Political commentary

The new technology of terror

(Ferdinand Mount In The Century of Total War, Raymond Aron argued that what makes modern wars different is 'technical surprise'. Soldiers and civilians alike go into each war in the expectation that it will be short and much like the last war in the numbers of troops and qual ity of armament deployed. But from the American Civil War onwards, the terrible ingenuity and energy which are released in a 'war of peoples' has meant that each war lasts far longer, consumes far more men and munitions and at the end is being fought with far more ghastly and more effective weapons than were dreamed of at the beginning. The First World War began with horses and ended with tanks and aeroplanes; the Second began with tanks and aeroplanes and ended with atom bombs.

Aron himself, writing in 1954, talked of technical surprise only in relation to con ventional large-scale warfare; guerrilla warfare was still generally assumed to be a spontaneous popularresistance, likely to use inferior weapons and to have no access to the latest technology. We had the Maxim , gun and they had not; and by the time they got the Maxim gun, we had something better. Guerrilla weaponry was not only inferior; it did not usually develop suddenly, under the stimulus of battle.

The IRA has now been decisively transformed into a type of guerrilla force different both from its previous self and from other traditional guerrilla forces. The horiible, cowardly and black-souled murder of Lord Mountbatten and his family, together with the ambush of the British Paratroopers, shows just how different. Mountbatten himself, with his instinct for the novel element in any branch of warfare and his grasp of the influence of the technical upon the political, would have been the first to understand this. The IRA now, alone among guerrilla armies except for the PLO, operates within the domain of technical surprise. The point is not so much the modest degree of skill required to detonate by remote control a bomb concealed in a boat or a lobster pot; nor is it even crucial how far the security forces are or are not able to trump the new methods of the terrorists; what matters is the terrorists' continuing technological advance. For as far ahead as we can now see, the IRA will not be short of money or modern munitions. The most important military appreciation of the terrorists' strength, analysed in full by Christopher Walker in the Spectator of 14 July, shows that the British army is under no illusions. The American money and the loot from Irish, bank raids will continue to meet the IRA's relatively modest needs, kindly subsidised by British social security, even if its most disgusting outrages do alienate the less fanatical sympathisers in the Republic and the United States.

The IRA's prospect of uninterrupted access to the latest — or nearly the latest — gadgets for killing people compensates for any increase in general unpopularity. It feeds the same illusion of omnipotence as the Bond films do. Any loss of fringe supports among stone-throwing teenagers or exiles in Kilburn pubs is outweighed by the improved expertise of the hard core, even if there are only 500 of them — the latest British estimate.

The British forces never imagined that they could destroy the IRA totally and permanently. What was meant by 'getting on top.of the gunmen' was containing their activities within an 'acceptable level of yinence'. Active service units would, it was hoped, be disbanded or lapse into inactivity. This was, after all, the traditional pattern of wars against guerrillas. If the great power had the will and the patience and the support of the majority, the guerrillas would eventually give up trying.

In Northern Ireland, the existence of an unreconciled minority meant that any apparent weakening of will was always liable to stir up terrorist activity. A change of government in London or Dublin or a presidential election in the USA seemed to presage political concessions. But these moments of political weakness would pass, and the lack of military progress would discourage all but the most fanatical, and terrorism would begin to subside again.

But now the element of technical surprise• not only gives the IRA a certain capacity to dictate —within limits— the level of violence; it also injects fresh excitement into terrorist activity and appears to magnify the possibilities of political pressure.

It is now being said both in London and Dublin that the British government cannot 'do nothing' politically, because the American government will insist on a political initiative or because the Dublin government cannot be expected to co-operate better on border security without some initiative from Britain in return. But these pressures are merely fleeting and insubstantial.

Jimmy Carter only wishes to appear to be doing something about Ireland during the run-up to the election; the same with Jack Lynch. The limits to co-operation from Dublin, welcome though it is, are both practical and political. 300 miles of border are a lot to police, and Irish judges are reluctant to permit the extradition of IRA gunmen for legal and sentimental reasons. The only real pressure comes where it has always come from — from the IRA. Negotiating with a Dublin government is not unlike negotiating with the TUC; you have to deliver, while they only discuss. It is no accident that Mr Heath, with his taste for instant but protracted negotiation, should have come to grief with both bodies. Any Irish government, even the one which included admirable men like Liam Cosgrave, Garret FitzGerald and Conor Cruise O'Brien, inevitably exhibits by reason of the Irish state's history and constitution a certain snipelike elusiveness in its dealings with Britain, while Britain usually seems by comparison slow-footed and insensitive to meanings and implications.

Mr FitzGerald —who was foreign minister at the Sunningdale talks in 1973 — was once asked: 'Weren't you surprised at how much the British are conceding?'

'Yes, I was.'

'And didn't you think it might lead to trouble with the Protestants?'

'Yes, we did.'

'Well, why didn't you point this out to Mr Heath and his colleagues?'

'We didn't think it was our business to tell the British how to negotiate.'

We shall never know whether powersharing might have worked if only Dublin had not been allowed to insert that fatal plan for an All-Ireland Council which brought the Protestants out onto the streets and if Mr Heath had not called an election in February 1974 which destroyed the old moderate Unionist party. We cannot wade back into that particular stretch of river. Like Mr Heath, Mr Whitelaw and Mr Pym before him, Mr Humphrey Atkins is now having to unlearn the professional deformity of a former Chief Whip — the belief that any disagreement can be settled by a quiet private chat.

Roy Mason has left Mr Atkins an unbending if over-optimistic example, which at least has clarified the situation. We know now that direct rule from London is the least unpopular form of government among both Protestants and Catholics. We know that the IRA can to some extent dictate the level of violence. We know that a majority of mainland Britain would prefer to 'leave the Irish to fight it out'. But the Protestants wish to stay British and would not tolerate even federated membership of a unified Ireland. If abandoned, they would in all likelihood set up their own fortress; state under President Paisley after a civil war that might dwarf the present horrors. The new capability of the IRA makes the prospect of going on as we are a grim one. Mrs Thatcher, like any incoming Pratte Minister, has to review all the ,wel 1-thum bed alternative strategies — a new partition which might suit the Catholics but not the Protestants, federation and/or an AngloIrish condominium which might suit the Catholics but not the Protestants. But if Mrs Thatcher finds a new answer, she had better be very certain that it is the right one before she says a word about it. In Northern Ireland careless initiatives cost lives,