A few days before Christmas 1975 a group of terrorists of unknown provenance broke into the OPEC building in Vienna and kidnapped the representatives of the chief oil-producing nations. Coming soon after the attacks of the South Moluccan separatists in the Nether lands, the incident occasioned great consternation among leader-writers in the Western press, who were anxiously concerned about the power concentrated in the hands of a few individuals and who made harrowing predictions about what all this could mean for the future. The incident monopolized the headlines: clearly it was an event of world-shaking consequence. Yet only a few days later when the shooting was over, when the terrorists had temporarily vanished from the front pages and the small screen — until the next hijacking or some other such action should take place — it appeared that the operation, however meticulously prepared, had been one of the great nonevents of the year. Its purpose was anything but clear: the terrorists seemed to have only a hazy notion of what they intended to achieve. They induced the Austrian radio to broadcast the text of an ideological statement which, dealing with an obscure topic and formulated in left-wing sectarian language, might just as well have been read out in Chinese as far as the average, baffled Austrian listener was concerned.
At first the Vienna terrorists were said to be Palestinian, driven by despair and poverty, demonstrating against the loss of their home-land. Later it appeared that the unit was led by Germans and Latin Americans; there might have been Arabs among them, but they were neither poor nor desperate. Their leader was “Carlos,” a Vene zuelan, who had been trained in Moscow and been connected with the Cuban secret services in Paris. The raid was certainly not a spontaneous action, and it was not at all clear who was behind it: according to the Egyptian press this operation, like many others, had been paid for by Colonel Khadafi of Libya, who, however, claimed that he had never heard of Carlos in his life and was against terrorism anyway.1 But what was its aim — was it indeed another action in the struggle for the national and social liberation of suffering mankind as the hijackers claimed? Modern terrorism, with its ties to Moscow and Havana, with its connections with Libya and Algeria, bears a certain resemblance to the anonymous character of a multinational corpora tion: whenever multinational enterprises sponsor patriotic causes, caution is called for.
The purpose of the operation has not become clearer to this day. It is most unlikely that the policy of the oil-producing countries would have been affected in any way, even if the terrorists had killed all their victims. Had there been mass murder in Vienna on that Sunday before Christmas, long obituaries on Sheikh Yamani and his colleagues would have been published. Within twenty-four hours, ambitious and competent men in Tehran and Caracas, in Baghdad and Kuwait, would have replaced them and would have, grosse modo, pursued the same policies. Hence the futility of the enterprise. Terrorists and newspapermen share the assumption that those whose names make the headlines have power, that getting one’s name on the front page is a major political achievement. Publicity, needless to say, is important; people pay a great deal of money and go to great lengths to achieve it. But, unless the publicity is translated into something more tangible, it is no more than entertainment.
Seen in retrospect, the OPEC hijacking in Vienna was only a foot note in the annals of international terrorism — dramatic, but without political consequences. Terrorist operations have continued since, not all of them quite as mysterious as the OPEC incident. But what happened in Vienna in December 1975 is still a convenient starting point for a summing up because in many respects it highlights the historical changes that have taken place in the character of terrorism and its political role.
A review of political terrorism, written before the outbreak of the First World War, would have concentrated on Russian terrorism and Irish, as well as on the Anarchists of the 1890s with perhaps some passing observations on the national struggle of Macedonians, Serbi ans and Armenians. It would have reached conclusions on terrorists’ motives and aims very different from those propounded by an author writing in the 1930s, when Russian and Anarchist terrorism belonged already to distant history and when the terrorism of the extreme right was of considerably greater importance. A study of political terrorism, undertaken in the 1970s will again reach different conclu sions in the light of events in the recent past. Its earlier manifesta tions cannot be ignored; terrorism can be understood only in its historical development, not through facts and figures fed, more or less indiscriminately, into computers. But equally, the terrorism of the 1970s is no longer that of the Narodnaya Volya; an overall assess ment of terrorism has to take into account, above all, its most recent manifestations, and the same goes, a fortiori, for any comment on its future perspectives.
During the last decade urban terrorism has by and large superseded guerrilla warfare. As decolonization came to an end, there was a general decline in guerrilla activity. Rural guerrillas had learned by bitter experience that the “encirclement of the city by the country side” was not the universal remedy advocated by the Chinese and the Cubans. With the transfer of operations from the countryside to the cities, the age of the “urban guerrilla” dawned. But the very term “urban guerrilla” is problematical. There have been revolutions, civil wars, insurrections and coups d’etat in the cities, but hardly ever guerrilla warfare. Urban guerrilla warfare can occur only if public order has completely collapsed and if armed bands freely roam the streets of the cities. Such a state of affairs does happen, but only very rarely and, according to past experience, it never lasts longer than a few days: either the insurgents overthrow the government in a frontal assault, or they are defeated. The term “urban guerrilla,” in short, is a public relation’s term for terrorism; terrorists usually dis like being called terrorists, preferring the more romantic guerrilla image.
