Why Talking About Terrorism Makes Even Nice, Articulate People Sound Incoherent

Former Spanish ambassador to the US, Javier Rupérez, today addressed an audience on the subject of terrorism, a topic he should know something about. He was kidnapped by ETA in 1979, and following his release enjoyed a distinguished government career, serving as ambassador in the Aznar administration and later taking up a post as the Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate in the UN.

Rupérez began by noting that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to define terrorism and claiming that it was not essential to do so, since the UN in its recent history has essentially managed to condemn all manner of terrorist acts through a wide variety of resolutions which have been passed in response to specific terrorist events such as the kidnapping of the Israeli athletes in Munich. Much of his talk was the kind of bromide you would expect to get from any government official from any country on the topic. But it soon became clear that his argument presupposed a definition of terrorism above and beyond an uncontroversial typology of terrorist acts. While rejecting the idea of "root causes" of terrorism he at the same time claimed that he was very concerned about, for example, the sorts of things taught at madrassas and believed that they should be monitored. He's probably right about that, but his point makes no sense unless we have some kind of working definition of terrorism and are not simply concerned with discrete "terrorist acts." While it's debatable whether the kind of instruction given in radical madrassas would qualify as a "root cause" of terrorism, it almost certainly is a phenomenon that plays some kind of role in the causal chain that leads to a determinate terrorist act. So, clearly we need a more robust notion of "terrorism" if we're going to regard factors such as religious instruction as relevant to terrorist activities. No bare typology of terrorist actions will get us there.

Equally troubling was the former ambassador's refusal to acknowledge any distinction between "local" terrorism which has concrete political aims and "global" terrorism which does not aim at achievable political objectives, at least not in any ordinary sense of the term (of course you're free to disagree with me if you believe that Al Qaeda's ultimate aims are politically feasible). This line is typical of most governments, including the US. But it's the kind of distinction that can't be made unless one already has an operational definition of terrorism and employs it to distinguish between "terrorist activities" and "non-terrorist activities." His argument for considering local terrorism and global terrorism as one and the same was that local terrorism produces "ripple effects" which are global. He cited ETA as a specific case which would, were the organization to achieve its objectives, throw all of Europe into turmoil. His reasoning was that ETA defends a Marxist-Leninist ideology which has been discredited and which would be a nightmare to return to. I happen to think he's right on both counts: ETA is unequivocally Marxist-Leninist and it would be disastrous for such a government to gain a foothold anywhere in contemporary Europe. But that's exactly the kind of argument one CANNOT advance if one accepts his premise that we don't need a definition of terrorism in order to combat it. I'll pass over without comment his two allusions to what "the Basques" want to do by means of political violence, when he clearly meant to say "ETA." He caught himself before saying it a third time.