House of Commons - Foreign Affairs

Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Written Evidence

Written evidence submitted by Professor Sir Adam Roberts

THE "WAR ON TERROR" IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

1. I am Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University. I have written extensively on strategic issues, on terrorism, and on wars and military occupations in the Middle East. My principal publications relevant to this memorandum is (co-edited with Lawrence Freeman and others), Terrorism and International Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul for Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1986. In connection with the Foreign Affairs Committee's Inquiry into Foreign Policy Aspects of the War Against Terrorism, I already submitted two memoranda to the committee: on 4 December 2001 on "Application of Laws of War"; and on 24 June 2003 on "International Law and the Iraq War". Both had a central focus on international law.

2. The present memorandum, as its title suggests, draws mainly on history. It is an exploration of two questions. What conclusions can be drawn from the long history of terrorist and counter-terrorist campaigns? And what directions does this history suggest for the ongoing international campaign against terrorism?

3. The reasoning behind the emphasis on history in this memorandum is simple. Notwithstanding the fact that today's international terrorism has assumed organisational forms and means of operating that are historically new (as too has the contemporary US and international campaign against it), there are dangers in neglecting the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism. These dangers include the repetition of mistakes made in earlier eras because of a lack of awareness of those earlier mistakes. In brief, the long and tangled history of terrorism and counter-terrorism suggests a number of conclusions about the nature of terrorist and counter-terrorist campaigns that ought to be taken into account in policy-making in the present era.

4. The central proposition of this memorandum is that the US doctrine on the "War on Terror" takes too little account of the history of the subject; and that there is a need to develop what might be called a British (or, more ambitiously, a European) view of terrorism and counter-terrorism, which in certain respects would be distinctive from the US doctrine. President Bush has won the 2004 US presidential election partly on the basis of his clear line on terrorism, which is not likely to be modified in the near future. It may be time to develop and articulate a distinctive line which would include a necessary historical dimension which, as I will indicate, is largely lacking in the US doctrine. Although, as I will suggest, there is much to criticise in certain official UK pronouncements on the matter, the UK may be well placed to assist in such a development.

5. Historians are neither agreed nor infallible in addressing this subject, any more than are my own colleagues in the field of International Relations. A profession that encompasses both Professor Sir Michael Howard and Professor Bernard Lewis is not about to reach a unanimous party line on a subject as contentious as what to do about terrorism. Yet, throwing caution to the winds, I will attempt some conclusions about past terrorist and counter-terrorist campaigns.

  6.  The structure of this memorandum is as follows:[27]

Section paragraphs

A. Definition of "Terrorism" 8-16

B. Denial of History 17-23

C. Key US Pronouncements of the "War on Terror" 24-29

D. Ten Propositions Based on Earlier Campaigns 30-59

E. Can International Support be Maintained? 60-70

F. Can Military Interventions be Effective against Terrorism? 71-89

G. How Do Terrorist Campaigns End? 90-97

H. Conclusions and Recommendations for Action 98-108

7. General Montgomery's first rule of warfare was "Don't march on Moscow."[28] Regarding terrorism and counter-terrorism there is no such straightforward rule. The history of these matters repays study, not because it offers a single recipe for action, but rather because it enriches our understanding of a peculiarly complex subject. It indicates a range of possibilities for addressing it, and a number of hazards to avoid.

A. DEFINITION OF "TERRORISM"

8. Terrorism, like many other abstract political terms, is a word that is both dangerous and indispensable. Dangerous, because it easily becomes an instrument of propaganda, a handmaiden of hypocrisy, and a means of avoiding thinking about the many forms and causes of political violence. Indispensable, because there is a real and dangerous phenomenon out there that poses a very serious threat. That threat, as I will argue, is especially to the societies from which it emanates.

9. Without foreclosing a debate, "terrorism" is used here mainly to refer to the systematic use of violence and threats of violence by non-state groups, designed to cause dislocation, consternation, and submission on the part of a target population or government. This definition is deliberately broad: this is essential if one is considering, as in this Memorandum, the history of terrorism over a long period.

10. The reference to non-state groups in this definition in no way excludes awareness that states, too, notoriously use terror—often systematically; and that states sometimes secretly sponsor non-state terrorist groups. Except where it has a bearing on the causes of, and action against, terrorist movements, such state terror is not a central focus of this paper. Most forms of terroristic state violence, whether against a state's own citizens or against foreigners, are prohibited in international law.

11. Attempts at defining terrorism in recent years, especially since 2001, have reflected the fact that much contemporary terrorism is targeted against civilians. For example, UN Security Council resolution 1566 of 8 October 2004 comes close to a definition of terrorism when it refers to it as:

criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act, which constitute offences within the scope of and as defined in the international conventions and protocols relating to terrorism.

12. Similarly, the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, the report of which was issued in December 2004, included "civilians" and "non-combatants" in its suggested definition of terrorism:

13. These UN definitions may contain a basis for a formal international legal definition of terrorism. However, a possible limitation of the definition they offer should be noted. The emphasis being quite largely on the threat to civilians and non-combatants, they might appear not to encompass certain acts such as attacks on certain armed peacekeeping forces, attacks on police or armed forces, or assassinations of heads of state or government. They might not include the attack on the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.

14. There are traps in these or any other definitions of terrorism, and in the uses made of the term. The most serious is that the label "terrorist" has sometimes been applied to the activities of movements which, even if they did resort to violence, had serious claims to political legitimacy, and also exercised care and restraint in their choice of methods. Famously, in 1987-88 the UK and US governments labelled the African National Congress of South Africa "terrorist": a shallow and silly attribution even at the time, let alone in light of Nelson Mandela's later emergence as statesman.

15. In certain circumstances, the repeated use of the term "terrorist" to describe a particular class of adversaries can itself conceal key aspects of the political environment. In the 1960s many writers and journalists freely used the word "terrorist" to describe a member of the Vietcong, the military arm of the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam. The Vietcong did undoubtedly use the weapon of terror ruthlessly and systematically against the South Vietnamese population. However, serious studies suggested that terror was not on its own an adequate basis of control: a sense of the moral justice of the cause was also present. The two factors were mutually reinforcing—and this helped to explain the capacity of the Vietcong to endure.[30]

16. What is perhaps easier to define than the grand abstraction of terrorism is terrorist acts. While still surrounded by a dense thicket of thorny problems, this term has the merit of keeping the focus on specific types of action. It encompasses certain violent acts that contravene national laws and, in some cases, specific international agreements on such matters as aerial hi-jacking. The term can also encompass acts that, in their targeting and manner of execution contravene the basic principles of the laws of war. It is possible, at least sometimes, to draw a distinction between such acts and other types and forms of armed resistance. That is why the adage "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", while it contains more than a germ of truth (especially that the same act can be seen differently by different people), is too simple: it reflects a lack of awareness that there are some criteria for distinguishing between the two.