There are basic differences between the strategy of rural guerrilla warfare and urban terrorism: mobility and taking cover are the essence of guerrilla warfare, and this is impossible in towns. It is not true that the slums (or the rich quarters) of the cities provide equally good sanctuaries. Rural guerrillas frequently operate in fairly large units and gradually transform themselves into companies, battalions, regiments and even divisions. They carry out political and social reforms in “liberated zones,” openly propagandize, and build up their organizational network. In towns, where this cannot be done, urban terrorists mostly operate in units of three, four or five; the whole terrorist ‘movement’ consists of a few hundred, often only a dozen, members. There have been a very few exceptions of urban guerrilla groups counting more than a thousand. Their small number is the source of their operational strength and their political weak ness. For while it is difficult to detect small groups and, while they can cause a great deal of damage, their political effect is limited. Only a few years ago, newspaper readers in the Western world were led to believe that the German Baader-Meinhof group, the Japanese United Red Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army or the British “Angry Brigade” were substantial movements that ought to be taken very seriously. Their “communiques” were published in the mass media; there were earnest sociological and psychological studies on the background of their members and their motivation; their “ideol ogy” was analyzed in tedious detail. But these were groups of between five and fifty members, and their only victories were in the area of publicity. Even the more substantial groups, such as the Tupamaros and the Brazilian ALN, the Black Panthers and the Weatherman, were very small indeed and had no significant public support — hence their sudden collapse and disappearance. Else where, terrorists had been more successful, either because their na tionalist-separatist appeal guaranteed them wider popular support, or because they received massive assistance from a foreign power (or powers) or, last, because in a very few cases the government of the country was in an advanced state of decay, no longer capable of mobilizing the vastly superior resources of the state against the ter rorists. With a few exceptions, the terrorist wave of the late 1960s and early 1970s has abated but the shock waves are still felt and its causes have largely remained obscure. In this sense it resembles public reaction to the Anarchist wave of the 1890s — the near panic of the mass media on one hand and the quaint theories of criminologists, early sociologists and political scientists on the other.
During the last decade a mythology of terrorism has developed, which in all probability is likely to persist for some time. Some of these misconceptions were mentioned at the beginning of this study; in an attempt to disentangle truth from mythology, it is necessary at the cost of some repetition to restate some essential facts.
(1) Contrary to widespread belief, terrorism is not a new and entirely unprecedented phenomenon. It is frequently argued that ter rorism in past ages was sporadic and had no doctrine. But the Narodnaya Volya and the Russian Social Revolutionaries were as well organized as any contemporary movement, even if their weapons were less advanced; their ideological and political sophistication was, if anything, higher. There is little in contemporary terrorist litera ture, other than more recent technological guidance, that cannot be found in the Russian brochures of the last century, in the writings of Most and the volumes of his Freiheit.
(2) Terrorism, it is argued, is a “politically loaded term,” which should be discarded because one nation’s terrorism is another people’s national liberation. This is quite correct but no more helpful than noting that many Americans supported F. D. Roosevelt in 1933 and that many Germans admired Adolf Hitler in the same year. That terrorism has been in certain circumstances a liberating force goes without saying. But whereas the terrorism of the Narodnaya Volya and similar such groups was directed against despotic regimes, this is no longer so; today it is directed almost exclusively against permis sive democratic societies and ineffective authoritarian regimes. Having been the ultima ratio of the oppressed, it has all too often become the prima ratio of a motley crowd of people of varying motivations. It is no longer directed against the worst types of dictatorships; there were no terrorist movements in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy nor are there any in the Communist regimes. The nationalist terrorism of a bygone age aimed at liberation from foreign rule. In our time, more often than not, terrorism is simply one form of nationalist or religious strife.
(3) Terrorism is widely believed to be “left-wing” or “revolutionary” in character. Terrorists, it is true, have usually claimed to act on behalf of the masses but they also believe that the “liberation of the masses” is the historical mission of a chosen few. If at the present time most guerrilla manifestoes are phrased in left-wing language, a past generation of terrorists gravitated toward Fascism. Nationalist-separatist movements have at various times in their history flirted with Fascism and with Communism. The ideology of many terrorist groups encompasses elements of far-left doctrine as well as those of the extreme right. Slogans change with intellectual fashions — they should neither be ignored nor taken too seriously. The real inspiration underlying terrorism is usually a free-floating activism that can with equal ease turn right or left. Terrorism in any case is not a philosophical school — it is always the action that counts.
