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Article Excerpt
Contemporary usage presents an opposition between states and terrorism, as if to suggest that terrorism is not an instrument of the state but something that is used against it. Yet the two most influential foundational myths of the modern states system suggest that the state's capacity for terror is the source of peace and order within the territorial community. It also makes other states think twice about attacking its territory. The author examines the ramifications of these myths and shows how they underlie conventional accounts of what is at stake in the war on terror. KEYWORDS: terrorism, territory, state, states system, foundation myths
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A recent work in the Sydney Morning Herald by Michael Leunig, a well-known Australian cartoonist, depicts two characters discussing the war on terror. One asks how we will know when the war on terror is over. The other replies: "That will be when we can do what we like to people anywhere in the world and they'll just lie there and take it without complaining." (1)
We know that things are always more complex than cartoons suggest, that they rely on caricature, on exaggerating certain features and ignoring or underplaying others. Yet in this case, the caricature forces us to confront a fundamental feature of the war on terror. Its name, "The War on Terror," suggests a distinction between those who conduct the war, who are opposed to terror, and their enemies, who use it. The cartoon challenges this distinction. Were we to be victorious, it suggests, the result would be tyranny, a condition in which the tyrant--the "we" invoked by Leunig's respondent--could act without constraint, taking no account of anyone else's wishes. There is no reason to believe that this would lead to the elimination of terror or even to an overall reduction in its incidence. The cartoon has no need to identify the tyrant more precisely. Because it was published in Australia, a junior partner in the West, the coalition of the willing, and the international community, the "we," could stand for any or all of these collectives.
The cartoon suggests that a world without "terrorism" might be even less appealing than one in which it persists.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) tells us that the word territory derives from the Latin territori-um, the land around a town, a domain, district, or territory. It also tells us that the etymology of this Latin term is unsettled and thus that it may contain a less obvious meaning. While it is usually seen as relating to terra, meaning earth or land, it might also be derived from terrere, to frighten, via territor, frightener. This, the OED suggests, would give us territorium, "a place from which people are warned off." Although the Latin root of a term is not always a reliable guide to its later meanings, the disputed etymology in this case provides a useful introduction to its political significance. While terror may sometimes pose a threat to the territorial order of states, the possibility that territory and terror derive from the same Latin root suggests that it might also be an integral part of this order's functioning. When we refer to the territory of a state, a tribe, a people, a domestic cat, or a colony of ants, it is always associated with the threat of violence toward those who do not belong. The derivation from territor also suggests a further set of associations that, like the threat to outsiders, lie at the heart of modern political thought. Territory is associated with the threat of violence toward those who do belong, as much as to those who do not. The point in this case is not to warn them off but to regulate their conduct. They are to be frightened without being frightened off. Like the threat to outsiders, the internal threat is often seen as a means of attaining security.
The OED defines terrorism as a system of terror: a "policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; the fact of terrorizing or condition of being terrorized." Terrorism, in this sense, may be employed by actors of many kinds, and it has often been used by states. Yet contemporary usage of the term is usually more restricted, suggesting that terrorism is not an instrument of the state but something that is used against it. Robert Dreyfus quotes Adel Abdul Mahdi, then deputy president of Iraq, as insisting: "There is terrorism on only one side. Inappropriate acts by the other side, by the police--this is something else. This is a reaction." (2)
We are told, moreover, that today's variety, unlike the terrorism of the nineteenth-century anarchists, is directed against civilians and not just against agents of the state. This suggests a sense in which the latter might be seen as fair targets. Is the targeting of civilians what makes contemporary terrorism seem especially heinous?
It is easy to problematize these restricted usages. The appearance of an opposition between states and the use of terror is preserved in the notion of the rogue state, which is the exception that proves the rule. If the use of terror at home and the sponsoring of terrorism abroad is what identifies a state as rogue, this suggests that normal states do not engage in such practices. Yet it is the rule itself, not just the alleged exceptions, that is the problem here. Among the many possible examples of the sponsoring of terrorism by states that are not normally classified as rogue, let me take just one of the more recent. It involves the United States, the leader of the war on terror. US support for military and paramilitary groups that terrorized Central and South American populations in the second half of...
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