B. DENIAL OF HISTORY

17. The starting point of this exploration has to be the ahistorical nature of much political debate about terrorism. Both terrorists and their adversaries tend to talk and write publicly about their campaigns with little reference to the centuries-long history of terrorism and counter-terrorism. This is not to say that they do not articulate a view of history more generally. Terrorists, for example, often focus on deep resentments based on perceptions of alien domination of the societies they claim to defend. When terrorists have put pen to paper, either at the time of their activism or subsequently, they have sometimes shown considerable awareness of international developments and the history of their own and earlier epochs.[31] At the same time, the long and tangled history of both terrorism and counter-terrorism is frequently airbrushed out of the picture. The publicly articulated world-view of terrorists and their adversaries is often a world of moral and political absolutes, in which terrorism, or the war against it, is seen as an essentially new means of ridding the world of a unique and evil scourge. On both sides, the favoured form of argument is phrased in terms of morality—and a relatively simple morality at that, in which the adversary's actions are seen as such a serious threat as to create an overwhelming necessity for the use of counter-violence.

18. Since 11 September 2001, statements by the principal Western leaders on the subject of the "war on terror" have contained astonishingly few references to the previous experience of governments in tackling terrorist threats, or to the ways in which certain international wars of the twentieth century were sparked off by concerns about terrorism. This appears to be true not only of their public statements, but of most of their inner deliberations as revealed by Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh and others. In particular, Woodward's Plan of Attack shows that there was little reference to historical precedents in the two years of decision-making leading up to the invasion of Iraq.[32] Similarly, since 2001 much writing on terror, particularly in the USA, has been notably unhistorical.[33]

19. The main exception, of course, has been frequent British reference to the experience of countering terrorism in Northern Ireland. British ministers and officials, however, have been too reticent to point out bluntly, and in public, that almost everything about the language and manner in which terror in Northern Ireland was opposed, and about the attempts at under-writing its end through mediation and even negotiation, has been very different from the US approach to the "war on terror". Partly, of course, this is because the problems faced have been different: the IRA is far removed from al-Qaeda in ideology, in political goals and in methods. Yet the British may have been too reticent about their experience of terrorism.

20. The tendency to approach terrorism without benefit of history has, itself, a long history. Many specialists in counter-insurgency have seen their subject more as a struggle of light versus darkness than as a common and recurrent theme of history. A fine example of an ahistorical approach to the subject is the French group of theorists writing in the 1950s and early 1960s about guerre re«volutionnaire. These theorists denied the complexities—especially the mixture of material, moral and ideological factors—that are keys to understanding why and how terrorist movements come into existence. Colonel Lacheroy, a leading figure in this group and head of the French Army's Service d'Action Psychologique, famously stated: "In the beginning there is nothing."[34] Terrorism was seen as having been introduced deliberately into a peaceful society by an omnipresent outside force—namely international communism. It is a demonological vision of a cosmic struggle in which the actual history of particular countries and ways of thinking has little or no place. These French theories—no doubt because they date from a period of failed military campaigns, attempted military coups d'e«tat, systematic use of torture against insurgents, and a generally disastrous period in French history—are now almost entirely forgotten, even in France itself. They are also ignored in the USA, even though they, and the events with which they are connected, provide object-lessons in how not to conduct a counter-terrorist campaign.

21. If terrorists and counter-terrorists have often forgotten history, history has not forgotten them. Many historians have written subtly and interestingly about the evolution of terrorism (which, like so much else, has significant European as well as extra-European origins), about its ever-changing philosophy, about its sociology and its consequences. Those historians who have combined historical analysis with advocacy have tended to favour a tough line against terrorism, but biased more towards a strong police response than to military interventions.[35]

22. In present circumstances there are powerful reasons to buttress the claim that the threat faced is totally new, and needs to be tackled in new ways. Today a single terrorist incident can involve a suicide mission, an assault on a nuclear-armed power, elaborate planning carried out half a world away from the location of the attack, the destruction of major buildings, and the killing of hundreds or even thousands of people, usually civilians, of many ages and nationalities. Such an attack may be on behalf of a movement many of whose demands are probably unachievable and certainly non-negotiable. Something new is undoubtedly happening, whether at the World Trade Center in Manhattan or at Beslan in North Ossetia. The difference between the scale of carnage now and what resulted from earlier phases of terrorism brings to mind the grim biblical statement that is inscribed on the Machine Gun Corps monument in London:

23. So sharp is the distinction from earlier eras that, from today's grim perspective, it would be easy to implore earlier terrorists: "Come back: all is forgiven". Former terrorists themselves, in the manner of old soldiers, have often deplored the terrible things that later generations of terrorists did, and the impurity of their motivations.[37] Because the changes have been so great, it would also be easy to brush aside earlier historical experience of terrorism on the grounds of diminished relevance—and this indeed appears to have happened in much contemporary analysis. It is a huge mistake.

C. KEY US PRONOUNCEMENTS OF THE "WAR ON TERROR"

24. The major pronouncements of what has been variously termed in official US speeches the "war against terrorism" and the "war on terror" have been self-consciously historic in character; they have enunciated historically novel and ambitious goals; but have contained only limited reference to the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism. In his address to Congress nine days after the destruction of the twin towers in New York, President George W Bush stated:

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated . . .

25. At the end of September 2001 President Bush added, in a radio address:

26. The term "war" is not being used here in a purely rhetorical sense, as in the "war on drugs" or "war on poverty". It has such a rhetorical side, but is being used to describe a notably broad and multi-faceted overall campaign of a type that is essentially new, and that includes major military operations (starting with Afghanistan) as one important aspect. In respect of both aspects of the war—the visible and the invisible—what is sought is "victory".

27. The most important subsequent articulation of the "war on terror" was the February 2003 White House document, National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. This began by emphasising the unique nature of the current threat:

28. The oft-repeated claim of uniqueness has provided a justification for much of the rhetoric and strategic direction of the "war on terror", and has provided, too, an implied justification for making little more than ritual reference to earlier history. However, the February 2003 document did contain at least a nod to history: "Americans know that terrorism did not begin on 11 September 2001". It continued: "For decades, the United States and our friends abroad have waged the long struggle against the terrorist menace. We have learned much from these efforts". In particular, past successes in destroying or neutralising various movements that had been active in the 1970s and 1980s "provide valuable lessons for the future".[41] However, the document was unclear about exactly what terrorist movements were being referred to, and about what lessons had been learned.

29. Subsequent articulations of US doctrine offered little further reference to the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism. The most extraordinary omission in most US statements in the "war on terror" is the lack of reference to the existing US counter-insurgency doctrine, and the reluctance to embrace it even when faced with an insurgency in Iraq. By contrast, the UK military view tends to be that counter-insurgency doctrine is a principal basis of addressing terror.

D. TEN PROPOSITIONS BASED ON EARLIER CAMPAIGNS

30. Having recognised the strength of the US view that present circumstances are different, and that the measures to be taken against contemporary terrorism are different, it may be useful to take a step back and look at 10 propositions that might be drawn from the long history of terrorism, and action against it, mainly in earlier eras.