(4) Terrorism is believed to appear wherever people have genuine legitimate grievances. Remove the grievances, remove poverty, inequality, injustice, lack of political participation, and terror will cease. The sentiments are praiseworthy and are shared by all men and women of good will. As a cure against terrorism they are of limited value; as experience shows, societies with the least political participa tion and the most injustice have been the most free from terrorism in our time. There are always grievances and, given the imperfect character of human beings and social institutions, they can be re duced but not eradicated altogether. But only in democratic societies can grievances be more or less freely voiced. It is perception that counts in this respect: a major grievance may be fatalistically ac cepted whereas at another time (or elsewhere) a minor grievance may produce the most violent reaction. Some grievances can be remedied but very often the demands of nationalist groups are mutu ally exclusive. Acceding to the demands of one group may result in injustice to another; it may lead to the creation of nonviable states and the crippling of society. Elsewhere, as in Latin America, terror ists have been fighting for greater political freedom and social justice. Their grievances may be perfectly legitimate; whether there would have been more freedom in Brazil under Carlos Marighella or Carlos Lamarca, or in Colombia under Fabio Vasquez or some other Castro-type caudillo is a question open to doubt. Last, there is the terrorism directed against the democratic governments of Western Europe, North America and Japan. The shortcomings of their political sys tems are well known, but to suggest, for example, that the members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang are more qualified by character or intel lect to lead the way to a better life than the Social Democrats is to invite ridicule. However democratic a society, however near to perfection the social institutions, there will always be disaffected and alienated people claiming that the present state of affairs is intoler able and there will be aggressive people more interested in violence than in liberty and justice.
(5) Terror, it is frequently argued, is highly effective. Terrorism has indeed resulted in political change, but it has had a lasting effect only in fairly rare circumstances when political mass movements used terrorist tactics in the framework of a wider strategy. There is no known case in modern history of a small terrorist group seizing political power; society usually tolerates terrorism only so long as it is no more than a nuisance. Once insecurity spreads and terror becomes a real danger, the authorities are no longer blamed for disregarding human rights in fighting terror: violence triggers off counterviolence and greater repression. The means of repression at the disposal of the state are infinitely more effective: the terrorists’ only hope is to prevent somehow the authorities from using their powers. If the terrorist is the fish — following Mao Tse-tung’s parable — the permissiveness of liberal society and the inefficiency of an autocratic regime is the water which the terrorist needs for survival. A government may be so weak and irresolute, a society in a state of such advanced decay, that it is no longer capable of defending itself against a terrorist challenge. But these are rare exceptions; the basic question is not whether terrorism can be defeated; even third-rate dictatorships have shown that it can be put down with great ease. The real problem is the price that has to be paid by liberal societies valuing their democratic traditions. This is the danger that terrorism poses at a time when free societies are on the defensive and in any case facing grave internal and external challenges to their survival.
(6) Terrorists, it is said, are idealists. They are more humane and intelligent than ordinary criminals. Such statements, true or not, contribute little to the understanding of terrorism. The essential humanity of the early terrorists in Russia is not questioned. But this is no longer true with regard to many terrorist movements that have appeared in recent decades and, in any case, some of the worst horrors in the annals of mankind have been perpetrated by those whose idealism was never in doubt. The love of adventure is an important motive in a world devoid of thrill and excitement. Terrorists in Latin and North America, in Europe and in some of the national-separatist groups have a higher education; they may be well read and articulate. But this is not to say that they have shown greater maturity. With some notable exceptions, they have displayed great political naivete. Larger issues and future perspectives are of little interest to them; frequently they have been knowingly or unknowingly manipulated by foreign powers. The early terrorist groups ab stained from acts of deliberate cruelty. But with the change in the character of terrorism, “left-wing” and “right-wing” alike, humane behavior is no longer the norm. The ordinary criminal does not believe in indiscriminate killing. He may torture a victim, but this will be the exception, not the rule: he is usually motivated by mate rial gain, not by fanaticism. The political terrorist of recent vintage may preach the brotherhood of man and sometimes even practice it. More often he has liberated himself from moral scruples and per suaded himself that all is permitted since everyone is guilty but himself. It is the terrorist’s aim not just to kill his opponent but to spread confusion and fear. He believes that the great aim justifies all means, however atrocious.
