Terrorism research focuses on three main questions. First, what are the consequences of terrorism? Second, what are the causes of terrorism? And third, what is the optimal government response to terrorism? These key questions are inherently interconnected because it is generally accepted that the outcome of terrorism reveals its appeal, which counterterrorism measures ought to divest in order to minimize the incentive for this violent behavior.
Within both the academic and policy communities, the dominant post-9/11 paradigm is what I call the Strategic Model. This model posits that (1) terrorism is an effective tactic for coercing government concessions; (2) rational groups are therefore using this tactic to achieve their policy demands; and (3) the international community can thus combat terrorism by providing superior avenues for achieving them via peace processes or democracy promotion. Clearly, the conventional wisdom is predicated on its first premise — that terrorism is indeed an effective tactic for groups to achieve their stated political preferences, be it the withdrawal of foreign troops, the creation of a new homeland, or the establishment of a different national ideology.
But what if it turns out that terrorism is actually among the worst tactics in the world for inducing large or small political concessions? What if instead of helping to accomplish them, substate attacks on civilians steel their governments from giving in to the perpetrators’ policy demands? The emerging evidence that terrorism is a suboptimal tactic for achieving them suggests that its perpetrators are motivated by alternative incentive structures, with important implications for counterterrorism strategy.
There is thus nothing wrong with the basic logic of the Strategic Model. But only by examining the real-world consequences of terrorism can we hope to understand its true appeal and how best to combat it. I therefore agree with Paul Pillar that notwithstanding the conventional wisdom particularly within the field of political science, the behavior of terrorist groups suggests that their goals may have nothing to do with coercing government compliance. Otherwise, those who participate in terrorism would be acting deeply irrationally.
Read: Understanding the Strategic Model — The Dominant Post-9/11 Paradigm on Terrorism
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Thanks very much to my colleagues, Dr. Hillyard and Dr. Pillar, for their responses to my discussion of the underlying causes of terrorist violence. I welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation.
Let me begin with Pillar’s rejoinder. He claims that in my effort to raise questions about the effects of socioeconomic factors and democracy on militant activity, I only address straw man arguments. I find this complaint more than a little ironic. Indeed, arguments that advance socioeconomic factors and the lack of democracy as causes of terrorism are those that commonly evince the simplistic, superficial logic indicative of straw man arguments. It is precisely because we observe the reflexive resort to notions that economic aid and democratization will eliminate the social bases of terrorism, that it is essential we take the arguments head-on. I found it striking that Pillar reports that he “know[s] no one who has argued in favor of such absolute propositions regarding economic or political roots.” It was precisely such a blind adherence to absolutist propositions that helped inspire the 2003 Iraq War.
Having said this, I understand Pillar’s complaint that my remarks lack nuance. He is right: I intended to be blunt. In part, it is challenging to do justice to complex arguments in a necessarily brief essay. However, I also sought to be attention-getting. Those captivated by simplistic formulations (recall, I offer that qualification) about the causes of terrorist violence need to be challenged, lest they accept those formulas unquestioningly. My goal was to be provocative, not comprehensive, to illustrate the wealth of contrary arguments as a hedge against any axiomatic conclusions about the effects of wealth and democracy on terrorism. Of course the ultimate objective of scholarly research is (and should be) more ambitious, namely to understand precisely how and how much these factors may or may not contribute to the incarnations of political violence about which we are concerned in this debate.
But now let me turn to some of the more substantive points raised. Hillyard’s point about inequality versus absolute poverty is a fair one and the professor provides a welcome elaboration of his own thinking in this regard. But I would take it a step further and suggest that inequality alone is insufficient as an explanatory factor. How people understand the circumstances that have brought about inequality or relative deprivation seem crucial. One thing I am often struck by is the degree to which militants and their societal supporters attribute that inequality to an alien oppressor, foreign occupier, or illegitimate government. If we want to understand the nature of the grievances that inspire support for violence, we must think carefully about the lethal mix of psychological and material circumstances from which those grievances arise.
