Lecture One: Defining Terrorism
Lecture One: Defining Terrorism
Hi class and welcome to my first of eight lectures on terrorism in this module. This lecture is going to help establish some of the critical foundations that the rest of my lectures are going to be built upon. Specifically, we're going to start this section of the module off by talking about controversies about how to define terrorism.
Terrorism: Scope and Definition
Terrorism: Scope and Definition
Alright, now, so what exactly is terrorism? This might seem like a pretty simple question with a straightforward answer, but, as with every aspect of terrorism, things are rarely as clear cut as they appear to be at first. Indeed, like so many of the critical concepts in international relations, terrorism has no universally accepted definition.
I think it is fairly easy to understand the reason for this, given the life-changing connotations of having the labels "terrorism" or "terrorist" attached to you. In fact, it's probably pretty hard to think of a more emotionally- and morally-loaded set of words in the current political environment.
For example, one definition of terrorism describes it as "the deliberate, systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear in order to gain political ends .... Terrorism ... is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil, and wholly evil."
With definitions like this in mind, it's important to recognize that, if you can make the terrorist label stick to your enemies, then you have won a major political victory because many people will want to have nothing to do with your enemies or their political positions anymore.
This is in part why authoritarian and totalitarian governments often call the groups that are resisting their rule "terrorists." For example, the German government during the Second World War labelled the French Resistance and the Polish Underground terrorists at the time but, since most people today consider resisting Nazi occupation to be a morally correct cause, they would probably disagree with this decision to call these groups terrorists.
More recently, the governments of many nation-states have used the label "terrorist" to delegitimize their opponents.
For example, the Chinese government has called Uighur separatists in its (Shin Jang) region terrorists.
The Indian government calls the non-state groups in Kashmir that are fighting for independence from India terrorists.
Likewise, the Israeli government has long argued that the armed Palestinian groups it is fighting against are not only terrorists but just as bad as al-Qaida, with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calling Yasser Arafat, a former leader of the Palestinian government, "our Bin Laden."
Taking this into account, there's a strong political incentive to adopt a definition of terrorism that can be used selectively to tar people and groups you hate, while protecting people and groups you like from the fallout associated with this nasty label.
As a result, the political battles over how to define terrorism are, in their own way, almost as intense as the struggle against terrorism itself.
Even in the academic world, attempts to reach a consensus on a definition of terrorism have failed miserably. For example, one of the most exhaustive and authoritative studies of modern terrorism required more than a hundred pages to examine and compare various definitions and it still didn't reach a definitive consensus.
To highlight one fairly well-known and quite simple academic definition of terrorism, a scholar by the name of Thomas Schelling defined it as "the use of terror, violence, and intimidation to achieve an end."
While seemingly simple and clear, the obvious problem with this definition is that it is far too broad since it would seem to include an incredibly diverse array of phenomena that go far beyond things like hijacking airplanes or exploding a suicide vest on a public bus.
Events like the bombing of civilian populations in cities by both sides in the Second World War, the invasion of Germany by Allied troops and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during that same war, the arrest and torture of political prisoners, and the execution of criminals (or, perhaps even the imprisonment of criminals) would all qualify as terrorism according to this definition.
It is, therefore, really important for us to try to figure out the key elements or constituent parts that could be included in a workable definition of terrorism that is not blatantly biased for or against certain actors in domestic or international politics, or so narrow that it leaves out several actors that might reasonably be considered terrorists, or so broad that it is no longer useful for describing a distinct political phenomenon.