(7) Terrorism is described as the weapon of the poor. This was certainly true with regard to the nineteenth-century terrorist move ments; the militants were usually of middle- or upper-class back ground, but as a group they were indeed without means. As the targets of terrorism have changed, striking differentiation has taken place. Terrorist groups without powerful outside protectors are still poor. The South Moluccans, for instance, belong to this category; their struggle for national independence happens to be of no interest to outside powers. They will get no weapons from Russia, no instruc tors from Cuba, no money from Libya or Algeria, because they be long to the wrong religious or ethnic group, or because their aspira tions do not coincide with big-power interests. They are the proletariat of the terrorist world. On the other extreme there are the groups kept by outside powers, the aristocracy of the terrorist world, among whom many millions of dollars change hands, who have offices in luxury hotels and bank accounts in Switzerland. This abun dance of funds makes it possible to engage in all kinds of costly operations beyond the reach of the poor terrorists. At the same time, the surfeit of money breeds corruption. In between these extremes there have been groups such as the Argentine ERP or the Montoneros who had no lavish outside support but who managed to amass considerable fortunes through bank robberies and extortion — they, too, did not have to live on a starvation diet and operate on shoestring budgets while the going was good.
The most recent wave of terrorism offers a number of lessons to terrorists and governments alike, which run counter to conventional wisdom. Terrorists have been slow in accepting the obvious fact that terror is almost always more popular against foreigners than against their own countrymen (or co-religionists). Most terrorists in our time who have had any success at all had the support of a specific national or religious group; it was the sectarian appeal that counted, not the revolutionary slogans — a fact that the Irish, Basques, Arabs and oth ers found out by trial and error. Terrorists have been quicker in accepting the other chief lesson, that the media are of paramount importance in their campaigns, that the terrorist act by itself is next to nothing, whereas publicity is all. But the media, constantly in need of diversity and new angles, make fickle friends. Terrorists will al ways have to be innovative. They are, in some respects, the superentertainers of our time. Thus for maximum impact the timing of an operation is of the greatest importance. Western authorities usually call on the good services as mediators of psychiatrists, social workers and clergymen, ever eager to assuage and to mediate. These men and women of good will have the reputation of knowing more than others about the mysteries of the human soul and of having the compassion required for understanding the feelings of “desperate men.” The real danger facing the terrorist is that of being ignored, of receiving insufficient publicity, of losing the image of the desper ate freedom fighter and, of course, of having to face determined enemies, unwilling to negotiate regardless of the cost. Fortunately, from the terrorist point of view, there are few such people in author ity in democratic societies. Leaders who might not hesitate to sac rifice whole armies at a time of war appear willing to make almost any concession to save a single human life in peacetime, even knowing that these concessions will lead to new outbreaks and fresh vic tims of terror. When an Anarchist tried to kill the Italian king around the turn of the century, Umberto noted that this was the professional risk facing kings. Such philosophical resignation (or sense of duty) is no longer universal. Diplomats, it is reported, have protested ‘against the hard line vis-a-vis terrorism taken by their government, because they fear for their life if taken hostage by terrorists.
To succeed terrorist demands have to be “realistic,” i.e., limited in character. Democratic authorities instinctively give in to blackmail, but they can afford to do so only up to a certain point. Thus, the demand for money or the release of some terrorist prisoners is usu ally a realistic demand. But there are limits beyond which no government can go, as terrorist groups have found out to their detriment. The long-run strategic losses from concessions usually exceed the momentary gains, capitulation is a short-lived palliative.2 If the ter rorist demands are altogether unreasonable they are bound to lead to extreme countermeasures and even the don’t-let’s-be-beastly-to-the-terrorists-but-tackle-the-roots-ofthe-evil school will no longer be able to help them. Terrorists may not be able to survive the anti-terrorist backlash unless they have sanctuaries abroad and strong support from a neighboring power.
The lessons to governments are equally obvious: if governments refused to give in to terrorist demands, terrorism would be much reduced in scale. The attitude of Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and his minister of the interior, who shook the terrorists’ hands after these had killed an Austrian policeman, was not only aesthetically displeasing, it is also usually counterproductive. But all democratic governments have at one time or another acted in a similar way, compromising with the terrorists: The British and the Germans have released imprisoned terrorists, Americans and French have paid ran som, and even the Israelis have freed terrorists who were in their hands. International cooperation against terrorism is almost impossi ble as long as some sovereign states sponsor, train, finance, equip and offer sanctuaries to terrorist groups. Spokesmen for democratic soci eties will continue to proclaim that terrorism is condemned by the “whole civilized world”; but the whole civilized world covers no more than about one-fifth of mankind, and it is not at present expanding. Specific bilateral agreements such as the U.S.-Cuban pact, may limit certain forms of terrorist activities. But a really effective drive against international terrorism would be possible only if there were the determination to adopt the strategy first advocated by the Narod-naya Volya, to “hit the center,” meaning the main sponsors of inter national terrorism. It has been maintained that such unorthodox action would result in a tremendous loss of prestige on the part of those rash or foolish enough to undertake it. Advice of this kind is manifestly wrong but again given the inertia of democratic government it can be taken for granted that such a course of action will not be adopted as long as terrorism remains a relatively minor problem. If on the other hand some major disaster were to occur as the result of international terrorism, pressure for “hitting at the center” will become overwhelming: this then is the dialectic of international terrorism. Meanwhile the debates about counteracting international terrorism will continue in the Sixth Committee of the General As sembly of the United Nations and other forums; they have gone on for many years and there is no reason why they should not go on indefinitely. The various international conventions to combat terrorism may be of considerable interest to international lawyers and insurance agents, they are of no practical importance.3 There is no dearth of well-meaning suggestions such as the establishment of an international court to deal with terrorist activities — an idea first mooted in the League of Nations after the murder of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934. Serious people have devoted years of their working life to discussing projects of this kind even though they must have known in advance what the outcome would be.