Yet understanding the grievances that might predispose societies to tolerate violence is not enough. Forty years of research in social movement theory belies such an argument.
As the research tradition of Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT) illustrates, it takes more than the existence of a grievance to mobilize a social movement. Other factors, such as the presence of pre-existing social networks, political and financial resources, and organizational strategies are essential to understanding how non-violent — and many violent movements — emerge and evolve. Of course, there is likely a relationship between mobilization and the grievances that inspire it. But to focus only on the latter, as those wont to emphasize root causes arguments are inclined to do, is fundamentally wrongheaded.
Finally, I would like to shift gears and turn to the central themes of Hillyard’s essay. Especially significant — and as he rightly observes, a theme no one has yet to take issue with — is the extent to which the efficacy of terrorism is within our own power to control: how we react to violent attacks determines their success. Those interested in this thesis might consult John Mueller’s book Overblown. I think Hillyard’s highlighting of the discursive aspects of terrorism is critical and consistent. We create more terrorists when we call them that.
Yet I must admit to being on the fence about whether to abandon the term terrorism altogether. Terrorism is a particular strategy (or set of strategies) of armed conflict. To understand it, we need to isolate its key elements. Arguably, it is more akin to economic sanctions and strategic bombing than conventional warfare, at least in sharing a strategic logic in which harming a civilian population is supposed to coerce a government to change course. To group terrorism within the umbrella of political violence could obscure its nature and detract from our capacity to study this form of armed conflict. But perhaps that is an argument for clearly articulating the method. Whether we call it is terrorism may be tangential.
Read: Will the Real Straw Man Please Stand Up?
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I am still at a loss, even after reading Paddy Hillyard’s thoughtful reply to all the response essays, just what actions by the United States constitute the supporting, sponsoring, and perpetration of terrorist incidents. I’m not saying there have never been any, but Hillyard does not identify specific actions, only locales. Nor does he offer a definition that would allow us to affix the label of terrorism to any actions that were identified. The closest he comes to offering a defining characteristic is to note the determination by the International Court of Justice that the United States had violated international law in actions taken against Nicaragua (around the time the United States was supporting the Contras and opposing the first Sandinista government). But including anything that is a violation of international law would embrace far more than I expect any of us in this discussion would want to call terrorism. Even confining our purview to political violence, that still probably would be true. For example, the use of dum-dum (i.e., expanding) bullets is a violation of international law. Does that mean that a conventional military operation in which an army used such bullets would be committing an act of terrorism, but that an army using standard ammunition in an otherwise identical military operation would not?
Setting that part of the definitional business aside, I am moved by some of what Max Abrahms has written to take Hillyard’s side on another issue. Terrorism can have any, or several, of widely differing types of objectives. Those objectives range from narrow instrumental ones such as coercing a specific concession from a government to vaguer, visceral ones such as exacting revenge or carrying out what the terrorist believes to be divine will. As the actions of even just modern terrorist groups demonstrate, there are many more possibilities as well — including showing the flag, inducing civilian fear, complicating an adversary’s military planning, establishing credible deterrence, sending other messages, etc. It is not all a matter of seeking compliance by a government, nor is it all a matter of provoking overreaction by a government. Sometimes the objective is neither of those. So it is a mistake to score success or failure of terrorist acts solely in terms of one of those objectives.
On the subject of civilian versus military targets, readers will note from my previous essay that I consider the targeting of noncombatants to be a key part of terrorism. But Hillyard is right that, as a practical matter, it often is difficult to determine whether any one incident meets this part of the definition. Those who compile government statistics on terrorism sometimes have to wrestle with the difficult cases. Uncertain targeting is one possible reason for the difficulty; was an inaccurate Hizballah-fired missile aimed at an Israeli military base or at a nearby kibbutz? Who qualifies as a noncombatant also can be open to controversy. (What about military personnel while they are in their barracks?)
Given all these definitional hassles, is it worth trying to rescue the term terrorism? One of the themes in my essay was that in discussing this subject we are too often mired in semantics at the expense of substance. Are we talking about such a semantically troublesome concept just so that people like the four of us can write articles on the subject?