D1. The basic means: intelligence and police

31. Perhaps 95% of the important action in any campaign against terrorism consists of intelligence and police work: identifying suspects, infiltrating movements, collaborating with police forces in other countries, gathering evidence for trials and so on. This underlying truth far from being denied by President Bush or other leading figures involved in the "war on terror". However, their rhetoric, being much more that of open war and of victory, has sometimes obscured this basic fact.

D2. Capacity of counter-terrorism to achieve results

32. Contrary to myth, counter-terrorist activities and policies can sometimes succeed—at least in the sense of contributing to a reduction or ending of the activities of terrorists without yielding power to them. For example, the forces opposed to terrorists were successful in this sense in the long-running Malayan "emergency" that began in 1948; in the Philippines at the same time; and against the "Red Brigades" that were active in Italy and Germany in the early 1970s. Arguably, they have had a measure of success in Northern Ireland over the past 36 years.

D3. A terrorist strategy: provoking a repressive response

33. A terrorist leader may seek to provoke a repressive response from the adversary's regime, thus exposing its supposedly true nature—the iron fist inside the velvet glove. As Lawrence Durrell wrote in Bitter Lemons, his rich and subtle account of the Eoka insurgency in Cyprus:

34. In some cases an aim may be to provoke not just government repression, but foreign military intervention. There do not appear to be fully documented cases of this, but the possibility cannot be excluded.

D4. Need to address underlying grievances

35. While there is no one simple formula to how terrorism can be undermined or defeated, the process often, perhaps even generally, requires action that is sensitive to the political environment. Where counter-terrorist strategies have succeeded, it has often been in combination with a political package that either responded to certain terrorist demands while rejecting others, or undercut the terrorists by reducing their pool of political support, or both. In Malaya, for example, the promise, and the actuality, of unqualified national independence was crucial to containing the terrorist threat there.

36. The Cold War historian John Gaddis has suggested that, in the campaign against terrorism, we may need to remember that during the Cold War it was perfectly well accepted that there was a need to address social issues on which Communist propaganda played:

37. It is sometimes suggested that making changes that respond in some way to terrorist demands constitutes appeasement, or at least implies recognition that a campaign of terrorism is justified. Such a suggestion is flawed. To say that a movement responds to real grievances—as for example over Palestine—is not to say that it is justified in resorting to terror, but it is to say that the terrorist movement reflects larger concerns in society that need to be addressed in some way. The exact way in which they are addressed may not be the way the movement is demanding. To refuse all changes on an issue because a terrorist movement has embraced that issue is actually to allow terrorists to dictate the political agenda.

D5. Respect for a legal framework

38. Respect for law is an important element in operations against terrorists. One of the key figures involved in the Malayan campaign in the 1950s, Sir Robert Thompson, distilling five basic principles of counter-insurgency from this and other cases, wrote of the crucial importance of operating within a properly functioning domestic legal framework:

39. It is not only national legal standards that are important, but also international standards, including those embodied in the laws of war. A perception that the states involved in a coalition are observing basic international standards may contribute to public support for military operations within the member states; support (or at least tacit consent) from other states for coalition operations; and avoidance of disputes within and between coalition member states. In short, there can be strong prudential considerations (not necessarily dependent on reciprocity in observance of the law by all the parties to a war) that militate in favour of observing the laws of war.

40. There are some well-known difficulties in applying the laws of war to terrorist and counter-terrorist activities. Most terrorists do not conform to the well-known requirements for the status of lawful belligerent, entitled to full prisoner-of-war status. Further, few states could accept application of the law if it meant that all terrorists were deemed to be legitimate belligerents on a par with the regular uniformed forces of a government. However, application of the law does not require acceptance of either of these doubtful propositions. Rather it means recognition that, even in a war against ruthless terrorists, the observance of certain restraints may be legally obligatory and politically desirable—especially as regards treatment of detainees. Understandable doubt over the formal applicability of some provisions of existing law should not be turned into a licence to flout basic norms.[45]

D6. Treatment of detainees

41. The treatment of detainees is an issue of crucial importance in the history of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Indeed, the defining moment in the birth of modern terrorism was an event in Russia in 1878 in response to the flogging of a political prisoner. This was what led a young woman, Vera Zasulich, to shoot and seriously wound General Trepov, the Police Chief of St Petersburg who had had the prisoner flogged.[46] Walter Laqueur has said of this event: "Only in 1878, after Vera Zasulich's shooting of General Trepov, the governor of the Russian capital, did terrorism as a doctrine, the Russian version of `propaganda by the deed', finally emerge."[47] Likewise, torture meted out in Egyptian jails from Nasser's time onwards has often been cited as part of the explanation for the emergence of radical Islamic terrorism in its modern and notably extreme form.

42. When fighting an unseen and vicious enemy, who may have many secret sympathisers, all societies encounter difficulties. In such circumstances, most states, even democratic ones, resort to some form of detention without trial. There are huge risks in such detentions. First, a risk of arresting and convicting the wrong people; and second, maltreatment of detainees. Both tend to create martyrs and to give nourishment to the terrorist campaign.

43. The United Kingdom's long engagement against terrorism in Northern Ireland affords ample evidence for both these propositions, and it also points in the direction of a possible solution. This was one of many conflicts in which those deemed to be "terrorists" were aware of the value, including propaganda value, of making claims to PoW status and publicising claims of ill-treatment. While denying that there was an armed conflict whether international or otherwise, and strongly resisting any granting of PoW status to detainees and convicted prisoners, the UK did slowly come to accept that they had a distinct status, and that international standards had to apply to their treatment. After initially using methods that were legally questionable and highly controversial, the UK used a different approach, in effect applying basic legal principles derived from the laws of war. This helped in the long and difficult process of taking some of the political sting out of the emotionally charged issue of treatment of detainees.[48]

44. Sadly, the treatment of detainees and prisoners has been one of the major failures of the "war on terror" ever since it began in late 2001. In January 2002 Donald Rumsfeld infamously said of the prisoners in Guantanamo, "I do not feel even the slightest concern over their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else over the last several years and vastly better than was their circumstance when they were found."[49] Needless to say, this and similar remarks were widely broadcast on radio and TV stations critical of the USA. The episodes of maltreatment and torture in Iraq since April 2003 have reinforced the damage. Those who suggest that humane treatment is a relatively unimportant issue—and those far fewer individuals who argue that torturing prisoners is a way to combat terrorism—do need to address the criticism that ill-treatment and torture have in the past provided a principal basis of arguments seeking to justify the resort to terrorism.

D7. Evil v error

45. In the history of both terrorism and counter-terrorism there has long been a temptation to depict the adversary as evil. In terrorist movements, many otherwise decent and serious individuals have been seduced by the simple and attractive notion of the power of the deed: that a cleansing act of violence can rid the world of uniquely evil forces.

