by John Gray
Martin van Creveld31
In September 2006, a classified report pooling the knowledge of sixteen American intelligence agencies was leaked, and sections of it subsequently published, which pointed to the ‘centrality’ of the US invasion of Iraq in fomenting Islamist terrorism throughout the world.32 This judgement came as no surprise to the analysts who predicted such a result well before the war began. They expected that the invasion would assist recruitment and provide a training ground for terrorists; some also anticipated that an Iraqi insurgency against American occupation would be impossible to defeat. If the war was launched despite these warnings it was because the politicians who engineered it were able to convince public opinion that it was part of the ‘war on terror’. The assault on Iraq was described by sections of the Pentagon as a move in a ‘Long War’ – a multi-generational conflict in which pre-emptive attack and regime change are used to defeat terrorism throughout the world. More recent American strategic thinking has noted the crucial role of non-military strategies in combating terrorism. Yet the belief persists that countering terrorism involves defeating a ‘global insurgency’, which is only a more sophisticated way of talking about how to fight a ‘global war on terror’.33
The very idea of such a war is questionable. Terrorism is an umbrella term that covers many types of unconventional warfare, which have different causes and remedies. To lump these together into a single global threat indicates a lack of understanding. Again, terrorism is a prime candidate for unqualified moral judgements. For those who think of counter-terrorism as a crusade for an ‘end to evil’,34 analysing terror without condemning it is outrageous. But amoral analysis of the sort conducted by military strategists may be more useful, and in the end more moral.
Where the term is used accurately, ‘global terrorism’ refers to a small – though growing – portion of the unconventional warfare that is occurring at any one time throughout the world. Much that is today described as terrorism was viewed in the past as insurrection or civil conflict and recognized to be a part of struggles that are local in nature. Techniques such as the bombing of government buildings and the assassination of public officials are the stock in trade of national liberation struggles and were employed in places as diverse as Palestine and Malaya under British rule, French Algeria and Vietnam during American occupation. Terrorist techniques are used because they are cheap and highly effective. They are normally employed on a large scale over extended periods only in circumstances of severe conflict when other methods have failed. In other words, terrorism is often a rational strategy.
It has become part of western discourse to link terrorism with Arab culture and an Islamic cult of martyrdom. However, Islam is a religion not a culture, and most of the people who live in the ‘Islamic world’ are not Arabs. Terrorism in Indonesia cannot be explained by cultural attitudes attributed – in a manner that when applied to other groups would rightly be condemned as racist – to Arabs. Suicide terrorism is not a pathology that afflicts any particular culture nor has it any close connections with religion.
Much terrorism is like other types of warfare. Nearly always, wars are fought within or across cultural boundaries. The first two world wars began as intra-European conflicts, the Sino-Japanese war was fought between countries that both belong in the Confucian cultural world, while the Iran-Iraq war was intra-Islamic. The Balkan wars of the 1990s were fought along ethnic-national not religious-cultural lines, with Christians and Muslims often allies. The idea that wars are conflicts of civilizations – which emerged in the course of an American dispute about multiculturalism rather than as an attempt to understand international relations – is not supported by facts.35
When applied to unconventional warfare, talk of a clash of civilizations is meaningless. It was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist group operating in a Hindu culture in Sri Lanka, that devised the technique of suicide bombing (including the vest that was later adopted by Palestinians), and until the war in Iraq the Tigers committed more such bombings than any other movement. Aircraft hijacking was pioneered by the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization with the help of ultra-leftist groups such as the Red Army Faction. A Japanese Red Army member carried out the first suicide attack in Israel in 1972.
Suicide bombing is a technique that has been adopted by people of various cultures and beliefs to achieve political aims. In the first rigorous empirical study of the subject, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,36 Robert Pape analysed all known cases between 1980 and 2004 and found that over 95 per cent of all incidents had clear political objectives. Whether in Chechnya or Sri Lanka, Kashmir or Gaza, the goal was to expel an occupying force. The ethnic and religious backgrounds of those who committed the bombings were highly diverse. In Lebanon, Hezbollah mounted a campaign against French, American and Israeli targets between 1982 and 1986 that included forty-one suicide attacks (including the attack in 1983 which killed over a hundred Marines and resulted in the abrupt withdrawal of American forces by president Reagan). Of these, only eight were committed by Islamic fundamentalists, twenty-seven by members of secular leftist political groups such as the Lebanese Communist party, and three by Christians. All the people involved were born in Lebanon, but otherwise they were very different. These Hezbollah suicide bombers did not fit into any recognizable profile of social marginality (one of the Christians was a female high-school teacher with a college degree, for example). The single common factor linking them was their adherence to a set of political goals. The decisive conditions in producing long-term, large-scale terrorist violence are not cultural or religious, but political. Where these conditions exist, anyone can become a terrorist.