All this is not to say that democracies are powerless against domes tic or international terrorism; but it is certainly true that global col laboration is a chimera and that usually they will not be able to take a decisive action before some damage has been caused. They will have to wait until public opinion becomes fully aware of the danger. In many cases terrorism may not outgrow the nuisance stage, in which case drastic action will not be necessary. There is an inclina tion to magnify the importance of terrorism in modern society: soci ety may be vulnerable to attack but it is also quite resilient. A plane is hijacked, but all others continue to fly. A bank is robbed, but the others continue to function. Oil ministers are abducted and yet not a single drop of oil is lost. Describing the military exploits of his Beduin warriors, Lawrence of Arabia once noted that they were on the whole good soldiers but for their unfortunate belief that weapons were dangerous and destructive in proportion to the noise they created. Present-day attitudes toward terrorism in the Western world are strikingly similar: terrorism makes a tremendous noise, but compared with other dangers threatening mankind, it seems almost irrelevant for the time being.
Paradoxically, terrorism may in certain circumstances have side effects that are not altogether negative, precisely in view of its provocative nature. True, there is the danger of overreaction and of marshaling the efforts in the wrong direction. But in the absence of a better demonstration effect, terrorism directed against democratic societies reiterates some useful general lessons which are only too easily forgotten — that freedom is under attack and cannot be taken for granted, that appeasement does not work, and that decisive ac tion has its uses. Such daring propositions are, of course, disputed, but it is precisely in the context of terrorism that the advocates of surren der face an uphill struggle. For terrorism is blackmail, and the victim of blackmail is less likely to forget and to forgive than the victim of almost any other crime: he feels a special sense of outrage because it is not just his life or property that has been affected. He is humil iated, his elementary human rights, his dignity and his self-respect are violated. To argue that this counts for little, to rationalize surren der to blackmail, to maintain that one should always be guided by expediency is asking too much of human nature, all the more so if the expediency is highly dubious.
The frequent invocation of the “steady growth of terrorism” to be found not only in the popular literature, is not borne out by facts and figures. If, in this respect, a mistaken impression has prevailed, the dramatic character and the enormous publicity given to individual terroristic exploits have caused it, as has, on the other hand, the indiscriminate use of the term “terrorist.” Many forms of political violence, ranging from government repression to civil war and rural guerrilla war, are indiscriminately lumped together under the heading “terrorism” in various research programs and statistics as if terrorism was a synonym for political violence in general.* That there has been a great deal of political turbulence in many parts of the world is not in doubt, nor is there any reason to assume that there will be fewer coups d’etat, insurrections, civil wars, or local wars in the years to come. Not a global threat now, terrorism could become one as a result of technological developments.