I don’t think so. There are three other reasons to preserve the term and the concept. One is that there already is a huge discourse on the subject that — however much we may wince at how often it is loosely used or blatantly politicized — is a fact of intellectual and policy life. We need to work with it, to make the discourse at least a little less flawed.
A second reason is that the type of political violence that corresponds to the sort of definition of terrorism I offered earlier — and despite the aforementioned wide diversity of terrorist objectives — lends itself to being countered by certain types of services and agencies, which are the ones in our governments that we have come to recognize as having a counterterrorist mission. In this important respect terrorism differs from some other forms of threatened or actual political violence, which are better countered by other means — such as by nuclear weapons, or at the other extreme, by a lone cop on the beat.
The third reason harks back to Paddy Hillyard’s invocation of international law, which in turn is linked some important matters of morality. Although terrorism cannot be equated to every kind of violence prohibited by international law, it does correspond pretty closely to violations of some of the more important principles of the laws of war (i.e., the jus in bello, or conduct of warfare, part of such law). One of those principles concerns not targeting civilians. Another involves humane treatment of prisoners (a principle terrorists violate every time they kill, or hold for ransom, a hostage). Yet another is the requirement that combatants be openly identified as such, which means being overt and uniformed, not clandestine. There is a legal, and an underlying moral, distinction between those who are licensed under the laws of war to do certain lethal things because they themselves have donned the uniform and subjected themselves to being the target of similarly lethal acts, and those who have not.
Read: Terrorism Involves Methods, Not Objectives
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If the conventional wisdom is correct that terrorism pays politically, then blowing up civilians is perfectly rational political behavior, and deterring aggrieved groups therefore rests on issuing moral appeals to depraved leaders such as Osama bin Laden. Fortunately, terrorism is a suboptimal political tactic, arming governments with a ready-made message to deter the aggrieved from attacking our populations. Paddy Hillyard raises two methodological objections with this empirical finding of mine, but both are misplaced.
His first objection pertains to my coding of whether terrorism is politically effective behavior. In my large-n regression analyses, the dependent variable I typically employ is the extent to which terrorism advances the political platforms of the perpetrators relative to alternative tactics available to them. Only if terrorism were not generally understood as a tactic used mainly for coercing policy concessions would progress on them be an inappropriate measure of success. In fact, Hillyard’s recommendation for the international community to provide terrorists with nonviolent outlets for realizing their policy demands likewise assumes that progress in realizing them is how terrorists evaluate their own political advancement. Yet rather than showing how terrorists achieve their political platforms by coercing government compliance, Hillyard focuses on how this tactic tends to lead to government overreaction. In practice, these two government responses — compliance and overreaction — are actually polar opposites. According to his logic, terrorism invariably becomes a win-win political proposition; regardless of its affect on governments, the tactic always pays.
To be fair, this common conceptual error is rooted in our genes. In the 1970s, the social psychologist Edward Jones developed a concept called Correspondent Inference to explain the cognitive process by which an observer infers the intentions of an actor. In the lab, Jones discovered that people typically infer the intentions of others directly from the immediate consequences of their actions. To illustrate the correspondence that observers draw between the effect and objective of an actor, he offered this simple example: if a boy notices his mother close the door and the room becomes less noisy, he will naturally conclude that she shut the door to silence the racket from outside. Due to this common heuristic of inferring intentions directly from visible outcomes, terrorists are often credited with purposefully achieving the exact opposite of their stated political preferences — namely, by mobilizing target countries into becoming more hawkish militarily toward the very people the terrorists claim to be defending. We saw my theory in action after 9/11, when the terrorist “masterminds” were exalted for the “sophistication” of their attacks that led the United States to increase its troop presence in the Persian Gulf by a factor of fifteen. In the minds of many observers, bin Laden’s goal had apparently shifted overnight from trying to drive the United States out of the Gulf to trying to provoke the long-term Western occupation of it.