Terrorism does not always serve a rational strategy, as has been seen. Apocalyptic beliefs played a central role in state terror from the Jacobins through the Bolsheviks and the Nazis. America’s indigenous terrorist movements are driven by similar myths: the rightwing militias that produced the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh were inspired by a neo-Nazi ideology that anticipated catastrophe and violent renewal in the US, while the Army of God, a Christian fundamentalist terrorist group that murders doctors who practise abortion, views the American state as Satanic. In Japan, the Aum movement, which planted sarin gas on the subway in Tokyo and attempted to obtain supplies of ebola virus for use in further attacks, also subscribed to an apocalyptic world-view – though it recruited among professional people (particularly scientists) rather than the marginal groups that join American rightwing militias. Terrorists of these kinds have more in common with cult members than with the soldiers and strategists of Hezbollah or the Tamil Tigers.
Al-Qaeda’s terrorism has both strategic and apocalyptic dimensions.37 Having morphed into new shapes since the 9/11 attacks, today it is more a loose web of affinity groups than an organized global network. There has been a shift of operational control from the centre to regional and local command centres, and at the same time networks have become increasingly internet-based. Founded towards the end of the Cold War during the Soviet-Afghan conflict in which it was used as a western proxy, al-Qaeda has become a decentralized, mostly virtual entity whose goals are less clearly defined than in the past. This is partly a response to western military action. While the destruction of the Taliban regime disabled most of the units that existed at that time, new ones have sprung up since the invasion of Iraq. Al-Qaeda’s original objectives were clear – the withdrawal of US forces from Saudi Arabia and the destruction of the House of Saud – but it has now become a vehicle for inchoate anger. This new phase has been seen in the violent jihad that produced terrorist attacks in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands, which were not only a rejection of western policies but also of western societies.38
Al-Qaeda is the only terrorist network that has a global reach, and in this as in other respects it is a by-product of globalization. Radical Islam is often interpreted as a backlash against modernity, but it is striking how closely the lives of the 9/11 hijackers matched a stereotype of m
odern anomie. Living a semi-nomadic existence, they were not members of any community, and it is difficult to resist the impression that they turned to terrorism more to secure a meaning in their lives than to advance any concrete objective. By taking up terror they ceased to be drifters and became warriors. Most of the hijackers were not long-time practitioners of Islam but became born-again Muslims in Europe. The Islam they represent does not exist in traditional cultures. It is a version of fundamentalism that could only have developed through contact with the West. It is globalization that underpins the utopian vision of a worldwide community of believers. As Olivier Roy, the French scholar who has developed a rigorous sociological analysis of global Islam, has observed, it is ‘the growing de-territorialization of Islam which leads to the political reformulation of an imaginary ummah’.39
Al-Qaeda has been compared with the anarchist terrorists of the late nineteenth century, and there are points of resemblance. Since the destruction of the Taliban regime, al-Qaeda has operated without state sponsorship, and its focus is on destroying existing states rather than founding new ones. Al-Qaeda differs from anarchist terrorism partly in the cruelty of its methods – whereas anarchists mainly targeted state officials, al-Qaeda specializes in attacking civilians –and in the fact that it is acquiring a mass base. Whereas anarchist terrorism was the work of a tiny sect that never had popular support, al-Qaeda now appeals to large numbers of disaffected Muslims, many living in western countries. In these circumstances, further attacks of the kinds seen in New York and Washington, Bali, Madrid, Ankara, London and other cities will not be easily prevented.
The danger of Islamist terrorism is real, but declaring war on the world is not a sensible way of dealing with it. Except in a few countries – such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iraq – terrorists pose a security problem rather than a strategic threat. There is no clear enemy against which war can be directed or any point at which victory can be announced. As has often been noted, disabling terrorists is a type of police work that requires support from their host communities. It is not facilitated by futile wars in Islamic lands or by discriminatory policies targetting Muslims in western countries. While concentrated military action may sometimes be effective – as in the destruction of training bases in Afghanistan – conventional military operations are usually counter-productive. Enhanced security measures and continuous political engagement are the only strategies that have ever brought terrorism under control.
A strategy of this kind succeeded in Northern Ireland.40 Though the IRA and the splinter groups around it were engaged in an insurgency, the terrorism they committed was not treated as an act of war. They were treated as criminals, and after an initial period in which mistakes were made – including mass internment of terrorist suspects – the overriding aim of policy was to detach the terrorists from their underlying communities and divert terrorist leaders into political channels. The strategy was continued throughout serious attacks –including the assassination of several key British figures and an attempt to decapitate the British government by bombing the Conservative party conference in Brighton in 1984 – and it worked. Terrorist violence is now much reduced in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland.