Professor Bernard Feld, a leading American physicist once dis cussed the nightmarish consequences of the disappearance of twenty pounds of plutonium from government stocks. What if the mayor of Boston received a note to the effect that a terrorist group had planted a nuclear bomb somewhere in central Boston — accompanied by a crude diagram which showed that the bomb would work? Professor Feld stated that he would advise surrender to blackmail rather than the destruction of his hometown. Such fears in one form or another have been expressed for almost a century, albeit with less justifica tion. If Most and some of his Anarchist contemporaries hailed dyna mite as the ultimate weapon, a panacea for the solution of all political and social problems, such joy was not universally shared. Thus a British police officer in the 1890s said:
Murderous organizations have increased in size and scope; they are more daring, they are served by the more terrible weapons offered by modern science, and the world is nowadays threatened by new forces which, if recklessly unchained, may some day wreak universal destruction. The Orsini bombs were mere children’s toys compared with the later developments of infernal machines. Between 1858 and 1898 the dastardly science of destruction has made rapid and alarming strides. . . .4
With the use of poison gas in the First World War, fears were voiced that millions of people would die in gas bomb attacks. Musprath wrote in the 1920s that with the help of certain chemicals unlimited areas could be destroyed in a very short time. Lord Halsbury who had been chief of the explosives department of the British ministry of war told the House of Lords in 1928 that forty tons of diphenylcyanarsin (a poison gas of the Blue Cross type) were sufficient to destroy the whole population of London. But the quantity of the poisonous material needed was such that it was generally assumed that only a modern army would be capable of using these lethal weapons. There had been talk in Irish extremist circles in the United States in the 1880s about the use of poison gas, but this had been sheer fantasy at the time. Bacteriological warfare including the poisoning of water reservoirs was first discussed as a practical possibility in the First World War. According to one report “Anarchist elements” had been hired toward the end of the war to carry cholera bacilli from a neutral state to the territory of one of the belligerents.5 The neutral country was apparently Switzerland, and the “Anarchist elements” were to smuggle the bacilli in fountain pens to Russia. There is reason to doubt the authenticity of the report, nor is it certain that the scheme would have been practical. But in the 1920s the danger was taken seriously, and a study commission on bacteriological warfare was established by the League of Nations. In 1936 a first nerve gas (GA-tabun) was synthesized in Germany, to be followed by the discovery of even more toxic agents — sarin (GB) in 1938, and soman in 1944, all of them fatal within minutes. They all belong to the organo-phosphates (OPA), a substance first discovered as far back as 1854; but its toxic properties were then unknown. Considerable quantities of these and other gases were produced by the belligerents in the Sec ond World War but not used. In 1944 a germ warfare center was established in the United States; there were similar establishments in other countries. Even before the first nuclear device had been ex ploded, scientists and statesmen in the United States voiced the fear that some insane people or agents of a hostile power could smuggle a bomb wherever they wanted — “twenty thousand tons of TNT can be kept under the counter of a candy store.”6 The possibility of such a threat has been discussed and investigated ever since. During the last seven years there have been 175 cases of threatened violence at nuclear facilities; in 1973 a group of ERP terrorists attacked a nuclear plant near Buenos Aires which was not, however, operating yet; a fire was started in 1975 at a nuclear plant at Fessenheim, France, allegedly by the Meinhof-Puig Antich group. With the growth of the civil nuclear industry, the establishment of new reactors all over the world and the declassification of technical information the danger has grown that technically competent people having stolen a sufficient quantity of plutonium could build a primitive nuclear device. The plutonium needed could either be stolen while in transport or smuggled out from a plant. Nor were the theft of a nuclear device or the emergence of a black market in plutonium ruled out. However stringent the means of control employed, it was assumed that they could not possibly be totally effective. Various official and private reports concluded that a sufficiently determined and able group could perform acts of sabotage endangering not only nuclear plants but also the safety of the public living in its vicinity. Another study stated that the acquisition of special nuclear materials by a terrorist group was a threat to be taken very seriously.7 If the United States faced such danger, they existed, a fortiori, in other countries in which supervision was less effective and terrorism more active. Yet another study argued that while INW (illicit nuclear weapon) pro duction was both plausible and feasible, the probability for success was low. Assuming that SNM (special nuclear material) had been acquired in sufficient quantity, an effort by a sizable group of people would be needed over a lengthy period. There was low probability that such a group would have the skills, motivations, resources and opportunities to make the venture a success.8 The fuel delivered to atomic plants has characteristics which make it nearly impossible to convert to nuclear weapons. The terrorist group would have to steal a number of centrifuges to produce high enrichened uranium from stolen low enrichened or natural uranium. The popular idea of a nuclear device produced in a garage and transported on a tricycle seems to belong for the time being to the realm of fantasy. Technical details are classified; it is believed however that the weight of an effective device would be at least one ton, possibly twice as much. Various other means of nuclear sabotage have been mentioned, such as the disposal of plutonium powder. All these possibilities have to be taken seriously, and the danger will undoubtedly increase in future even though the risks involved for nuclear terrorists are formidable. According to some estimates there is a 50 percent death risk in stealing nuclear material, and about 30 percent in bomb manufacture. But terrorist groups ready to make use of nuclear devices or poisonous substances cannot be measured by rational standards in any case, and it is also true that the technical obstacles would be greatly reduced if the terrorists could count on the help of a friendly government which had nuclear reactors and the facilities to produce plutonium or uranium-235. All this may take longer than some ex perts assume but there is little reason to doubt that “if present trends continue, it seems only a question of time before some terrorist organization exploits the possibilities for coercion which are latent in nuclear fuel.”9 In the meantime certain safeguards — sensors for instance — may be developed which at the present do not exist. But there is no reason to assume that there will ever be totally effective safeguards.
