LIVING WITH TERRORISM
I have been living with terrorism, so to speak, for over thirty years. I lived through the onset of the IRA’s violence in the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s. My first doctorate, on the law of guerrilla warfare, examined international attempts to outlaw terrorism and included research in Northern Ireland and South Vietnam. I am now onto my second wave, following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
During the intervening period, there has been a revolution in military affairs, but it is often overlooked, particularly by those in the armed forces who yearn for a return to the ‘proper soldiering’ of the past. After World War II, the major powers suffered a form of ‘nuclear blindness’, whereby they could not see much beyond the Cold War nuclear threat, and so have been slow to recognise the looming threat of complex irregular warfare. I sometimes think that guerrilla groups are better than the conventional forces at learning the lessons of history and from each other about what innovation works.
In this book, I argue that creative thinking is required to cope with this new era of warfare. I discuss examples of how events since September 11 could have been handled differently.
The book has four parts. Part I seeks to define terrorism. Part II views terrorism as part of complex irregular warfare and explores its history. Part III examines some of the techniques now being used – or which could be used – in this new era. Part IV links the current concerns with some wider dimensions.
The bad news is that terrorism is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. The underlying conditions that bred terrorism, such as poverty and racism, will long continue to exist. Terrorist groups cannot be eliminated simply by creating additional laws. Passing new laws may have a therapeutic effect, reducing public anxiety and quietening the media, but terrorists are often smart opportunists, looking for gaps to exploit in national security systems. They try to be one step ahead. Meanwhile, excessive legislation will simply erode the human rights of the people being ‘protected’. An attorney-general introducing new laws could be accidentally assisting the terrorists – destroying hard-fought-for human rights in the interests of trying to save society.
The good news is, first, that the world is getting safer. Conventional warfare – at least as we knew it in the twentieth century – is on the way out. Far more people were killed in the first half of the twentieth century than in the second half. Warfare is now far less labour intensive. Its nature has changed and so fewer people are being killed overall, although there are more civilian fatalities as a percentage of the total number of deaths.
Second, the current wave of terrorism will subside. It always does. Prevention techniques will be improved, community opinion will turn against the violent groups, the groups themselves will have less appetite for violence and they may have fewer grievances as appropriate economic, social and political reforms are introduced. There could be any number of reasons. But, going on the past record, we do know that gradually the problem will decline. Until the next time.