An obstacle to coping with the terrorist threat is the belief that it is unlike anything in the past. Al-Qaeda is different from previous terrorist movements in operating throughout the world, but the emergence of global terrorism does not reflect a quantum leap in international relations of the kind postulated by some American theorists. Philip Bobbitt has argued that global terrorism mirrors the decline of the Westphalian system, which is being replaced by a US-led order in which state sovereignty no longer exists. In this new system the chief task of states will no longer be to reflect the values of their citizens. They will be ‘market states’ serving the global economy. Establishing this new system will involve a series of epochal conflicts that include several ‘wars against terror’. During this period the US – which supposedly embodies the new type of state that the rest of the world is struggling to achieve – will face the necessity of initiating ‘preclusive’ attacks on rogue regimes that refuse to accept the terms of the new global order.41
Though it is more rigorously developed, Bobbitt’s analysis has much in common with Fukuyama’s. Both believe an historical process is underway in which a version of the American system of government is spreading throughout much of the world. Unlike Fukuyama, who believed the end of history would be peaceful, Bobbitt perceives that it will be a time of large-scale wars; but like Fukuyama he is convinced a major shift is human affairs is underway. As the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy has noted, ‘We have underestimated the importance and centrality of the Fukuyama way of thinking in contemporary American ideology.’42
With few exceptions, American analysts have interpreted the large shifts in international relations of the past two decades as signs that the old world of ethnic and religious divisions and great-power conflicts is coming to an end. It is a belief that reflects the survival of faith-based habits of thinking rather than any clear view of the facts. The true shift that is underway is the reverse: all the old conflicts have returned but with new protagonists and a diminished role for the US. The only step-change is in new technologies that give these conflicts a new scale. In operational terms the obsolescence of state sovereignty means the unlimited sovereignty of a single state – the US, which in recent years has treated its laws as having universal jurisdiction – but the conditions in which the US could exercise this authority no longer exist (if they ever did). Accelerated by the Iraq war, the decline in American power that is an integral part of globalization has left it heavily dependent on other states. The US relies on other countries for access to natural resources, finance for its mounting debt and diplomatic aid to deal with international crises. The only unilateral power it retains is the power to bomb, the limits of which have been demonstrated in Iraq.
Instead of other countries following the US in becoming market-states, they are emulating the US in asserting their sovereignty. The US was never a market-state – the imperatives of the market have nearly always taken second place to those of national security and national identity. China, India and Russia are now behaving as the US has done in using global markets to advance their power in the world while American power is in steep decline. The result is a world that is becoming steadily more pluralistic, though not necessarily any safer. The system of sovereign states has entered another phase in which new powers are challenging the status quo and competing among themselves, a process that has happened many times before.43
Nor – with one vital exception – does the terrorist threat mark a step-change in history. While the 9/11 attacks were not unprecedented – there were earlier attacks on US embassies in Africa, for example –they were on a larger scale and the work of a network that is global to an unprecedented degree. Despite these differences, 9/11 was a further development of earlier types of unconventional warfare rather than a qualitative change in the nature of conflict. Aided by the internet, which enables violent jihadists who have never met to form virtual cells, al-Qaeda is extending its influence and reach. At the same time, developments in weaponry are improving the arsenal available to groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. But Islamist terrorism implements no coherent strategy and cannot command the resources of any great power. It is still far from being anything like a mortal threat to civilized life of the kinds that were confronted and defeated in the twentieth century.
This situation will change if terrorist groups gain access to the means of mass destruction. Not only al-Qaeda but also cults such as Aum have demonstrated an interest in biological warfare. Information technology enables types of cyber-war to be waged that can disrupt the infrastructure of modern societies – power stations and airports, for example – with the potential of causing large-scale casualties. The most catastrophic risk comes from nuclear terrorism. Using ‘suitcase bombs’ or ‘dirty bombs’ (conventional explosives salted with r
adioactive waste), terrorists could kill hundreds of thousands of people and paralyse social and economic life. No doubt the materials needed for such devices are heavily guarded, but if any of the world’s nuclear states were destabilized the danger of these materials falling into terrorist hands would be high. In Pakistan – a semi-failed state in which fundamentalist forces are heavily entrenched – that risk may already be present. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence officer who died in London in November 2006 weeks after receiving a lethal dose of radiation, suggests that nuclear terrorism may already be a reality.
The risk of proliferation has been accelerated by American policies. North Korea acquired nuclear capability as a result of a transfer of know-how from Pakistan – a country whose role in the ‘war on terror’ insulated it from effective pressure to stop leakage of this kind. The risks have been increased by the Bush administration pulling out of arms control agreements and by a change in US nuclear doctrine that allows the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against countries believed to have WMD programmes.44 Above all, after Iraq everyone knows that the only way to be safe against American attack is to possess the WMD capability Saddam lacked. According to an announcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency in November 2006, six Islamic countries have indicated they wish to acquire nuclear technology. All of them – Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey – insist they want it for peaceful purposes, but a nuclear arms race may already have begun. Other countries that may be interested include Nigeria and Jordan. It is not beyond the realm of realistic possibility that the state of Iraq – if it still exists – might at some time in the future acquire a nuclear capability of the kind pre-emptive military action by the US was meant to prevent.