Most attention has focused on the potential of nuclear blackmail because it is the most dramatic threat; but modern technology has provided other, equally lethal weapons more frequently discussed in the scientific literature than in popular writing.10 This refers to vari ous poisons such as the OPA’s which include the nerve gases of which mention has already been made and the monofluoroalipathic com pounds as well as BTX (botulinum toxin) which is physiologically effective however it enters the body. In addition there are a great many other potential biological weapons capable of spreading conta gions ranging from anthrax to bubonic plague, from certain forms of encephalitis to psittacosis.11 Some bacteria are difficult to cultivate or to disseminate, but the list of those that could possibly be used is still uncomfortably long. Most of the biological pathogens (like most of the highly poisonous substances) have been available for many decades but there have been several important technological devel opments since the Second World War. These include the continuous culture of micro-organisms, the production of monodisperse aerosols and the stabilization of organisms to maintain their viability in aero sol dissemination.12 At the same time modern society has become more vulnerable as the result of rapid communication, central venti lation, central water storage systems and in many other respects.13 Biological pathogens are more easily available than special nuclear material; transport and dissemination might be undertaken by very small groups of people, possibly even single individuals. On the other hand, it is precisely the almost unlimited destructive character of biological pathogens which makes them less suitable as a terrorist weapon, not only because nuclear terrorism has the greater publicity value, but mainly because a threat to use biological pathogens would be less credible. A terrorist group could prove that it is capable of carrying out a nuclear threat by exploding a device in a sparsely inhabited area, whereas a “trial epidemic” is impossible to launch. A crude fission bomb of, say, 0.1 kiloton, would have a limited effect — that of a bomb of 100 tons of high explosive or more. It could destroy a big factory, or several blocks of buildings. An epidemic, on the other hand, could spread to all parts of the globe, which makes it impractical for international terrorism. A weapon of this kind is more likely to be used by a madman, rather than by political terror ists.14 For these and other reasons the use of biological weapons despite their greater availability seems less likely than the use of chemical agents, such as the OPA substances, some of which are commercially available in any case. But chemical agents like home made nuclear devices involve high risks for those engaged in their preparation and their effectiveness is not guaranteed. By the mid-1970s there had been reports of the theft of mustard gas from Ger man ammunition bunkers allegedly by the Baader-Meinhof Gang; a quantity of nerve gas (stolen by criminals) had been recovered by the Austrian police; there had been unconfirmed reports that the Baa der-Meinhof Gang and a Spanish terrorist group had enlisted the services of chemists and microbiologists; that an Arab Pharmaceuti cal Congress had pledged support to the PLO urging training in biological warfare.15 But there has not been as yet a single attempt at terror on the grand scale.
It can be taken for granted that most of the terrorist groups existing at present will not use this option, either as a matter of political principle or because it would defeat their purpose. If weapons of this kind were used in Ulster, for instance, Catholics and Protestants alike would be the victims. But some groups might well opt for the weap ons of superviolence because their aim is not political change but the total destruction of the enemy.
Various scenarios based on the spread of unconventional weaponry have been developed, such as the use, or threat of use, of arms of mass destruction by poor Third World countries against the “rich” industrial states. Others have envisaged the emergence of two types of states — those of nations in the traditional sense, with boundaries, capital cities and national armies, and those of groups which are not nations, do not always have precisely defined national territory, but possess some sort of armed force of their own.16 Such scenarios, while not a priori impossible, seem a little farfetched; “surrogate warfare” of this kind would lead sooner or later to full-scale war. A discussion of these scenarios leads in any case beyond the confines of a study which is not concerned with state terrorism. It seems possible, in theory, that the weapons of superviolence would endanger totalitar ian rule as much as democratic societies. But the means of control on which totalitarian rule rests makes this much less likely; there may be the necessary determination on the part of the enemies of the regime, but opportunity will be far less than in an open society.
Credible threats of the use of arms of mass destruction would face governments with agonizing choices. The advocacy of surrender (as suggested by Professor Feld and others) seems natural enough, but it would not, of course, answer the challenge. For according to expe rience, one case of successful blackmail leads to another and yet another; a left-wing nuclear threat would sooner or later be coun tered by a similar threat from the extreme right; and there would be conflicting threats of nuclear terror or biological or chemical warfare by nationalist separatist groups. This would lead to constant tyranny by small groups of people or, more likely, total anarchy and possibly widespread destruction, unless, of course, society learns to face black mail. Society may be spared the dilemma, but if the emergency arose countermeasures could involve a degree of state control and repres sion hitherto unknown in any democratic society except at a time of war. In the long run it could result in the surrender of sovereign rights thought unthinkable at the present. But then it would be a situation at least as dangerous as full-scale war and if a choice has to be made between survival and a restriction of civil liberty and sover eign rights there is no doubt what the response would be. Whether preventive measures could forestall an emergency of this kind is a moot question, but if it came to it, greater clarity about the roots and the character of terrorism would be needed to face the threat with out panic and hysteria.
