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Trends on Terror: The Analysis of Political Violence

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International Terrorism (Hearings Before the Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress, Second Session, June 1974). Washington, D.C., United States Government Printing Office, 1974, 219 pp.
HyamsEdward, Terrorists and Terrorism. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1974, 200 pp., $7.95.
ClutterbuckRichard, Protest and the Urban Guerrilla. London, Cassell, 1973, 277 pp., $3.75.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

J. Bowyer Bell
J. Bowyer Bell
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

Both the public and the academic response to terrorism has been ahistorical, exaggerated, and closely associated with congenial political postures; moreover, the academic perspective is conditioned by the nature of individual philosophy. The books under review examine the subject from several points of view, in which the conventional means of social scientists have been wielded to mixed advantage. Since there are no agreed definitions, no accepted limits to the subject, and no very effective academic approach, the situation seems unlikely to improve dramatically in the near future.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , April 1977 , pp. 476 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

1 One of the first responses to the advent of the new terrorists on the part of the concerned—other than speculation, and there was plenty of that—was to count. The result is that, although no one is any closer to understanding the phenomenon, still the course of events can be followed in the detailed chronologies of violence provided by RAND or HERO (Historical Evaluation Research Organization), or in the appendices to various studies or Congressional committee reports. There are even those who seek to order all such incidents on computer cards, producing a concordance of the dreadful.

2 On skyjacking alone there is a mini-library: Arey, James A., The Sky Pirates (New York: Collier 1973)Google Scholar. From the victim's view, there is Oren, Uri, 99 Days in Damascus: The Story of Professor Shlomo Samueloff and the Hijack of TWA Flight 848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1970)Google Scholar; from the hijacker's, Khaled, Leila, My People Shall Live: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1973)Google Scholar. And there are mounds of governmental reports, psychological studies, and accounts of various aspects, especially on the Palestinian Fedayeen; for example, Snow, Peter and Phillips, David, The Arab Hijack War (New York: Ballantine Books 1971)Google Scholar.

3 For a massive chronicle, see Groussand, Serge, The Blood of Israel: The Massacre of Israeli Athletes—The Olympics 1972 (New York: Morrow 1975)Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, “Transnational Terrorism as a Policy Issue,” paper delivered at the 1974 meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.

5 , Methvin, The Riot Makers: The Technology of Social Demolition (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House 1970)Google Scholar; The Rise of Radicalism: The Social Psychology of Messianic Extremism (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House 1973)Google Scholar.

6 Jenkins has done some of the most balanced and effective analysis of terrorism, but his work is widely scattered, from RAND papers to Congressional testimony. Cf. his “International Terrorism: A New Mode of Conflict,” in Carlton, David and Schaerf, Carlo, eds., International Terrorism and World Security (London: Croom Helm 1975), 13–49Google Scholar.

7 Seeking new directions, the Department of State organized a large conference of the academic and analytical “specialists” on terrorism in Washington in March 1976. There were no visible new directions.

8 There is substantial literature, by various legal scholars, on appropriate responses and strategies, and on various United Nations resolutions and international conferences. This work looks most scholarly, dotted with footnotes and cross-references, but has taken place several giant steps away from reality. However desirable a world court for terrorists, or international agreements to end sanctuary, or an effective United Nations stand, in practice very little has been done. For a thoughtful survey of the problem, see Franck, Thomas M. and Lookwood, Bert B. Jr., “Preliminary Thoughts Toward an International Convention on Terrorism,” The American journal of International Law, Vol. 68 (January 1974), 69–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Gustave Morf, a Swiss-born psychiatrist practicing in Montreal, interviewed captured members of the F.L.Q. and published the result in Terror in Quebec (Toronto and Vancouver: Clark, Irwin 1970)Google Scholar. David Hubbard (fn. 2) did the same on skyjackers, arriving at a bizarre explanation for such deviant behavior, but producing a most effective screening process. One of the very few trained psychologists to interview revolutionaries outside of prison has been Walter H. Slote. See his “Case Analysis of a Revolutionary,” in Bonilla, Frank and Michelena, José Silva, eds., A Strategy for Research on Social Policy, I (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1967)Google Scholar for a Venezuelan study. His Vietnamese interviews are not yet published.