46. In counter-terrorist operations, the depiction of the adversary as evil may faithfully reflect understandable feelings in a society under terrorist assault, but it poses severe practical problems elsewhere. One hazard of treating terrorism as a problem of evil is that many people in the population from whom the terrorists come will know that such an explanation is too simple. They will have a broader idea of the mixture of characteristic traits that can make a terrorist: idealism, self-sacrifice, hope, despair, ignorance, short-sightedness, thuggishness, hatred, sadism, cleverness and stupidity. The population may have sympathy with the cause for which the terrorists stand but not with the method. If the terrorist group is described as simply "evil", the population will therefore be further alienated from the anti-terrorist cause, which they will see as depending on a caricature that they do not recognise.

47. In the struggle against terrorism, it may be most useful to conceive of terrorism as a problem, not so much of extreme evil (although it may be that), but rather of dangerously wrong conduct and ideas. The difference in approach—the view of terrorism more as dangerous idea and as morally reprehensible than as absolute evil—has significant implications for how terrorist campaigns may be opposed, and how they may end.[50]

D8. The effects of terrorist action

48. Most terrorist movements and individuals have notions of change with two main strands.

1. A spectacular act of political violence will transform the political landscape, particularly by mobilising and radicalising the dormant masses.

blitzkrieg

49. There is no doubt that some terrorist campaigns (whether involving elements of blitzkrieg or attrition) have achieved significant objectives. Certain temporary international presences have proved vulnerable to terrorist campaigns, including especially those of over-stretched colonial powers, and, more recently, of international bodies such as the United Nations. The one sure consequence of a sustained terrorist campaign in a particular area is that it is bad for tourism—especially when, as has happened in several attacks in this century from Indonesia to Egypt, it is the tourists themselves who are targets. Yet only rarely has the discouragement of tourism been the principal goal of a terrorist movement.

50. Other consequences of terrorist campaigns are much more unpredictable. For example, political assassinations have very seldom had the effects for which terrorists hoped, and more often have led to a strengthening of the regime against which they were fighting. An exhaustive study concentrating particularly on the effects of 56 assassinations of heads of government or state in the period 1919-68 concluded: "We are dismayed by the high incidence of assassination indicated by our collected data . . . We are also surprised by the fact that the impact of any single assassination, even of a chief executive or dictator, normally tends to be low."[51]

51. Sometimes terrorist actions lead to major consequences that are different from what the terrorists anticipated. They may lead to vigorous political or military campaigns against the terrorists, and even to the outbreak of international wars, as in Europe in 1914. According to a friend who was close to him, Gavril Princip, the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb student who killed Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, had no idea that the result of the assassination would be war, let alone world war.[52]

52. In some cases terrorist action has been so callous that it has aroused antagonism even among the population that has some sympathy with, even involvement in, the terrorist cause. For example, in August 1949, when communist terrorists in the Philippines murdered the popular widow of President Quezon, for the first time there was widespread popular wrath against the insurgents.[53] Such actions can contribute to the isolation of terrorist groups. Indeed, the terrorist dream of awakening the masses through their actions has almost never worked in the way in which terrorists have perennially hoped.

D9. Terrorism's endemic character

53. One of the most pernicious aspects of terrorism is its capacity to become endemic in particular regions, cultures and societies. Because of its unofficial and clandestine character, and because of the extreme bitterness it engenders within and between communities, it easily becomes a habit.

54. The experience of terrorism suggests that, after it has been taken up in one cause, it gets adopted by others, and by splinter-groups; and how difficult it is to reach a definitive end to terrorist activities. Started by the Right, it gets taken up the Left, or vice versa. Started by nationalists, it may get taken up by so-called religious fundamentalists. Started by the Stern Gang, it gets taken up by the PLO. Started by the high-minded, it gets taken up by criminals, drug-smugglers and Mafiosi. Moreover, it can be difficult to call off terrorist struggles. A hard-core splinter group within a movement may refuse all compromise; and may be able to continue the struggle because the decentralised nature of terrorist organisation and action makes that easy.

55. This view of terrorism as damaging to the societies in which it takes place is confirmed by the history of the Middle East, Latin America, the Balkans and Ireland over the past two centuries. It forms an important buttress to moral condemnations of terrorism. An understanding of its destructive character within the societies that produce terrorist movements—which are of course the very societies that they purport to save—provides a better basis for securing international action against terrorism than do certain views of terrorism that focus on it as a threat principally to the democratic states of the West, or indeed to the USA in particular.

D10. Similarities between terrorists and their opponents

56. A student of the history of terrorism cannot help being struck by certain similarities between terrorists and their opponents. Both share not only a vision of the world as a struggle of good versus evil, but also a belief that particular new weapons and tactics now give an opportunity to strike directly at the heart of the adversary's power. Russian terrorists in the nineteenth century believed that their new and quite accurate weapons—the pistol, the rifle and the bomb—could enable them to attack the source of all evil (namely the Tsar) directly and with limited side-effects.[54]

57. In the "war on terror", a similar vision of clean and well-targeted war against dictatorial regimes has informed much US policy-making. As George Bush put it in his infamous (because premature) "Mission Accomplished" speech on 1 May 2003:

In the images of falling statues, we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred of years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation.

58. One year and many deaths later, this vision of the 2003 Iraq War as a more or less clinical excision of an evil regime looks to have been a desert mirage—just as many terrorist visions of achieving change through violence have also led to disappointment.

59. The similarity between so-called terrorists and their adversaries was noted by Re«gis Debray in his little-known novel Undesirable Alien. In this remarkably unsentimental view of his fellow revolutionaries in Latin America, he mocks his comrades in the struggle for having a taste for cowboy films, and suggests that red revolutionaries may be propounding nothing more than the ideology of the American western.[56] Sadly, events have moved on since then, and it is the Hollywood disaster movie that is emulated by Osama bin Laden and his colleagues.[57] Incidentally, radical Islam also has its Californian roots due to the presence there in the 1950s of its founding father, Sayyid Qutb.[58]

E. CAN INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT BE MAINTAINED?

60. Turning to specific questions about the "war on terror" that began in 2001, the first is whether it has achieved, and is able to retain, the historically unique breadth of international support that Bush has consistently sought. It was framed from the start as a campaign on a broad front, involving a large number of countries—but at the same time it was always as a US-led operation. Bush's words in his 20 September 2001 speech reflected this duality:

E1. The UN's unprecedented role

61. From 11 September 2001 onwards, the United Nations was seen as one vehicle for securing international co-operation, but never as the lynch-pin of the war, leadership of which remained firmly in US hands. The UN became deeply involved in numerous aspects of the "war on terror". Yet there was bound to be doubt about whether the UN or any other international organization could be the central agency through which a war on terror could be conducted.

