Terrorism and the uses of terror

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 5-35

  Waldron, Jeremy ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

Author keywords

Coercion; Definition; Fear; Hannah Arendt; Intimidation; Liberty; Means end distinction; Rational choice; State; Terror; Terrorism; Terrorize; Thomas Hobbes; Threat

Indexed keywords

EID: 37349089913     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/B:JOET.0000012250.78840.80     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (63)

1. For example, it is not like Ted Honderich's book, Violence for Equality: Inquiries in Political Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1989).
2. For example, it is not like Thomas Hill, Jr., "Making Exceptions without Abandoning the Principle: Or How a Kantian Might Think about Terrorism," in Ray Frey and Christopher Morris (eds.), Violence, Terrorism, and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 196-229.
3. I have pursued some issues about the political morality of recent responses to the events of September 11, 2001 in Jeremy Waldron, "Security and Liberty: The Image of Balance," Journal of Political Philosophy 11 (2003), p. 191.
4. See especially Section 6, sub-heading (7), below.
5. See Alex P. Schmid, Political Terrorism: A Research Guide to Concepts, Theories, Databases, and Literature (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983), p. 110;
6. John Dugard, "International Terrorism: Some Problems of Definition," International Affairs 50 (1974), p. 67.
7. Russell Hardin pressed this point hard at a conference at the University of Arizona, at which this paper was first presented.
8. Some definitions may help here. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (online at http://dictionary.oed.com/) "intimidate" means "[t]o render timid, inspire with fear; to overawe, cow; in modern use esp. to force to or deter from some action by threats or violence." It defines "terrorize" as "[t]o fill or inspire with terror, reduce to a state of terror; esp. to coerce or deter by terror." And it defines "terror" as "[t]he state of being terrified or greatly frightened; intense fear, fright, or dread." The same source defines "coerce" as "[t]o constrain or restrain (a voluntary or moral agent) by the application of superior force, or by authority resting on force; to constrain to compliance or obedience by forcible means," but philosophical usage tends to associate coercion in particular with the use of threats rather than force alone.
9. US Code, Title 18, Section 2331. This is from the statutory definition of "international terrorism." There is another definition in 22 U.S.C. 2656f: "[T]he term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."
10. But other official definitions have made reference to terror. For example the 1937 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism categorized "acts of terrorism" as "criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons, a group of persons or the general public" (see Dugard, "International Terrorism," pp. 68-69).
11. See the discussion in Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," Journal of Conflict Resolution 16 (1972), p. 383.
12. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Isaiah Berlin (ed.), Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 121-122.
13. But is it a real choice? Suppose I opt to give up my life; so I tell the gunman that and he shoots me. Now it is unlikely that he will then fastidiously leave my full wallet lying beside my body, saying "A deal is a deal." His threat is more properly rendered either as "Your money, or your life and your money," or as "You be the one to give me your wallet or I will shoot you and take it." Perhaps we should concentrate on cases that do involve a genuine choice, like "Tell me the secret combination to the safe or I will break your arm."
14. See particularly Robert Nozick, "Coercion," in Peter Laslett, W. G. Runciman and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, fourth series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 114-115. Briefly: Nozick argues that whether a statement is a threat (and thus coercive) or an offer (and thus non-coercive) depends on how the carrying out of the statement in the event of non-compliance affects the otherwise normal and morally expected course of events as between P and Q. So, he says, "one would expect that people will disagree about whether something is a threat or an offer because they disagree about what the normal and expected course of events is, which is to be used as a baseline in assessing whether something is a threat or an offer."
15. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, revised student edition, in Richard Tuck (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 146.
16. Andrzej Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 35.
17. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 152.
18. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 147.
19. Hobbes defines fear as "Aversion, with Opinion of Hurt from the Object," Leviathan, p. 41.
20. quot; See Michael Horsnell, "Noye Guilty of Brinks-Mat Bullion Plot," The Times (London), 24 July 1986.
21. Jon Elster, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 233.
22. Elster, Alchemies of the Mind, p. 275.
23. See also George Loewenstein, "Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision-Processes 65 (1996), pp. 272-292. I am grateful to my colleague Sam Issacharoff for suggesting these references.
24. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New Edition (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), p. 441.
25. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 467.
26. I do not mean they always respond rationally or well, but that they respond like someone seeking to weigh up costs and benefits, etc., i.e., they respond in that mode.
27. See sub-heading (6) in Section 6, below.
28. I add this parenthesis because some would argue that a policy of targeted assassination, assassinating particular identified officials because of their particular position or power or importance is different from terrorism.
29. See Edwin Hoyt, Inferno: The Fire-Bombing of Japan (New York: Madison Books, 2000);
30. and W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (New York: Random House, 2003).
31. There is a slight complexity here, because Arendt denies that the Nazis organized a state in the proper juridical sense (See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 392-19 - the section entitled "The So-Called Totalitarian State"). But they certainly had a ruling apparatus, which exercised control through terror over whole populations.
