What Is Terrorism?

ABSTRACT My aim in this paper is not to try to formulate the meaning the word ‘terrorism’has in ordinary use; the word is used in so many different, even incompatible ways, that such an enterprise would quickly prove futile. My aim is rather to try for a definition that captures the trait, or traits, of terrorism which cause most of us to view it with moral repugnance. I discuss the following questions: Is the historical connection of terrorism with terror to be preserved on the conceptual level, or relegated to the psychology and sociology of terrorism? Does mere infliction of terror qualify as terrorism, so that we can speak of non-violent terrorism? If terrorism is a type of violence, does it have to be against persons, or should violence against property also count? In what sense can terrorism be described as indiscriminate violence? Should we use the word only in a political context? In such a context, can we speak of ‘state terrorism’, or should the word be restricted to actions not sanctioned by law? Is the terrorist necessarily oblivious to moral considerations, as those who define terrorism in terms of antinomianism imply? My answers to these questions lead up to the following definition: terrorism is the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating them, or other people, into a course of action they otherwise would not take.     

The criminalization of money laundering and terrorism in global contexts: a hybrid solution

What obligations do global actors have to prevent terrorism? Is consent required to create an international obligation, or does the correctness of its goals ground its legitimacy? In this paper, I consider these questions with respect to a subset of international law often overlooked: anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). AML/CFT comprises peaceful response to violence and terrorism, making it a significant component of international justice and diplomacy. First, I present the current legal framework for AML/CFT institutions and identify two conflicting sources of justification: objective value and consent. The fix for this problem, I argue, does not come from either component alone. Objective value cannot provide the sole source of justification because it cannot settle the choice between multiple competing norms that would achieve the same objective goods were we to follow them (‘the choice problem’). Consent cannot provide the sole source of justification (‘the constraint problem’) for two reasons: some contracts that people agree to are morally abhorrent and others are morally required but people do not agree to them. But objective value and consent can be combined consistently, and I articulate this hybrid as a sound basis for evaluating and reforming AML/CFT laws and institutions.     

Self–Serving Perceptions of Terrorism Among Israelis and Palestinians

Definitions of political violence as terrorism are often tainted by self–serving motivations. Groups in conflict in particular tend to justify the use of indiscriminate violent means by highly regarded political ends. This study explores such self–serving perceptions of terrorism in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In two surveys during December 2001, Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians were asked whether 11 local and international incidents were acts of terrorism in their view, and whether they were considered acts of terrorism by the international community. Self–serving judgments on both sides were expected, but their extent is striking, and they extend also to the international incidents. Israeli Arabs judge all acts of violence as terrorism in high percentages. Israeli Jews and Palestinians' definitions present a mirror image; however, they do not project these definitions to the international community. Instead, they perceive an international norm largely divergent from their own point of view, inflating world judgment of their own acts of violence as terrorism and underestimating world judgment of the other side's violence, in what amounts to a hostile–world phenomenon.     

Reasons for Conflict: Political Implications of a Definition of Terrorism

This essay analyzes the U.S. political situation before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and ties this conflict to the events of 9/11. The guiding thread of the discussion is the definition of “terrorism” that has led to George W. Bush's declared “war on terrorism.” By means of Hegel's dialectic logic, the essay exposes the problem offered by the category of causality involved in the definition of terrorism: Is terrorism the original “cause” of the war declared on it by the United States (as the Bush administration claims) or is terrorism rather the very “consequence” of that war?     

Uncivil Disobedience: Political Commitment and Violence

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience.     

Vattimo’s Renunciation of Violence

For Gianni Vattimo, the renunciation of violence is the starting point for constructing a post foundational politics. So far, criticism of Vattimo’s argument has focused on his larger commitment to metaphysical nihilism and whether the renunciation of violence is a thicker principle than his post foundational philosophy can support. I argue that Vattimo’s renunciation of violence can also be criticized for two other reasons. First, Vattimo attempts to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of violence through an under developed idea of self-defense. Second, despite his attention to the political and philosophical impact of mass communications technology, Vattimo ignores emerging technological challenges to our understanding of violence. Nonetheless, I argue that Vattimo’s renunciation can still serve as a useful starting point for contemporary political thinking. What Vattimo’s logic shows is that we can enhance the moral standing of democracy by decisively detaching its practices and institutions from historical artifacts of political violence.     