62. The UN has a long and mixed history of involvement in the question of terrorism. The UN General Assembly had historically had great difficulty in agreeing a definition of terrorism, partly because of the insistence of a number of member states on incorporating in any resolution a pledge to address the root causes of terrorism—which seemed to the US and others as a backdoor justification of terrorism. Despite this unpromising background, the UN General Assembly had done much over the years to address the problem of terrorism, mainly by approving twelve conventions prohibiting particular terrorist acts, such as air piracy. It provides a forum for demonstrably refuting those crude caricatures of the international struggle against terrorism as a struggle of the US (or the West) v the rest.

63. The Security Council has had a somewhat more positive role. It had already, long before September 2001, passed numerous resolutions condemning particular terrorist acts, and condemning the international terrorist presence in Afghanistan. After 11 September 2001 it gave the green light for US-led military action. Security Council resolution 1373 of 28 September 2001 took this international collaboration much further. It obliged all member states to prevent the financing of all terrorist acts, and it established a Counter Terrorism Committee to assist and monitor implementation.

64. Despite its virtues, the UN should not have excessive expectations placed on it. A particular problem is that UN personnel and forces are themselves vulnerable to terrorist assault, and have sometimes been withdrawn from violent situations in view of the risks posed by terrorism. Thus the UN is not suited to the role of manning the front line against terrorist assault.

65. Since May 2003, a number of commentators have suggested that the United States role in Iraq is so compromised, and has led to such opposition, that there needs to be a handover to the UN.[60] However, the UN cannot perform miracles, and would still need to rely on the troops of whatever states were willing to supply them. The vulnerability of the UN in Iraq was shown by the murderous attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003, and the subsequent withdrawal of UN personnel. The UN offers no easy way out of the dilemmas experienced in Iraq, or those posed by terrorism more generally.

66. The capacity of the UN Security Council to make serious mistakes in the "war on terror" was embarrassingly evident in the wake of the Madrid bombing of 11 March 2004. On the same day, the UN Security Council passed a resolution in which, after "reaffirming the need to combat by all means, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts", went on to state that it "Condemns in the strongest terms the bomb attacks in Madrid, Spain, perpetrated by the terrorist group ETA on 11 March 2004."[61] There was no need—except, of course, for the Spanish Government for its own political reasons in the days before the election—for the Security Council to apportion blame at all. From the start it was obvious that the Madrid bombings might be the work of international terrorists, and the evidence of an Islamic extremist connection would quickly mount. This is by some distance the silliest resolution ever passed by the Security Council. It suggests that, at least in some aspects of the task, governments throughout the world, including our own, are doing a poor job of facing up to the terrorist threat, and at using in a sober and serious manner the opportunities the UN system offers for assisting in this task.

E2. US leadership

67. The notable insistence on US leadership in the various aspects of the "war on terror" reflected two central facts: it was the US that had been attacked on 11 September; and in a struggle which would require prompt and decisive military and other action, national capabilities and decision-making structures would be more effective than anything else.

68. In 2001-02 the variety and extent of international support for the campaign against terrorism was remarkable. As the US State Department pointed out in March 2002, 136 countries offered some form of military assistance, 46 multilateral organizations issued declarations of support, and three treaty bodies (NATO, the OAS and ANZUS) invoked their collective defence treaty obligations with the US.[62]

69. Despite the extensive evidence of international support, including in such delicate matters as sharing intelligence and cooperation between police forces, the idea that the "war on terror" was a universal project, in which all states could join the US, ran into trouble. First was the awkward and unavoidable fact that different countries see the world differently. Many had doubts about a war on terror that relied so extensively on military force and did not address underlying grievances with the same level of determination. Second, there was a major difficulty in the particular way in which the US leadership in this struggle was presented. Many were antagonised by the blunt and US-centred approach of "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists". Third, several NATO members were offended by the apparent lack of US response to NATO's unprecedented invocation of Article V, bringing collective self-defence into play.

70. However, the event that most exposed differences of philosophy and interest in the "war on terror", that contributed most to a renewal of tension between the US and the UN, and that most challenged the idea that this campaign had a universal character, was the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Among the many problems which this war leaves in its wake is the strong and damaging perception that Western countries seek to force Muslim populations into a single, externally imposed political template: a perception that damages efforts at coalition building.[63]

F. CAN MILITARY INTERVENTIONS BE EFFECTIVE AGAINST TERRORISM?

71. In countries faced with terrorist attacks, there are often strong reasons for attacking terrorism at what is seen as its source. A state that allows terrorists to organize on its territory to wage operations elsewhere is naturally the object of suspicion, and may well be though to deserve whatever it gets. Yet in the "war on terror" the question of military intervention proved extremely divisive.

72. Counter-terrorist operations, when taking the form of open war and a conventional military response, have often led to tragedy. The First World War began when the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 by a young Serbian nationalist led to an Austrian determination to root out the "hornet's nest" that was Serbia. Similarly, Israel's disastrous intervention in Lebanon in 1982 was explicitly a response to a persistent and intense pattern of terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets not only in Israel but also internationally.

73. It is not surprising, therefore, that historians have generally been sceptical about waging war as a response to terrorist acts. However, they tend to be admirably discriminate: more sceptical than dogmatic. Two or three months after 9/11, the American historian Paul Schroeder wrote:

74. He drew a crucial distinction between Afghanistan, where the war had a legitimate objective and was widely understood internationally, and other possible target countries, including Iraq.[65] Within 18 months of this warning, the US was deeply involved in Iraq in exactly the way he had feared, with no prospect of an early exit. He was right that the two cases, and the nature of the US involvements in them, were very different, both in the justifiability of the intervention and in the consequences that followed.

F1. Afghanistan: war and its aftermath

75. The first major engagement of the "war on terror", Operation Enduring Freedom, which encompassed the US-led coalition military operations in and around Afghanistan that began on 7 October 2001, was widely viewed as a justifiable use of force—a term greatly preferable to the more familiar term "just war". It had a great deal of diplomatic support, and received significant legitimation from resolutions passed at the United Nations.[66] There appeared to be no other means of stopping the activities of al-Qaeda, protected as they were by the Taliban regime. The war did result in a victory—at least of sorts. By the end of the year, the Taliban regime had gone, replaced by the Afghan Interim Authority, and then in June by the Afghan Transitional Government. In the course of 2002 a total of 1.8 million Afghans, 1.5 million of whom had come from Pakistan, resettled in Afghanistan. Although the return of refugees was not the main objective of the campaign—and the capture of the main al-Qaeda leaders, which was an objective, was not achieved—this huge refugee return was evidence that the "war on terror" could achieve at least some positive effects, by helping to depose a reactionary, oppressive and thoroughly dangerous regime. The remarkably successful presidential election on 9 October 2004 provided a further small sign of progress in post-war Afghanistan.