Observers have drawn the same kind of faulty correspondence from the consequences of terrorism inside of the American homeland. When Americans became hesitant to fly after the four planes were hijacked on 9/11, President George W. Bush concluded that the terrorists evidently “want us to stop flying.” To Bush, the post-9/11 economic contraction likewise revealed that “The terrorists want our economy to stop.” Similarly, with American civil liberties restricted in the wake of the attacks, he proclaimed that al-Qaeda apparently “hates freedom” and “seeks to destroy our freedom.”[1] Because al-Qaeda and its affiliates are essentially mute on these topics, it is difficult to imagine anymore ascribing them to the terrorists had Americans not been hesitant to fly and worried about their economic and political future in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Certainly, the post-9/11 response has been extremely costly to the United States, but war is not a zero-sum game in which our losses necessarily spell al-Qaeda gains. Taking my shoes off at O’Hare does not curb U.S. middle east policy.
Hillyard’s second objection pertains to my coding of the independent variable. As a terrorist splitter, I define terrorism narrowly as a substate attack against a civilian target for a putative political goal. As a terrorist lumper, by contrast, Hillyard brooks no distinction between this tactic and a guerrilla attack against a military target. Hillyard rejects on practical grounds our ability to distinguish terrorist attacks against civilians versus guerrilla attacks against military personnel, offering the admittedly ambiguous case of a pub occupied by off-duty soldiers. Like international law, however, the leading terrorism datasets which I use for the coding, such as the Global Terrorism Database, are almost always able to distinguish between civilian and military targets. The more interesting question, it seems to me, is not whether a perceptible difference exists between the many disparate forms of behavior that are regularly lumped together under the clumpy rubric of terrorism or political violence, but whether splitting up these behaviors into conceptually like units can yield clearer insights for formulating government countermeasures.
[1] Quoted in Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: NY, Free Press, 2004), 17.
Read: Does Terrorism Really Pay Politically?
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I would like to thank Max Abrahms, Risa Brooks, and Paul Pillar for their insightful and critical responses to my piece. All three take issue with different parts of my argument. Max Abrahms raises an interesting methodological point about research approaches into political violence and argues that there are two main camps: lumpers and splitters. Risa Brooks focuses on my conclusion and challenges me over the issue of the relationship between structural inequalities and political violence and how it is possible to persuade militants that there are more effective means of achieving justice other than through violence. Paul Pillar concentrates on the core of my argument and deals with the semantics of terrorism. Overall, I find it interesting that no one took issue with my argument that we are spending billions of dollars to counter political violence and in the process are eroding fundamental human rights and freedoms and abusing the rule of law. We have therefore achieved the very thing that those who carry out political violence wish to achieve, namely the undermining of liberal democratic values.
Let me first comment on Abrahms’ piece. It may come as a surprise but I agree with some of his argument about lumpers and splitters. There are indeed conceptual problems for lumpers. Context does matter and therefore if we are to advance our understanding of political violence we do need to distinguish clearly between the many different types of political violence. One of the many problems with the current use of the word terrorism, and why I argue that we should ditch the term, is precisely because it lumps together many different forms of political violence while mostly ignoring the political violence perpetuated by state actors. It can never be a rigorous, unambiguous term. Hence, as I argued in my conclusion, we should use the concept of political violence “to cover acts of violence within clearly defined political contexts.” For example, we should not lump together the political violence which characterized Northern Ireland for over thirty years with the political violence of the Tamil Tigers. While there may be some similarities, the historical, demographic, economic, and social contexts are very different.