The debate on whether or not one should compromise with terrorist has lasted a long time. Concessions may be advisable in some exceptional cases; consistent conciliation of terrorism on the other hand is bound to claim a higher toll in human life in the long run than resisting it. But while terrorism is on a relatively small scale it is not really that important what kind of is taken; societies facing a deter mined terrorist onslaught will opt for a hard-line policy in any case. But what is true with regard to a period in which terrorism is no more than a nuisance does not, of course, apply to an age in which mankind may be threatened by weapons of superviolence. There is the cer tainty that society would not be able to satisfy the grievances real or imaginary, the demands justified or unjustified of all its members in the foreseeable future. There is equally the certainty that some in dividuals will have at some future date the skill and the determina tion to dictate their wishes to society. Such action would, of course, be irrational, leading sooner or later to destruction without prece dent. But is this likely to deter individuals or small groups of people convinced that the whole world ought to be punished if their de mands, whatever they might be, are not met?
If these are the more distant dangers, there is reason for concern also for the near future. Attempts have already been made by terror ist groups to use precision guided weapons, such as the Soviet SA-7or the American Redeye, against civilian aircraft. This does not nec essarily add a new dimension to the technology of modern terrorism, but it could lead sooner or later to war between nations. For country X, the victim of such an attack, would assume, rightly or wrongly, that the terrorists were acting on behalf of country Y, which financed and trained them and provided the weapons. It could retaliate by bombing the capital or the oil fields of that country or in some other way. The assumption underlying the policy of the sponsors of inter national terrorism that they will escape retaliation cannot be taken for granted. Precisely in view of its international character interna tional terrorism, in contrast to the purely domestic species, can easily lead to war, but it must be taken that those sponsoring it will not desist until a disaster has befallen one of them.
If these are the future perspectives, they are far removed indeed from the origins of political terrorism inasmuch as they were rooted in the struggle against despotism and in tyrannicide. Terrorism appeared in the secret societies and revolutionary organizations of the nineteenth century fighting a tyranny against which there was no legal redress. It was adopted by national movements against foreign oppressors, but also by some movements of the extreme left and right. Circumstances still vary from country to country and what is said about one is not necessarily true with regard to another. By and large, however, there has been an essential change in the character of terrorism with the shedding of restraints on the one hand, the growing practice of indiscriminate murder on the other, the emer gence of multinational, remote-controlled terror and, above all, the failure or unwillingness to challenge effective dictatorships. Once it was the strategy of the poor and weak used against ruthless tyrants; today its more prominent representatives are no longer poor, and modern technology is giving them powerful weapons. Some present-day terrorist groups have quite clearly acquired the characteristics once attributed to tyranny, atrox et notoria iniuria; the tyrant wanted to impose his will on society and to keep it at ransom and so do terrorists. Others genuinely believe in their liberating mission, yet if their actions have any effect at all it is that of unwitting pacemakers of a new breed of tyrants. The wheel has come full circle: modern terrorism from its beginnings could challenge only nonterrorists, that is, governments or groups which would stop short at using their own weapons. It first appeared on the scene under the banner of freedom and democracy and at a time when it was thought that these ideas would prevail all over the world. These hopes have not come true and nondemocratic regimes, unlike the democracies, suffer from no inhibitions in dealing with political opponents. If the power of demo cratic societies shrinks so does the sphere in which terrorism can operate.
*All statistics on terrorism are suspect — partly because there are genuine difficul ties of definition; it is not always easy to establish, whether, for instance, the hijacking of a plane or a kidnapping was politically motivated or not. On occasion the term terrorism is used in such a vague way as to make comparisons virtually meaningless. Thus, for instance, reference is frequently made to the killing of four U.S. ambassadors between 1968 and 1976 “by terrorist action,” whereas in reality the ambassadors to Cyprus and Lebanon were actually killed during a civil war, which, of course, is not quite the same. A RAND study on 63 major kidnapping operations between 1968 and 1974 reached the conclusion that there has been an 87 percent probability of success in attempts to seize hostages and a 79 percent chance that all members of the terrorist team would escape punishment or death. Such figures may accurately reflect a certain trend in one part of the world at a given time, they are quite misleading with regard to other times and places.