Books

Points of no return

Robert Skidelsky

Terrorism and the Liberal State Paul Wilkinson (Macmillan 27.95)

The academic study of terrorism raises questions both of academic integrity and competence. On the first, it is hard for the academics involved to avoid absorption, through patronage, into the government's anti-terrorist projects. I agree with Paul Wilkinson that research into terrorism Should be done. It is not clear that it should be done at universities, as opposed to special institutes funded by governments for that purpose. In principle, university work Should not be part of the state's repressive apparatus. One of the main issues in the student unrest on the American campus in the nineteen-sixties was the universities' involvement with the 'military-industrial complex'. As Robert Lekachman wrote at the time (Dissent, August 1969): 'Students realise, even if their teachers frequently do not, that social scientists who pride themselves on the "value free" quality of their Work will actually choose problems, modes Of investigation and consequent research outcomes which support existing institutions, and the existing distribution of Political and economic power.' The more Placemen there are on the campus, the more active radicals there will be; and the more politicised the universities will become. Is this desirable?

The second question concerns intellectual standards. Much of the information on the organisation and finance of terrorism and counter-terrorism is of poor quality, since both sides try to keep their secrets, even (or especially) from academic investigators. This greatly increases the chances of inaccuracy, credulity and bias; and thus of academics being used for political pmPOses. Also, the study of terrorism brings together many quite different kinds of discussion which a single person is unlikely to handle equally well. The writer on terrorism

must have some knowledge of political Philosophy, history, law, psychology, rad

ical movements, war strategy, weapons technology, international relations, current affairs, as well as of a dozen or so detailed situations all over the world. The chances are that the discussion of each will be fairly low-grade.

These considerations are suggested by Paul Wilkinson's informative and inter esting, though repetitive, book. He is one of our leading academic students of terrorism; so his book provides a test case of the state of the discipline, if such it is. Few will quarrel with his definition of terrorism as 'the deliberate use of terror as a mode of psychological warfare', or with his view that 'contemporary terrorism in its severe forms constitutes. . .the most testing and immediate challenge to the will and courage of liberal democracies'.

He is right to emphasise the growing vulnerability to terrorism of liberal states. The technological interdependence of modern society presents the terrorist with such strategic targets as power plants and communications systems. In this context, terrorism is just one aspect of the growing ability of small groups to hold up society to ransom. In his book, The Point of No Return, Robert Fisk showed how 500 power workers at Ballylumford were able to shut down the economic life of Ulster in 1974, bringing down the Faulkner government. Moreover, the terrorist can attack society's nerve centres with increasingly sophisticated weapons. Wilkinson foresees terrorists equipped not just with plastic explosives, letter bombs and sophisticated revolvers, but surface-to-air missiles, mortars, squirtless flame throwers, short-range, portable, anti-tank weapons, and shoulder-fired multi-rocket launchers. 'The ugly prospect is an ever-widening diffusion of these increasingly accurate and portable shortrange weapons', especially if, as Wilkinson thinks probable, terrorists are increasingly used as mercenaries by sponsoring regimes in 'proxy' wars. With precision-guided munitions, a terrorist group 'could assassinate a head of state and his entire entourage in a motorcade from a hiding place several kilometres distant and make good their escape in anonymity and ease'. Finally, there is the threat of nuclear terrorism, arising from diffusion of civil nuclear technology.— 'micro-proliferation' — and attacks on nuclear installations.

How are these threats to be met? There is a good discussion of the problems which terrorism has posed for police forces. The police ethic of minimum force, Wilkinson argues, may be inappropriate in the new situation. The traditional aim of a police operation is to bring the criminal to trial. Against heavily armed terrorists, the milit ary aim of shooting to kill may make better sense. Today it is generally agreed that ordinary police forces cannot cope with ter rorism; and most countries have set up anti-terrorist units. (The German one was most recently in spectacular action.) How ever, the 'decisive war against terrorism' must be waged not by dramatic rescues of the Entebbe type but .'in the realm of intel ligence and counter-intelligence'. This is undoubtedly true. Since the terrorist does not wear uniform and has no front line, only intelligence will give knowledge of his whereabouts and possibility of prevention. The collapse of the British intelligence system was the key to the IRA's success in Ireland in 1920-1. The attacks of the IRA on the police, by isolating them increasingly from the population, dried up their sources of intelligence, which were often based on informal contacts in pub or home.

In the last few years Northern Ireland has offered a classic example of the difficulty liberal governments have in responding accurately to terrorist action. Wilkinson has `no doubt whatever that the army could inflict total military defeat on the Provisional IRA if they were given the freedom to do so.' In fact he argues they had already done this by Christmas 1974, when the British Government imposed three crippling restraints — it curtailed intelligence gathering, ended internment, and issued the 'yellow card' restricting soldiers' right to shoot. So detrimental to army success has government policy recently been that Wilkinson wonders 'whether the British Government really wants to see the Provisional IRA defeated in Ireland.' The problem surely goes deeper than that. As Antony Burton put it: 'one of the problems facing governments in Western liberal democracies is that there is no coherent and generally accepted philosophy in the name of which force can be organised against the violence offered by the terrorist . . . the mere proposition of counter-force is perceived in the language of exploitation and aggression.'

It is in trying to provide such justification that the book's superficiality becomes apparent. Terrorism is indefensible, Wilkinson says, in societies where people have political and civil rights; such societies are, by definition, open to peaceful change. But most states are not liberal democracies. Why should not their people resort to violence to win the rights of which they are deprived? Wilkinson offers no reason. On what grounds, then, would he condemn the Palestinian 'freedom fighters'?

But Wilkinson does not even provide conclusive arguments against the use of terrorism in liberal democracies: The democratic argument on political obligation is that representation creates an obligation to abide by resulting majority decisions. The minority should obey the will of the temporary majority because the minority can itself hope to become the majority, or part of the majority, at the next election. But suppose the minority is permanent and therefore cannot use the political system for its own benefit, or at least not to the same extent as the majority? Is it not, then, entitled to use extra-legal means to get its way? This situation most frequently arise 's where there are minorities with relatively unchangeable defining characteristics, such as colour or religious beliefs. Such groups may not be fully assimilable into larger, more orthodox, political groupings; on the other hand, majority opposition or other factors may preclude the remedying of their perceived disabilities. Wilkinson sees such ethnic minorities or 'foreign enclaves' as the

best recruiting grounds for terrorism in the years ahead. With their usual sense of timing, our rulers have done their best to ensure that we in Britain will keep up with these possibilities.

The fact is that terrorism exposes a major crisis in the political theory of modern democracy. Democratic theory was majority theory, relying on a homogeneous population (or, in the United States, the 'melting pot') to ensure the circulation of majorities. Today's multi-ethnic societies are marked off by much more rigid barriers between majorities and minorities. The basis of obligation to obey majority decisions therefore collapses, and the question of minority 'rights' moves into the centre of politics. But this in turn threatens the democratic basis of politics, since such rights often have to be established in the teeth of majority opposition; and either may not be established at all, or will be under constant threat of reversal.

In discussing the ethics of terrorism under modern conditions it may be that we will need to reject the view, represented in this book, that only the 'just' state is entitled to political obedience, in favour of the older tradition that citizens should acquiesce in unjust situations because the maintenance of security and general welfare takes priority over other claims. This is not an attractive doctrine. But it seems to me that a political theory which places the quest for justice at its centre is one that, in today's world, inevitably opens the door to terrorism. Is that what we want? It is a question which Wilkinson does not address.