76. Tribute must be paid where it is due. On the first day of the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, said of the Taliban: "Ultimately they're going to collapse from within. That is what will constitute victory."[67] That is very much what happened in November and December 2001. The main achievement was regime change, not the tracking down of al-Qaeda forces. This fact was seen by some, including the White House counter-terrorism specialist Richard Clarke, as a criticism of the otherwise successful handling of the Afghan War.[68]

77. Three unique facts enabled the Afghan campaign to succeed. (1) The Taliban regime was weak both within Afghanistan and internationally. (2) The fanatical character of the bombing of the World Trade Centre, and the persuasive evidence of links to Afghanistan, contributed to the Taliban's loss of allies, especially Pakistan, and also meant that the world accepted the legitimate element of self-defence in the US-led campaign. (3) The existence on the ground of the US-supported forces of the Northern Alliance enabled the US-led bombing campaign to be effective rather than merely punitive, and then provided a basis for post-war administration.

78. In respect of Afghanistan some historians doubted whether any positive result could be achieved in the US-led campaign in late 2001. They could and in some cases did point out, very reasonably, that Afghanistan is not a country in which foreign armed forces have ever had a happy time; that there is good reason to be cautious about the prospects of changing Afghanistan's violent political culture; and that there are problems in waging a bombing campaign against so devious and elusive a target as a terrorist movement.

79. Sir Michael Howard, former Regius Professor of History at Oxford, criticised the Afghan war during its opening phase, when its main aspect was bombing rather than support for ground forces. In a lecture in London on 30 October 2001 (and subsequently published in Foreign Affairs) he said that it would be "like trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow-torch"[69] Three months later, in a thoughtful reappraisal, he said: "I got it wrong, and I apologise."[70] Yet in a broader sense he did not get it entirely wrong. Despite the achievement of results in Afghanistan, historians have good reasons to be sceptical about the efficacy of military interventions as a response to terrorist campaigns. Howard's vivid image of hazardous use of the blow-torch may fit other cases, including Iraq since 2003, better than it fitted Afghanistan.

F2. Iraq: war and its aftermath

80. The Iraq War of 2003 provides a very different context for exploring the question of whether invasion of states believed to assist terrorism is an effective way to achieve the aims of a counter-terrorist policy. The rhetoric of the "war on terror", with its emphasis on open war, may be part of the explanation of the US-led assault on Iraq in 2003. In his television address of 17 March 2003 presenting Saddam Hussein with an ultimatum to get out of Iraq within 48 hours, President Bush included the statement that Iraq had "aided, trained and harbored terrorists, including operatives of al-Qaeda."[71] Yet in reality Iraq's links to al-Qaeda up to March 2003 appear to have been, at best, very limited indeed. There were some Iraqi connections with terrorists, especially those connected with the Arab-Israel conflict, but Iraq does not appear to have had any significant part in the ruthless campaign of international terrorist attacks for which al-Qaeda has been seen as responsible. Within the US government, there was already in early 2003 some official awareness that the accusation of the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda was weak. When on 20 March 2003 the US government gave to the UN Security Council a letter containing its justification for attacking Iraq, the letter dealt exclusively with Iraq's non-compliance with a range of UN Security Council resolutions on weapons issues. Terrorism was not even mentioned.[72]

81. Against this background, it is peculiar that the US government called the war in Iraq part of the "war on terror", and issued medals for both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns which are called "the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal" (for those who served in Afghanistan or Iraq) and "the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal" (for those whose service was elsewhere). Naturally, critics objected that the administration was "subtly using the single campaign medal to buttress its contention that the war in Iraq was undertaken as part of the worldwide battle against al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists."[73]

82. I was, and remain, critical of the use of force in Iraq. The principal concerns are that certain of the stated grounds for going to war (violations of the UN resolutions on disarmament, and association with al-Qaeda) have proved to be weak; that the planning for the aftermath of war was so feeble; and that the results of the war have proved so violent. Historians were right to warn, as Professor Michael Howard did in interviews in March 2003, that Iraq might be easy to defeat in a military campaign, but would be difficult to occupy and administer. At least in terms of the struggle against terrorism the results so far of the Iraq War appear to be distressingly negative.

83. Indeed, the presence and role of foreign (mainly US) armed forces in Iraq is cited as justification for terrorist bombings, kidnappings and executions there, and also in other countries. And more generally, the common thread in the growth of suicide bombing since the attack on the US Embassy in Beirut in 1983 is not just religious extremism but the presence of foreign military occupation. As Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has written:

84. There are, of course, some grounds for questioning the generally negative picture of the results of the Iraq War. Within Iraq, the removal from office of Saddam Hussein was widely welcomed, and some still retain the hope that a stable democratic order can emerge slowly from the twisted wreckage of his brutal regime. Outside Iraq, the war may have helped to induce an element of prudence in the conduct of policy of some governments.

85. One possible case is Libya. In December 2003 Colonel Gaddafi made his decision to bring Libya in from the cold, confirming his renunciation both of terrorism and of ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. Whether his decision owed anything to the Iraq War is debated. Although the process which bore fruit in December had begun long before the initiation of hostilities in Iraq in March 2003, it is possible that seeing a fellow Arab leader unceremoniously deposed may have helped to concentrate Gaddafi's mind. At the very least the Iraq War did not foreclose a highly significant policy development in Libya.

86. Overall, the Iraq War has probably done more harm than good to the US and UK efforts to combat terrorism. There is much force in Richard Clarke's argument that Bush "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."[75] There is also much force in the criticism of Robert Tucker and David Hendrikson:

F3. UK and US doctrine on military intervention

87. Iraq compels us to revisit the argument that it is best to engage an enemy at long range. This is the philosophy expressed in two key documents of the "war on terror", both issued in 2002. The UK Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter says: "Experience shows that it is better where possible, to engage an enemy at longer range, before they get the opportunity to mount an assault on the UK."[77] The National Security Strategy of the United States commits the US to attack terrorist organisations by "convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities".[78] The implication here is that states won't get rid of terrorists on their soil, the USA will do it for them.

88. The proposition that terrorism should be attacked at source is attractive, but three serious grounds of criticism, all historically based, should be noted:

(a) It is a false choice. However desirable it may be to engage the enemy at longer range, there is no substitute for defensive anti-terrorist and counter-terrorist activities. Granted the imperfections of intelligence, the multiplicity of possible sources of attack, and the hazards of taking military action against sovereign states, it may not always be possible, or sensible, to attack terrorism at source. Meanwhile, much can be done at home to reduce the risk of terrorist attack. The astonishing casualness of US airport security before 11 September 2001 illustrates the point.

(b) The history of counter-terrorist operations suggests no such simple conclusion. True, some counter-terrorist operations have involved military action in states perceived to be the sources of, or providers of support to, terrorist movements. However, many counter-terrorist campaigns have been effectively conducted with only limited capacity to engage the enemy at longer range. For example, the UK and Malayan governments had to engage in the long struggle against terrorism without attacking the People's Republic of China, despite the fact that the PRC was aiding and abetting the Communist Terrorist movement in Malaya from 1949 onwards. Similarly, the UK government had to deal with terrorism in Northern Ireland without resorting to military action in the Republic of Ireland, despite claims that the provisional IRA was deriving benefit from resources and support there.