The katechon in the age of biopolitical nihilism

The article addresses the ‘messianic turn’ in contemporary continental philosophy, focusing on the concept of the katechon as the restraining force that delays the advent of the Antichrist in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians. While Carl Schmitt held the passage on the katechon to ground the Christian doctrine of state power, Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Pauline messianism rather posits the ‘removal’ of the katechon as the pathway for messianic redemption. In our argument, the significance of this text goes beyond the persistence of a vestige of the theological in modern politics. On the contrary, the logic of the katechon only comes into its own under modern nihilism as the resolution of the problem of social order in the absence of the eschatological dimension. The article focuses on the lethal paradox of the logic of the katechon, whereby the function of protection and restraint is converted into violence and anomie, and global political order becomes indistinguishable from global civil war. We conclude by outlining the conditions for suspending the katechonic function in a critical engagement with Agamben’s messianic politics.     

Domestic Abuse as Terrorism

A number of philosophers and feminist authors have recently equated domestic abuse with the ubiquitous and ill‐defined concept of “terrorism.” Claudia Card, for instance, argues that domestic abuse is a frequently ignored form of terrorism that creates and maintains “heterosexual male dominance and female dependence and service” (Card 2003). Alison Jaggar, in a recent article, also concludes that an acceptable definition of terrorism will find rape and domestic violence to be terrorist acts (Jaggar 2005). Yet there seem to be several obstacles to any simple appropriation of the term “terrorism” for cases of domestic abuse. In this paper I will address what I take to be three significant problems that might be raised with regard to any attempt to identify domestic abuse as an act of terrorism. These problems include the fact that a) definitions of terrorism usually require clear political motivations, b) definitions of terrorism normally require that the terrorist intend to create a climate of terror, and c) adopting the term terrorism for cases of domestic abuse might appear simply inappropriate or unhelpful. I will argue, however, that each of these possible objections can be answered effectively and that domestic abuse rightly falls under the rubric of terrorism.     

Primoratz on Terrorism

ABSTRACT In ‘What is Terrorism?’ Igor Primoratz defines terrorism as “the deliberate use of violence, or the threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating them, or other people, into a course of action they would not otherwise take”. In this article I argue that Primoratz is wrong (a) to posit a necessary connection between terrorism and terror or intimidation, (b) to argue that terrorism is directed solely against people, and not, for example, property, and (c) to argue that the targets of terrorism proper are ‘the innocent’.     

PSYCHOANALYTICAL PSYCHOTHERAPY: Death in the afternoon

One afternoon, a patient who had been in three-times-weekly psychoanalytic psychotherapy for over fi ve years with the author left the offi ce after her session, drove down to the train tracks half a mile away, and sat down facing an oncoming train. Her suicide occurred a little over a year after 19 hijackers took over four passenger airplanes and fl ew two of them into the World Trade Center, and during the period of the massive buildup for a pre-emptive war with Iraq. This paper explores the very personal impact of these interlocking events of personal, political, and state-sponsored terrorism on the author. Interweaving the patient's and the author's personal struggle with the patient's overwhelming destructiveness-and how it ultimately failed-with the inability to stop the war despite the unprecedented mobilization of voices for peace across the world, it is a journey through the shattering impact of violence into the tentative discovery of a sustaining vision of hope. It explores the theme of terrorism, both personal and political, as a theater of violence designed to create maximum impact, and how fantasies of redemption, fueled and blinded by righteous certainty, can transmute into acts of breathtaking violence, and fi nd justifi cation in their own mad logic. Through the elaboration of the patient's story and its impact on the author, she offers a very personal attempt to understand and reckon with violence and destructiveness as manifested in these different forms, to grasp how openings of hope and new creative possibility are often followed by a violent regressive backlash, and to fi nd a way to survive them without losing heart for the work.     

THE MEDIA AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE

The meanings of violence, political violence, and terrorism are briefly discussed. I then consider the responsibilities of the media, especially television, with respect to political violence, including such questions as how violence should be described, and whether the media should cover terrorism. I argue that the media should contribute to decreasing political violence through better coverage of arguments for and against political dissidents' views, and especially through more and better treatment of nonviolent means of influencing political processes. Since commercial pressures routinely conflict with media responsibility, I argue that society should liberate substantial amounts of culture from such pressures.     