32. It is a little like Hobbes's definition of "terror" - "Feare, without apprehension of why or what" (Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 6, p. 42).
33. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 465.
34. For a good account, see Dana Villa, Politics, Philosophy, Terror: Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), Chapters 1-2.
35. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 437-459, 474-479.
36. The way in which even solitary thought models itself on articulate dialogue is key to Arendt's position here. See Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, Single Volume Edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 185ff. So her suggestion is that the comprehensive extirpation of the possibility of real dialogue is bound to have effects on the ability of individuals to think morally by themselves.
37. Former U.S. president Truman's threat after Hiroshima was as follows: "If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth" ("Address to the Nation," 6 August 1945).
38. For convenience, I shall call such groups "ordinary terrorists," not to minimize the effects of their activities, but to distinguish them from terrorizing states (i.e., states that use terror, whether in war or in peace, with effects that are orders of magnitude greater than the effects achieved by the IRA, the suicide bombers, Al-Qaeda, etc.).
39. This was written in the first half of 2003, a period in which Israel suffered at least eleven suicide bombings, killing at least 80 people.
40. Note that I am not here attempting to explain what is wrong with terrorism. If that were our aim, we would surely focus more on the deaths, injuries, and destruction wrought by the terrorists in the atrocities they perpetrate, and less on the role that the fear occasioned by such deaths, injuries, and destruction plays in the overall logic of terrorist coercion. But this paper is devoted to a discussion of the later, following the legislative suggestion - see text accompanying note 8 - that it is the type of coercion or intimidation that they practice that distinguishes terrorists from other murderers and arsonists, etc.
41. My colleague José Alvarez has suggested that a definition of "terrorism" in terms of its characteristic aims may be fruitful if it identifies aims (or kinds of aim) that cannot be pursued using ordinary non-violent political means. For example: the modern world tries to put the boundaries and the basic legitimacy of most existing states beyond political question. Except in rare instances, political means are not defined for seeking revision of boundaries or revocations of basic legitimacy. So, political groups which pursue these ends are driven to adopt extraordinary means. This insight is not incompatible with a primarily means-based approach to the definition of terrorism, and if it is borne out in a large number of instances of terrorism, it would have the advantage of helping to explain the terrorist's choice of means.
42. John C. Whitehead, "Terrorism - the Challenge and the Response," Journal of Palestine Studies 16 (1987), pp. 215-216.
43. And this may be a true characterization of how some of these operatives view their actions, even though formally the September 11th atrocities seem to have been part of more familiar coercive strategy, as announced in Osama Bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 declarations of war and his ultimatums to the U.S. to remove its troops from the Arabian Peninsula.
44. See Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1966).
45. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, pp. 94, 122.
46. See Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin, Paroles d'un revolte (Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, 1885), p. 286,
47. cited in Alfred H. Novotne, "Random Bombing of Public Places: Extradition and Punishment of Indiscriminate Violence against Innocent Parties," Boston University International Law Journal 6 (1988), p. 225.
48. David C. Rapoport, "Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions," American Political Science Review 11 (1983), p. 660.
49. Jeffrey Ian Ross and Ted Robert Gurr, "Why Terrorism Subsides: A Comparative Study of Canada and the United States," Comparative Politics 21 (1989), p. 407.
50. Edward R Mickolus, "Comment - Terrorists, Governments, and Numbers," Journal of Conflict Resolution 31 (1987), p. 56.
51. This was suggested by Onora O'Neill. I am obliged to Baroness O'Neill and also to Frances Kamm for further discussion of this point.
52. See text accompanying footnote 23 above.
53. quot; See, e.g., Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
54. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, or on Education, trans. Barbara Foxley and Grace G. Roosevelt, Book II, Paragraphs 289-293 (online at http://projects.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/contents2.html).
55. For discussion, see Mary P. Nichols, "Rousseau's Novel Education in the Émile" Political Theory 13 (1985), p. 539.
56. See, e.g., Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, pp. 243-249.
57. I am grateful to my colleague Michael Dorf for this point.
58. C. L. Stevenson, "Persuasive Definitions," Mind 47 (1938), p. 331.
59. There are other difficulties too. An emotively or rhetorically powerful term tends to be extended, by metonymy to almost anything that can be associated with a person or group once some act or opinion of theirs can plausibly be condemned as terrorism. My favorite example is the condemnation of the theory of natural rights as "terrorist language" because it was espoused by French Revolutionaries associated with the terror in France in 1793-1794. As a matter of interest, this phrase comes hot on the heels of Jeremy Bentham's famous characterization of "natural and imprescriptable rights" as "nonsense upon stilts" in Jeremy Bentham, "Anarchical Fallacies" (excerpted in Jeremy Waldron, Nonsense upon Stilts: Bentham Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 53.
60. For useful discussions, see C. A. J. Coady, "Terrorism and Innocence,"
61. and Virginia Held, "Terrorism and War," in this issue of The Journal of Ethics.
62. I am grateful to Eric Cave for these points.
63. This paper was first presented at the "Conference on Moral and Political Aspects of Terrorism" (A Conference in Memory of Gregory Kavka) at the University of Arizona, March 2003. I am most grateful to the participants - especially Eric Cave, Tom Christiano, Tony Coady, Laura Donoghue, Russell Hardin, Virginia Held, and David Schmidtz. I appreciate also the suggestions of my colleagues at Columbia Law School, José Alvarez, Michael Dorf, Sam Issacharoff, and Carol Sanger.