ in the past. If bin Laden’s actions were morally repugnant as they were synonymous with the indiscriminate mass murder of men, women and children, this was not the case with many other organizations in history, which has major implications for legitimate counter-terrorism measures. In fact, contrary to what we may think, most – but not all – of what has been referred to as “the old terrorist organizations” were always keen to base their operations on a discrimination between those they considered legitimate targets and innocent civilians (Neumann, 2009). For instance, the Jewish Sicarii, who are known today as one of the first groups to use terror for the sake of achieving a political objective in an organised way, took great pains to determine who was to be targeted. The immediate cause of their revolt against the Romans was the census implemented in the early years of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which the Jews viewed as a humiliation, a sign of their subordination to a foreign empire. They were able to canalise that frustration into violent actions solely against the Roman ‘invaders’ and their Jewish collaborators, who were identified as traitors, which took the form of an urban guerrilla. According to the Romano-Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus, the Zealots’ main tactic was the public assassination of political and religious public figures to create a general feeling of insecurity in Judea¹⁵.

The case of the Assassins shares many similarities with the one of the Sicarii. This sect associated with Isma’ilism also resorted to the public assassinations of public figures who were opposed to their mission. Their most famous murder is, without doubt, the one of Nizam al-Mulk, the vizier of the Seljuk Empire in 1092, which remains one of the first great terrorist attacks¹⁶. Subsequent murders included the one of Conrad of Montferrat, the King of Jerusalem, in 1192.

Terrorising policymakers and other public figures as a way to force societies to pursue a specific course of action was the main tool used by 19^th century anarchists. In this vein, we can think of the murders of French President Marie François Sadi Carnot in 1894, of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo in 1897, of the Empress Elizabeth ‘Sissi’ in 1898, of Italian King Umberto I in 1900, the attempts against leading French politicians Leon Gambetta and Jules Ferry in 1881 and 1884, respectively, or the one committed in 1893 when ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Understanding Contemporary Terrorism
• Chapter 2: The Shortcomings of the Just War Approach Against Terrorism
• Chapter 3: Revisiting the Notion of the Pre-emptive Attack
• Chapter 4: Thinking About Violent Alternatives to War
• Chapter 5: Justifying Lethal Alternatives to War
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index