Risking Aggression: Toleration of Threat and Preventive War

Generally speaking, just war theory (JWT) holds that there are two just causes for war: self‐defence and ‘other‐defence’. The most common type of the latter is popularly known as ‘humanitarian intervention’. There is debate, however, as to whether these can serve as just causes for preventive war. Those who subscribe to JWT tend to be unified in treating so‐called preventive war with a high degree of suspicion on the grounds that it fails to satisfy conventional criteria for jus ad bello; – particularly the just cause and last resort criteria. Francisco di Vitoria held that the only just cause for war was ‘a wrong received’, which renders impossible any justification for preventive war. There are assumptions implicit in recent military practice, however – most notably, the US‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that challenge this ban on preventive war. Interestingly, both supporters and critics attempt to justify their views through the broader logic of JWT; viz., through a conception of what is good for both political communities and individuals, and through a legitimate defence of these goods. Supporters point to situations where so‐called rogue states represent ‘grave and imminent risk’ of committing acts of aggression as grounds that justify preventive war; critics argue that to attack another political community on the basis of crimes not yet committed is a breach of the very rights JWT was created to defend. The advocate of preventive war does not appreciate important aspects concerning the morality of war. In the ongoing tension between Iran and The United States and her allies – if the rhetoric is to be believed – I am asked to tolerate a threat to my security and liberty, and to risk suffering aggression in defence of the rights of the antagonistic, but not yet aggressive, state. The crucial question is how such tolerance and risk fit in with the logic of just war: at what point, if any, does the risk of being attacked become great enough to justify declaring war in anticipation? In this paper I highlight some of the theoretical and practical difficulties in determining what counts as a grave and imminent threat, focusing especially on the complicated case of ‘imminence’ in the face of so‐called ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Secondly, I will argue that not only is the notion of preventive war inconsistent with the defence of the rights of political communities that JWT requires; it is also forbidden by the proportionality requirement of jus ad bellum. A risk of being subjected to aggression is the price for global peace. Whilst political communities can do much to prevent aggression and prepare themselves in case it occurs, the conditions for just war require that this prevention and preparation stop short of declaring war. We must live with a certain degree of risk in this area.     

The “Hero‐Protector Narrative”: Manufacturing Emotional Consent for the Use of Force

How do political leaders manufacture collective emotions to justify the use of force? This article introduces the “hero‐protector narrative” as a conceptual model to analyze how political leaders try to manufacture specific collective emotions to encourage their audience to perceive violence as the only morally acceptable course of action. In our model, we formalize a set of distinctive narrative structures (roles and sequences), which are combined to activate compassion and moral anger as well as identification with “heroic” behavior. Furthermore, we argue that the resonance of this narrative draws on values of hyper‐masculinity in patriarchal societies. As such this narrative is to be found across different types of actors (state/nonstate) and culturally diverse settings. To test our model, we use a computer‐assisted QDA approach. We compare systematically discourses produced by political actors legitimizing the use of force versus actors opposing the use of force. We find that discourses supporting the use of force, such as those produced by George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden in the context of the Iraq war, share the structural characteristics of the hero‐protector narrative. In this regard, they differ remarkably from violence‐opposing discourses, regardless of their cultural background.     

What is terrorism and can psychology do anything to prevent it?

Terrorism has a long history, which continues to unfold, and takes many forms. Notwithstanding these facts, there is no generally accepted definition of terrorism. I set forth the definitional issues that underlie the current debate about terrorism. By comparing terrorism with various forms of violence, I argue that it is plausible to construe terrorism as crime and, in support of this, I demonstrate why terrorism cannot be morally justified. Next, I cluster various immediate and long-term approaches intended to prevent terrorism, highlighting psychologically based strategies, such as behavioral profiling, teaching tolerance and citizenship, modifying media images of terrorism, and building peace. In order to understand and respond more effectively to 21st-century terrorism, I advocate adoption of a multidisciplinary, contextually sensitive approach.     

Children and Political Violence from a Social Ecological Perspective: Implications from Research on Children and Families in Northern Ireland

The effects on children of political violence are matters of international concern, with many negative effects well-documented. At the same time, relations between war, terrorism, or other forms of political violence and child development do not occur in a vacuum. The impact can be understood as related to changes in the communities, families and other social contexts in which children live, and in the psychological processes engaged by these social ecologies. To advance this process-oriented perspective, a social ecological model for the effects of political violence on children is advanced. This approach is illustrated by findings and methods from an ongoing research project on political violence and children in Northern Ireland. Aims of this project include both greater insight into this particular context for political violence and the provision of a template for study of the impact of children’s exposure to violence in other regions of the world. Accordingly, the applicability of this approach is considered for other social contexts, including (a) another area in the world with histories of political violence and (b) a context of community violence in the US.     