Where I do take issue with Abrahms is over his argument about the political effectiveness or otherwise of “terrorism.” He argues that by adopting a splitter perspective and disaggregating campaigns directed against civilian targets and those directed against military targets “terrorism’s abysmal political record” is laid bare. He goes on to argue that this is good news because it shows that “‘terrorism’ does not pay politically.” It would be great if the evidence was as clear cut, but it is not. Part of the problem stems from his commitment to clear-cut binary divides: the lumpers and splitters, military targets versus civilian targets, “terrorism pays” versus “terrorism doesn’t pay.” In the real world, these divisions are often blurred. In the many different contexts that give rise to political violence, it is not possible to distinguish, either spatially or temporally, between political violence directed at military targets and political violence directed at civilian targets. For example, is a pub where off-duty soldiers drink a civilian or a military target? Again, is the financial center in London a civilian or a military target? It all depends on how the conflict is perceived. From a Republican perspective, the British have no right to be in Ireland. The IRA and its supporters perceived themselves to be soldiers involved in a war to remove British rule from Ireland. Attacks on pubs frequented by the military, attacks on commercial and financial centers in London or Manchester, and even attacks on builders carrying our work for the security forces, were all considered to be against “legitimate” targets. The type of targets, whether civilian or military, varied over time depending on a range of factors, but the most important was how the attacks were perceived within the communities from which the IRA drew their support.
Similarly, it is not possible for Abrahms to assert categorically that “terrorism” doesn’t pay politically. Certainly, as he points out, I noted that IRA political violence did lead to government crackdowns. But it is wrong to conclude the corollary that political violence does not pay. The Easter Rising in 1916 led to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. The political violence in the North, admittedly after thirty years, led to the Belfast Agreement and real political representation for Catholics in Northern Ireland for the first time since the setting up of the Northern Ireland State. The attack on the twin towers created a political response involving two wars and spending billions of dollars on homeland security. Following the arrest of the underwear bomber, yet more money is being spent on airport security. At the same time, Yemen has now been added to the list of rogue nations, and the watch list grows longer by the day. All of this is what those involved in these acts of political violence want. The delays at airports become longer, and it creates widespread anger among even moderate Muslims when they are pulled out for inspection and interrogation. Among their multiple identities, their identity as a Muslim becomes stronger. To argue therefore that political violence does not pay ignores the sociological evidence from everyday encounters and the changing beliefs, attitudes, and identities of Muslims.
Risa Brooks, in her closely argued piece, takes issue with the two recommendations which I make in the last five lines of my conclusion. I suggested that we must begin to address the underlying causes which give rise to various different types of political violence. Then I went on to say “This must include dealing with structural inequalities and finding solutions to the many ethno-religious conflicts without resort to unilateral military force.” Somewhat unfairly, I feel, Brooks focuses on structural inequalities and makes no reference to what I consider to be closely related — the need to deal with ethno-religious dimensions. In reality, it is often impossible to disentangle the structural inequalities and the ethno-religious elements.
But let us focus just on the structural inequalities. Here Brooks puts forward three points to challenge the connections between inequalities and political violence: many of the participants in political violence are not uneducated; many supporters do not generally come from the poorest strata of society, and many poor countries have little evidence of political violence. These are all fair points, but I do not consider that they counter my suggestion of a connection. The problem is that the connection is complex and it is not simply a question of whether or not the perpetrators or their supporters are drawn from the poorest reaches of society. The key issue is how inequalities affect both the poor and the rich alike.
There is now much scientific evidence which suggests that inequality does matter. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their recent book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, review the evidence and conclude that inequality causes unhappier, unhealthier, and shorter lives and diminishes trust. It also increases the rate of many social problems including violence and murder, road accidents, imprisonment, addiction, and obesity. It is just not the poor who are affected by inequality. It is everyone. Given this overwhelming evidence, we should not too harshly argue that political violence does not also have it origins in structural inequalities.
Let me illustrate this point a little in relation to the place I know best — Northern Ireland. The conflict here arose out of the 1960s civil rights campaign which had its basis in discrimination against Catholics in terms of access to public housing and the distribution of public resources. It remains a very unequal society in terms of income and wealth. Income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, stands at 34%. A measure based on a number of different elements — possessions, social participation, economizing, and subjective views — suggests that Northern Ireland is a 25/25/50 society, with 25% of the population living in hardship, 25% in some comfort and 50% well-off. In such a context, it comes as no surprise to find that the majority of the violent deaths took place in the poorer areas of Northern Ireland. While the ethno-national issue provided the historical context, it was principally a working class war in which the middle classes played a silent, and sometimes not so silent, role. The peace process is very fragile. While there has been considerable economic growth since 1998, it has not benefited all sections of society equally. Thousands have left school without any qualification and have little hope of finding a job. Their plight is now even worse since the recession. It is in these blighted and disadvantaged communities that the threat of renewed violence lies. If we dismiss the complex connections between inequality and political violence, we will fail to see the potential dangers.