10 The historical literature on Revolution/Terror is such that even bibliographies have become massive. Most movements have generated a tame historian (although recently the Provisional I.R.A. decided their man had taken his brief to be objective too seriously—been too critical—and suggested he forego publishing); but the most useful material is focused on somewhat more distant events, making use of varying historical means.

11 The most elegant recent study is Gurr, Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, Princeton University Press 1970)Google Scholar; a glance at the bibliography will reveal just how massive the relevant literature is.

12 A major difficulty is that revolutionary “events” are seldom discrete, and are always related to vague variables. It is possible to count assassinations (once the deed has been satisfactorily defined), but quite impossible to list those “assassinations” that aborted out of sight. And quite often, the aggregate-data people appear content with less than complete sources. Some wars do not even make theNew York Times Index—which may be a good thing.

13 A great body of interviews exists, underwritten by the Israelis concerned with the Fedayeen, and the Americans with the Viet Cong; but much of the material remains, if not classified, at least confidential.

14 One solution has been to put together anthologies: Carlton and Schaerf (fn. 6); Baumann, Carol Edler, International Terrorism (Milwaukee: Institute of World Affairs, University of Wisconsin 1974)Google Scholar; O'Neil, Bard E., Alberts, D. J., and Rossetti, Stephen J., eds., Political Violence and Insurgency (Arvada, Colorado: Phoenix Press 1974)Google Scholar; Alexander, Yonah, ed., Inter-National Terrorism, North and South America, The USSR, Europe, Asia, and Africa (New York: Praeger 1976)Google Scholar; the issue on terrorism of The Stanford Journal of International Studies; the proceedings of the conference on terrorism held under the auspices of Glassboro State College, Glassboro, N.J. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press 1977); and those of the City University of New York Conference, Terrorism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York: John Jay Press 1976)Google Scholar.

15 Beyond the normal behavioral considerations, Hubbard (fn. 2) factored in the reaction to gravity and to the space program, but his screening program did work, gravity or no.

16 Clutterbuck's recent Living With Terrorism (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House 1975)Google Scholar, a handbook for the threatened, is dedicated to Sir Geoffrey Jackson, who was kidnapped and held for 224 days by the Tupamaros in Uruguay. Jackson, however, in his Surviving the Long Night: An Autobiographical Account of a Political Kidnapping (New York: Vanguard Press 1974)Google Scholar, broke the chain by dedicating his book more conventionally “To my wife, and our son.”

17 See V. Anthony Burton (another retired British Army officer), Urban Terrorism, Theory, Practice, and Response (New York: Free Press 1975)Google Scholar.

18 For those made uneasy by details, McPhee, John, in The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1974)Google Scholar provides a splendid popular account originally published in The New Yorker.

19 A most fascinating and effective examination of what might be described as pre-state regime-terror by anthropological means is Walter, E. V., Terror and Resistance: A Study of Political Violence (New York: Oxford University Press 1969)Google Scholar.

20 Still perhaps the most impressive treatment is Rapoport's, David C. brief Assassination and Terrorism (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Company 1971)Google Scholar. Some works with intriguing titles, such as McKnight, Gerald, The Mind of the Terrorist (London: Michael Joseph 1974)Google Scholar, turn out to be muddled journalism; others, like Irving L. Horowitz, “Political Terrorism and Personal Deviance,” a background paper prepared for the United States Department of State (XR/RNAS-5, February 15, 1973), or Segre, D. V. and Adler, J. H., “The Ecology of Terrorism,” Survival xv (July-August 1973), 178–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar (reprinted from Encounter, XL [February 1973]), are intriguing but highly speculative.