Pacifism—Fifty Years Later

I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones. Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that this position is contradictory, if it is intended to mean that one has no right to use violence. While that is perhaps going too far, pacifism as so characterized is surely, as I have later argued, self-defeating in an obvious sense of that expression. But in any case, contemporary theorists who describe their views as pacifist profess to hold no such doctrine—they regard that familiar characterization of pacifism as a caricature. They do express strong opposition to war, but even that is not unlimited. If the chips are genuinely down, they will approve going to war-level self-defense—but they deny that it ever is really necessary, or at least that it is necessary nearly as often as actual war-making behavior among nations would suggest. In this it is not clear that we have a purely philosophical disagreement. How much opposition to war qualifies a view as “pacifist”? That is now very hard to say. After all, all decently liberal thinkers are against violence as a standardly available way of pursuing one’s ends. We all agree that if violence is to be justified, it takes something special. It should be a “last resort,” Just War theorists have classically said, and while ‘last’ is very difficult to pin down, at least, violence should be very far from the first thing a responsible nation thinks of. What’s more, the “something special” is not just that one’s ends are so important. It has to be that the violence would be employed in defense, of self or of other innocent parties under threat. So if there is genuine disagreement, it must be along this line: that we are morally required to make very substantial sacrifices in the pursuits of our otherwise legitimate interests, including our interests in security, in order to avoid using the violence of war. Is this reasonable? I think not. We should, of course, be reasonable, and that includes refraining from violence—except when the violence is necessary to counter the aggressive violence of others. For we reason, on practical matters, in terms of benefits and costs. Agents, especially political agents, can, alas, benefit from violence where that violence is unilateral. Thus it is rational to see to it that it won’t be unilateral. And when it is not unilateral, then the balance is in favor—strongly in favor—of peace. It remains that we must, alas, be able to make war in the possible case that we can’t have peace. When everybody shares the preference for peace, then we can scale down and hopefully even eliminate war-making capability. (Contemporary nations have already scaled down considerably—there have been few wars in the classic sense of military exchanges between states as such in recent times.) But until the scaling down is universal and includes a genuine renunciation of the use of warlike methods to achieve ends other than genuine self-defense, what most of us think of as “pacifism” is a non-option in the near run.     

Civilian Immunity,Supreme Emergency,and Moral Disaster

Any plausible position in the ethics of war and political violence in general will include the requirement of protection of civilians (non-combatants, common citizens) against lethal violence. This requirement is particularly prominent, and particularly strong, in just war theory. Some adherents of the theory see civilian immunity as absolute, not to be overridden in any circumstances whatsoever. Others allow that it may be overridden, but only in extremis. The latter position has been advanced by Michael Walzer under the heading of “supreme emergency.” In this paper, I look into some of the issues of interpretation and application of Walzer’s “supreme emergency” view and some of the criticisms that have been levelled against it. I argue that Walzer’s view is vague and unacceptable as it stands, but that the alternatives proposed by critics such as Brian Orend, C.A.J. Coady, and Stephen Nathanson are also unattractive. I go on to construct a position that is structurally similar to Walzer’s, but more specific and much less permissive, which I term the “moral disaster” view. According to this view, deliberate killing of civilians is almost absolutely wrong.     

Organized Crime and Preventive Justice

By comparison with the prevention of terrorism, the prevention of acts of organized crime might be thought easier to conceptualize precisely and less controversial to legislate against and police. This impression is correct up to a point, because it is possible to arrive at some general characteristics of organized crime, and because legislation against it is not obviously bedeviled by the risk of violating civil or political rights, as in the case of terrorism. But there is a significant residue of legal, moral and political difficulty: legislation against organized crime is hard to make effective; the harm of organized crime is not uniform, and so some preventive legislation seems too sweeping and potentially unjust. More fundamentally, the scale and rewards of organized crime are often dependent on mass public participation in markets for proscribed goods, which may point to a hidden public consensus in favour of some of what is criminalized. For all of these reasons, I argue that existing preventive policing and legislation against organized crime may be harder to justify than their counterparts in counter-terrorism, at least in the UK.