(c) It is a recipe for a revival of imperialism. Military intervention in states in order to eliminate the sources of terrorism must inevitably mean, in many cases, exercising external domination for a period of decades. This was the pattern of much European colonialism in the nineteenth century, including in Egypt. By a perverse paradox, external control, intended to stop terrorism in its tracks, frequently has the effect of provoking it and providing a ready-made justification for it.

89. Paul Schroeder has argued persuasively that the US can legitimately and sensibly aim to exercise hegemony, but it is ill-advised to lunge, on the basis of blinkered historical ignorance, into the mirage of empire. His conclusion is that America's leaders, because they are ignorant of the past, are actually stumbling backwards into it:

G. HOW DO TERRORIST CAMPAIGNS END?

G1. The Bush administration's vision

90. The advocates of the "war on terror" offer a vision—but a restricted one—of how the war might end. The focus is more on victory than other visions of possible endings, but it is victory of a special kind. Some elements of it were outlined in the White House National Security Strategy document of September 2002;[80] and they were further elaborated in the White House doctrinal statement of February 2003:

Victory against terrorism will not occur as a single, defining moment. It will not be marked by the likes of the surrender ceremony on the deck of the USS Missouri that ended World War II. However, through the sustained effort to compress the scope and capability of terrorist organisations, isolate them regionally, and destroy them within state borders, the United States and its friends and allies will secure a world in which our children can live free from fear and where the threat of terrorist attacks does not define our daily lives.

91. These small glimpses of how "victory" might come about are essentially schematic and prescriptive rather than historical. They have an abstract and euphemistic quality. Because they leave little room for complexity, they have enabled some individuals to focus the idea of destruction more than other possible mechanisms. When Timothy Garton Ash asked a very high US administration official how the "war on terror" would end, he received the answer: "With the elimination of the terrorists."[82]

92. Such simple prescriptive views of how a terrorist campaign should end are also to be found in a book by two clever supporters of the Bush administration, David Frum and Richard Perle. Published in 2003, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror is modestly described by its authors as "a manual for victory"[83] It is certainly a paean of praise for Bush's anti-terrorist policy, and a diatribe against all those allies and bureaucrats who fail to support it properly: "While our enemies plot, our allies dither and carp, and much of our government remains ominously unready for the fight." [84]What does it say about how terrorist campaigns end? Virtually nothing. In true American fashion, this is a "How to" book which is full of hectoring instruction but which gives no clue about how terrorist campaigns actually end.

G2. How past terrorist campaigns ended

93. The talk of "winning" and "victories" suggests a decisive result. Yet such a result is seldom encountered in counter-terrorist struggles. There is a need for much broader understanding, based on historical evidence, of how terrorist campaigns do in fact end.[85] The processes—some of them deeply flawed—by which terrorist campaigns end are far more complex than is suggested by the language of the "war on terror". They usually include what is part and parcel of the "war on terror": debilitating losses to the terrorist movement caused by military action, arrests, and trials. However, they can also involve any or all of the following four elements:

2. Recognition by governments which organised or assisted terrorism that they must renounce this method of pursuing a cause. Such recognition may sometimes (as in the case of Libya) be coupled with a willingness to pay compensation to the families of victims of terrorist acts.

3. The amelioration of conditions in order to weaken the strength and legitimacy of their support. Such amelioration is something in which Messianic terrorists have no interest. It may include a change in the political context, which side-steps some of the issues that provided grist to the mill of the terrorist movement, provides new opportunities for pursuing its aims in a different manner, or emphasises a new range of attainable goals of general appeal, for example in the fields of human rights or democracy.

4. A shared awareness of stalemate, giving both sides a possible incentive to reach a negotiated or tacit settlement involving mutual concessions. This may encompass a recognition by its adversaries that the terrorist movement, however criminal its actions, did represent a serious cause and constituency—leading to a reluctant acceptance that certain concessions should be made to some positions held by terrorists.

94. Sometimes terrorist campaigns do not exactly end, but wind down. A few terrorist leaders, hidden in a jungle or a city, maintain their faith, even continue to plot or to detonate the occasional bomb, but lose completely their following and their impact.[87]

95. In some cases the combatants, or at least a proportion of them, may be retrained. This happened in Guatemala following the civil war of the 1980s and 1990s. The former Marxist guerrillas, who had been called terrorists by their enemies, received extensive retraining at a centre in Quetzaltenango. When I visited it in 1997, it was evident that one class was particularly popular—business studies. Its members were reportedly not just learning about how to make money, but were actually making it. What were they producing and selling? The answer, I found, was Che Guevara T-shirts. I would be grateful if any reader of these words could tell me authoritatively whether this represents a triumph of business studies over terrorism, or a preservation of the seductive and pernicious Che myth for yet another generation. Probably both.

96. Not all these processes whereby terror campaigns end are relevant to the current struggle against al-Qaeda and other terrorist movements. However, we do need a greater sense that terrorist campaigns, while they may go on for a long time, do eventually end; and do so not because every last terrorist is captured or killed, or because they are comprehensively defeated in military operations, or because there is a clear victory, but rather because terrorism is seen for what it is: a highly problematic means of bringing about change, that cannot be the sole basis for a movement, that often damages the very people in whose name it is waged, and that may burn itself out or backfire on its own authors.

G3. UK policy on the elimination of terrorism as a force in international affairs

97. On the ending of terrorist campaigns, UK policy is subtly different from that of the US. It is also flawed, but in a different way. The key UK statement of doctrine about terrorism, published in July 2002, The Strategic Defence Review: A New Chapter, articulates the view that the goal of the Government's efforts is "to eliminate terrorism as a force in international affairs".[88] This is a carefully thought-out phrase, and of course it is properly recognised that "countering terrorism is usually a long-term business requiring the roots and causes to be addressed as well as the symptoms."[89] Nonetheless, there are two main disadvantages to proclaiming as a goal "the elimination of terrorism as a force in international affairs":

(a) Terrorism is notoriously difficult to "eliminate". The proclamation of this goal is not only unrealistic, but it also undermines one of the strongest arguments against terrorism—namely that, once started, it easily becomes endemic. The unofficial, decentralised, and hydra-headed character of terrorism provides the main explanation for the difficulty of eliminating it.