Risa Brooks also takes me to task for my final comment where I suggest that it is important to try and convert militants to peaceful methods. As she rightly notes, this point was not the central focus of my essay. It was also said specifically in the context of Northern Ireland. Indeed, I made it clear that if any lesson is to be learned from Northern Ireland, it is that to achieve peace it is important to persuade those involved in violence that there are other ways of achieving justice. She helpfully broadens the debate and explores ways in which this might be achieved.
I agree with much of Paul Pillar’s essay on the semantics of terrorism. He produces a clear and precise definition of “terrorism” which overcomes many of the limitations of existing definitions. I would, however, still prefer to jettison the use of the word because of its populist connotations and the power of its discursive aspects.
Pillar takes me to task on my comments on violence perpetrated by states. The point I was attempting to make is that the concept of terrorism is not generally applied to actions of liberal democratic states rather than states in general. I am aware of the broader literature within terrorism studies on state sponsorship terrorism. I was attempting to specify that the activities, in particular, of the United States and the United Kingdom in sponsoring political violence, which on most definitions ought to be captured under the concept of terrorism, are not so identified. Pillar notes that “The United States, for one, has laws on the subject, with associated sanctions placed on state sponsors and requirements of the Department of State to issue public reports.” But the presence of laws and associated sanctions does not necessarily prevent the sponsoring of political violence. The United Kingdom also has laws, sanctions, and oversight committees but this did not prevent a number of police and army agents in Northern Ireland, for example, committing numerous murders. Nor did they prevent one agent in the UFF from importing a large cache of arms from South Africa in 1986.
Pillar accuses me of getting “my own licks by pinning that same term on what are clearly his own bêtes noires: foreign and security policies of the British and U.S. government.” He goes to argue that quoting a phrase from “the likes of Noam Chomsky hardly suffices to identify what he is talking about.” After such a careful analysis of the difficulties over the use of the term, I find it odd that the language changes when issues about liberal democratic states collusion in violence and terror are raised. Democratic states have a special responsibility to uphold the rule of law and international human rights covenants. State sponsored terror is, therefore, qualitatively different from terror perpetrated by sub-state actors. The pressures to deviate, however, are great particularly in the context of each atrocity or when foreign policy objectives are not being achieved. At the same time, the demands of “national security” make it very difficult to provide adequate oversight. For all these reasons I have legitimate concerns over both UK and U.S. foreign and security policies.
Pillar claims that he honestly does not know to what I refer when I state “The United states has long supported, sponsored and perpetuated terrorist incidents about the world.” Here I was referring to U.S. activities in various theatres such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala or the Middle East. The evidence suggests that a number of incidents of terror were supported, sponsored or actually perpetuated by the United States. For example, the International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v United States found that the United States had violated international law. I was therefore trying to make the point that it was nonsense not to include these types of incidents within the concept of terrorism.
Read: Response to My Critics
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The comments by Risa Brooks regarding economic and political roots of terrorism exhibit a characteristic frequently exhibited by debunking of such roots: an absolutist straw man. We are warned not to place stock in economic development as far as counterterrorism is concerned because the evidence shows that development assistance is not “the remedy” to terrorism. We are similarly counseled not to look to political liberalization for help because “exposure to political processes alone is insufficient” to turn people into peaceful political animals and because expanding democracy does not “drain the swamp” of support for terrorism. I know no one who has argued in favor of such absolute propositions regarding economic or political roots. Anyone who did would deserve to be derided (or ignored) just as much as anyone who pointed to any other single factor as the key to combating terrorism, be it seizing terrorist money, assassinating terrorist leaders, or pacifying a particular piece of territory.
