How to combat terrorists

Is there a workable moral response to an immoral strategy?

Welcome back to our Substack Seminar on just-war principles!

If you are just joining us, I’d encourage you to look back on previous episodes, to gain a better sense of what we’re about and to learn the “ground rules” for this discussion. For the full experience, read up from the bottom of the segments listed here. But you don’t need to know everything, and you can always catch up later; we’re happy to have you join us right now!

Once again let me encourage readers (and listeners) to join in our discussion, asking your questions or making your arguments in the Comments section. I know from experience that this topic provokes lively and enlightening debates, and I’m waiting for our little Substack Seminar to reach what you might call a “critical mass.” As I explained a few weeks back, I’ve set aside the outline that I’d presented for our discussion, in hope of jump-starting those debates.

When I led a college seminar on just-war theory, I asked students to watch the movie, The Battle of Algiers, which I mentioned in another context several weeks ago. It’s a very effective propaganda film, with a distinctive leftward tilt, about the struggle between an Algerian independence movement, the FLN, and the French colonial rulers.

The FLN, as portrayed in the film, was a disciplined movement, organized into small cells. The active members planned and organized their attacks on a need-to-know basis, so that if any member was captured and interrogated, he could only give information about two or three colleagues—and those colleagues could arrange to disappear as soon as they learned of the arrest.

To counteract the FLN, the French military decided that they must extract information from captured members as quickly as possible, so that they could make more arrests, and extract more information, before other FLN members disappeared into the safety and anonymity of the casbah. So they used torture. As the battle escalated, the French engaged in other forms of brutality— blowing up the homes of FLN sympathizers, for instance. Eventually this revolutionary movement was broken— but only temporarily. A few years later the FLN was back in business, with a new generation of leaders, and French colonial rule was overthrown.

From the perspective of just-war analysis, the entire conflict (again, as portrayed in the film) is appalling, with both sides guilty of clear moral violations. But the dynamic is instructive, as a case-study in the use of terrorism and the effort to overcome it.

The first FLN attacks were on police officers, who were chosen as targets because they were symbols of the colonial authority. The police were ambushed, while going about their business of maintaining public order; so these incidents were morally unjustifiable.

But terrorists are not worried about just-war theories, and the FLN leaders could foresee the tactical consequences of these first attacks. The police, unable to identify the perpetrators of the hit-and-run attacks, took disciplinary action against all the residents of the neighborhood. Those disciplinary actions caused resentment in the casbah. The Arab residents— even those not involved in the revolutionary movements— began to hate and fear the French rulers. French officials, in turn, came to suspect and fear the Arab residents. So the FLN had successfully followed Trotsky’s advice to “heighten the contradictions” and pave the way for a broader revolutionary conflict.

Chairman Mao said that guerrillas swim in the sea of the population, supported by the people who, even if they are not ready to fight, come to sympathize with the cause. In the casbah of Algiers, residents supported the FLN not simply out of political sympathy but also out of fear— fear of the French military, but also fear of the FLN’s growing power. Whereas guerrillas aim to swing public opinion in their favor, terrorists have a somewhat different goal: to create that climate of fear. One fundamental difference between terrorists and other guerrillas is the willingness of terrorists to treat innocent civilians as pawns rather than potential allies: as expendable resources to be sacrificed for the cause.

Another key difference is that whereas guerrillas usually begin their campaigns by attacking weak military targets, terrorists select targets that have no military value.

How can terrorism be justified, then? It cannot— not from anything approaching a just-war perspective. From that perspective— our perspective— the only relevant question is how to fight terrorism without slipping into the amoral thinking of the terrorists.

The early theorists of Marxist revolution— Trotsky and Lenin, Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxembourg— wrote lengthy tracts on the uses of terrorism. They recognized the usefulness of creating a climate of fear, as a prelude to introducing authoritarian rule, and they could justify the suffering of innocents, at least in their own minds, by pointing toward the introduction of a utopian society. Later, the intellectual guru of anti-colonial revolution, Frantz Fanon, argued that only by violence— only by killing their oppressors— could the people of the Third World gain their own psychological freedom. For all these theorists, the glorious cause justified the appalling tactics; the ends justified the means.

Terrorist violence tempts governments toward brutal reprisals. Brutal reprisals turn public opinion against the government, and thus fuel the terrorists’ propaganda campaigns. The conflict can escalate quickly, creating political chaos, making the society ungovernable.

So how does a just and prudent government respond to terrorists? Not by adopting the terrorists’ immoral tactics; not by punishing the innocent; not by violating human dignity. Somehow the government must identify and eliminate the leadership and the resources of the terrorist organization, with as little collateral damage as possible.

That is a tall order, since terrorists often welcome attacks on the people they claim to represent. Terrorists use civilians as human shields, and consequently any military attack on the terrorist organizations will entail heavy civilian casualties— which will blur the moral lines, casting the government in the villain’s role.

Governments frequently respond to terrorist outbreaks by suspending civil liberties, setting curfews, restricting travel and commerce, invoking martial law. Again that approach carries a heavy price; the government can become the enemy, even in the sight of people who previously decried the terrorists. Moreover the suspension of ordinary civilian life takes a toll on society, saps public confidence, and so helps to create the climate in which terrorism can thrive.

Should the government seek to infiltrate the terrorist groups, to gain better information about their plans? That option too poses serious moral risks. Infiltration requires gaining the confidence of the terrorist leadership, which means participating, to some extent, in the group’s immoral activities.

Rooting out the terrorists’ resources— blocking their flow of money and weaponry— looks at first like a more promising approach. But complications arise if the terrorists are sponsored by powerful governments, with whom one does not want an open conflict— or even putative allies.

Terrorism clearly violates the fundamental principles of just-war thinking. But developing the capacity to fight terrorism without violating those principles is one of the pressing foreign-policy challenges of our day.