(b) If "elimination" is the proclaimed goal, then every subsequent terrorist incident represents a victory for the terrorists. In our own UK experience we faced this problem in Northern Ireland. A number of government pronouncements in the 1970s and early 1980s had indicated the UK's aim was the complete ending of terrorist activity. Thereafter, every terrorist assault, including the IRA's mainland campaign, had a possible added bonus of "proving" that the government had failed to achieve its proclaimed goal. Eventually the UK's aims were re-stated in more modest terms as being the reduction of terrorist activities: this was accepted by the public with remarkably little complaint, and may have helped in the slow winding down of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

H. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION

98. Any conclusions and recommendations about how a historical perspective affects views of the "war on terror" must begin by acknowledging a basic fact. The global conflict that began in 2001 has many aspects that are historically unique. That shadowy entity called al-Qaeda is different from earlier terrorist movements in the breadth and extremism of its aims, and in the co-ordinated and ruthless character of its operations. The campaign against it is unique in having achieved something, however incomplete, in military operations in Afghanistan; in having put the full weight of the US into the struggle; and in having involved a remarkable degree of international collaboration some of which has survived the fall-out over Iraq. The overall verdict is not entirely negative.

99. Yet, against a background of the long historical record of the subject, six main lines of criticism of the US-led international campaign arise:

100. First, the title and language of the so-called "war on terror" is misleading. It conjures up the image and expectation of open war being a major and recurrent part of the action against international terrorist movements; and it suggests the unrealisable aim of the complete elimination of terrorist movements. There is a need for words to describe the overall policy with regard to terrorism that convey toughness but do not rely so heavily on the imagery of war. The core idea has to be a vigorous and sustained countering of terrorist threats, involving action at many levels, and aimed at achieving a significant reduction and marginalisation of terrorist activities. A better term, more accurate if less dramatic, would be "International Campaign against Terrorism". It may not be too late to use this term in at least partial substitution for "war on terror".

101. Second, the "war on terror" risks becoming an exercise in latter-day imperialism. There is a need for intervention in certain societies, but it needs to be handled with extraordinary skill and care. The risk of stumbling into a colonial role is especially great because in US political culture there is a caricature vision of European colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. In consequence it is believed, erroneously, that nothing the USA does today could remotely resemble such deplorable European practices. Yet to many the similarities are all too real. The irony of the situation is that foreign rule, especially foreign military occupation, is notoriously a producer of terrorist movements.

102. Third, some official statements made in the course of the "war on terror" have inadvertently credited terrorist movements with a greater capacity to achieve intended results than can be justified on the basis of the record. For example, in several passages the UK Strategic Defence Review states or implies that international terrorist attacks have "the potential for strategic effect"[90] This phrase is used for a good reason—to avoid implying that it is essential to tackle absolutely all terrorist movements everywhere simultaneously and with equal vigour—but it is flawed. It ignores the important distinction between intended and actual strategic effect. Although terrorist actions frequently have major effects, they are seldom those that the terrorists intended. It does not make sense to give terrorists more credit than they deserve for the size and capacity of their organisations, for the accuracy of their political calculations, or for the effectiveness of their actions.

103. Fourth, the history of counter-terrorist operations in the 20th century suggests that in the long struggle against terrorism, four assets are important:

— public confidence in official decision-making;

— public confidence in the intelligence on which that decision-making is based;

— operation with respect for a framework of law; and

— a willingness to address some of the problems that have contributed to the emergence of terrorism.

104. Tragically, all four of these assets risk being undermined by the many aspects of the "war on terror" since September 2001, especially the 2003 intervention in Iraq and the conduct of policy there after the war. The fact that the intervention in Iraq coincided with US approval of a fateful turn in Israeli policy—not least as regards the legitimacy of settlements in the West Bank—seemed almost calculated to aggravate the very factors that contributed to the growth of fanatical terrorist action in the name of Islam.

105. Fifth, the torture and ill-treatment of detainees, of which there has been substantial evidence in the war on terror, is, to quote Talleyrand, worse than a crime: it is a mistake. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have provided propaganda gifts to adversaries. Those who have argued for, or quietly tolerated, the use of ill-treatment in the war on terror appear to be woefully ignorant of the historical evidence that suggests that official torture is sometimes the stated reason for the initiation and continuation of terrorist campaigns.

106. Sixth, the international campaign against terrorism stands in need of a more realistic vision of how terrorist campaigns end than the simple picture of the elimination or incarceration of terrorists.

107. On the basis of the historical record, some positive recommendations can be advanced about the most appropriate basic aims and character of the international campaign against terrorism. The struggle should be presented, not just as a fight against evil or as a defence of free societies, but also as a fight against tragically erroneous ideas. It should be seen as a means of ensuring that the societies from whence terrorism comes do not succumb to endemic violence. An important aim must be, not the capturing of every last terrorist leader, but their relegation to a status of near-irrelevance as life moves on, long-standing grievances are addressed, and peoples can see that a grim terrorist war of attrition is achieving little and damaging their own societies. It needs to encompass close attention to after-care in societies that have been torn apart by terrorism.

108. The problem of terrorism can diminish over time. Such diminution will require continued resolution and toughness, including arrests, trials, and a willingness to take military action where appropriate. It will also require a patient and more prudent approach that would mark a departure from certain major aspects of what we have seen so far in the "war on terror". Above all, the international campaign against terrorism needs to take account of the long history of terror and counter-terror—and of the way historians have understood it. The UK is well placed to make a distinctive contribution to the development of a doctrine about the struggle that is consistent with our own experience and that of other societies.

Professor Sir Adam Roberts

Balliol College

University of Oxford

6 December 2004

27 Parts of this text formed a basis of the Emden Lecture, St Edmund Hall, Oxford University, 7 May 2004; and the Annual War Studies Lecture, King's College London, 23 November 2004. Back

28 General Bernard Montgomery said of US policy in Vietnam: "The US has broken the second rule of war. That is, don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don't march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself." Alun Chalfont, Montgomery of Alamein, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, [1976], p 318. Back

29 UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, UN doc A/59/565 of 2 December 2004, paragraph 164(d). Back

30 This is the conclusion, for example, of two exceptionally thorough and impressive US studies of the Vietcong published during the war: Douglas Pike, Vietcong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966; and Nathan Leites, The Vietcong Style of Politics, Rand Memorandum RM-5487-1-ISA/ARPA, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California, 1969. Back

31 See eg David C Rapoport, "The International World as Some Terrorists Have Seen It: A Look at a Century of Memoirs", The Journal of Strategic Studies, London, vol 10, no 4, pp 32-58. Back

32 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2004. An honourable exception occurred when Secretary of State Colin Powell, at a planning meeting on Iraq, asked sarcastically: "Are we going to be off-loading at Gallipoli?". (p 324.) Back

33 An exception that proves the rule is Bruce Maxwell, Terrorism: A Documentary History, CQ Press, Washington DC, [2003]. The documents in this book cover only a 30-year period, "from 1972, when international terrorism bust into the public consciousness with life TV pictures of Palestinian terrorists holding Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics". In some countries the public was aware of terrorism decades, or even centuries, earlier. Back

34 Col Charles Lacheroy, "La Guerre Re«volutionnaire", talk on 2 July 1957 reprinted in La De«fense Nationale, Paris, 1958, p 322; cited in Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine, Pall Mall Press, London, 1964, p 15. Paret comments that "nothing", in this case, means "the secure existence of the status quo". Back