In short, just because something doesn’t explain all of the variance doesn’t mean it cannot explain some of it. Brooks is right when she says that societal tolerance for violence is “multifaceted and complicated.” We should be interested in anything that, even if it cannot drain the swamp, can lower the water level somewhat. And counterexamples, such as terrorists who are rich or who enjoy political freedoms, are just that: counterexamples, which in turn can be countered by still other examples.
Debunking of the economic roots of terrorism is further plagued by oversimplification that treats poverty as the only variable worth testing. To the extent that poverty-vs.-wealth is a significant variable, the relationship probably is curvilinear, with the desperately poor being more concerned about the basics of food, clothing, and shelter than about ginning up a terrorist operation. Most likely the economic conditions that most matter go beyond poverty-vs.-wealth and have at least as much to do with mobility and opportunity. Most of this may be hard for a researcher to operationalize in a quantitative study, but that doesn’t mean it is irrelevant to terrorism.
As for political conditions, Alan Krueger — whom Brooks cites — has done some of the most useful quantitative work. He, unlike many others, has carefully disentangled the country of a terrorist’s origin from the country where a terrorist operation occurs. One of his most interesting results is a significant negative correlation between the extent of political and civil liberties and a country’s propensity to breed terrorists.
Something else Brooks mentions — terrorist groups that also have political wings — is also significant, but not because of any absolutist straw man about mere exposure to political processes turning terrorists into puppy dogs. Rather, such organizations are an embodiment of the principle — as perceived by the groups themselves — that terrorism and peaceful political competition can be alternative means for pursuing the same end. To the extent that one means is available and works, the other one is less attractive. PIRA/Sinn Fein provides an example of the peaceful political means eventually being available and working sufficiently well that the terrorist means was forsaken. Hamas provides an opposite example — not because the underlying principle about alternative means is not valid, but instead because Israel and the United States refused to let the peaceful political means work (i.e., when it resulted in a Hamas victory).
So I generally agree with Paddy Hillyard’s observations about political and economic roots.
Read: Not a Cure-all, But a Contribution
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Paul Pillar makes the case for clarity of terms in the debate over terrorism. He first argues that this area of public policy is especially burdened by loaded language. He next proposes a definition of the word terrorism on which he thinks he and Paddy Hillyard can agree. Finally, he suggests that labels for various violent acts may work to obscure the difficult issues underlying them. If so, we should return to these fundamentals, and agree to put debate over the labels aside.
Read: The Semantics of Terrorism
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Risa Brooks casts doubt on the correlation between democracy and terrorism prevention, and likewise the correlation between prosperity and terrorism prevention. We commonly observe terrorist organizations with political wings or allied political parties, for example. And many terrorists are well-educated, middle-class individuals. Further, many very poor societies have little terrorism to speak of. Addressing the root causes of terrorism is a noble goal, but these causes may be so idiosyncratic or so driven by small group dynamics that we can’t easily reach them via public policy.
Read: Democracy and Prosperity Aren’t Cure-Alls
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Max Abrahms cautions against lumping together all groups found under the terrorist label. Not all political violence is alike. Significant differences exist, he argues, between terrorists who target civilians and those who attack military targets. The former tend not to achieve their stated political goals — and this is a usable message for governments wishing to protect their populations. If terrorists don’t achieve their political objectives when they attack civilians, we should ask what other motivations they may have, and address those as well.
Read: Lumpers versus Splitters: A Pivotal Battle in the Field of Terrorism Studies
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In his lead essay, sociologist Paddy Hillyard argues that “terrorism,” as a term, unduly empowers both state and non-state actors who engage in violence: Terrorists, so called, gain in prestige and publicity; governments, who claim to protect us against terrorists, typically resort to improper coercion, destroy civil liberties, and alienate large segments of the governed population — who then turn to terrorism. Hillyard suggests that “political violence” would be a more useful because more analytically neutral term, one that potentially embraces both state and nonstate violence for political ends.
Read: What Is Terrorism?
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