It is a strange anomaly that a government which will stand firm in the face of an ultimatum knowing that 10,000 of its citizens will die in the consequent invasion or bombardment, will give way in the face of a threat to the life of a single hostage. Individual violence is now more often used than invasion or bombardment as a means of international coercion, and is proving more effective than public demonstrations and riots. for exerting internal pressure. Guerrillas and terrorists have existed for centuries, but it is only in the last few years that they have become a...

When did guerrilla warfare and terrorism begin? Fashionable though they are, they are certainly not new. Examples are quoted by the earliest historians, such as Herodotus, and by the earliest philosophers of war, such as Sun Tzu. It is a reasonable conjecture, however, that they are a good deal older than that, and almost certainly the oldest form of war, dating from the dawn of civilization.

Man emerged from the forest about one and a half million years ago. Till then he had lived, like the other apes, by plucking nuts and fruits from the trees. Outside in the open...

So much has been written about South East Asia in the past ten years that the lessons applicable to guerrilla warfare have become obscured. One reason for this was that, after 1965, the war in Vietnam ceased to be primarily a guerrilla war at all—that is, guerrilla warfare became no more than complementary to conventional warfare between large armies, as in the nineteenth century. From 1965 to 1970, ninety per cent of those fighting against the government were in North Vietnamese regular army divisions and were opposed by regular divisions of the South Vietnamese and U.S. Armies. By 1972,...

If guerrilla warfare and terrorism are the form of conflict for our time, then soldiers and policemen too are here to stay. Moreover, whether or not the world will continue to avoid nuclear war, it shows no sign of avoiding limited and civil wars. There has been no year since 1945 when there has not been at least one such war in progress and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the 1974 Cyprus War, the 1975 Indo-China War, and the 1976 civil wars in Lebanon and Angola suggest they are likely to continue.

Put another way, so long as there is crime,...

So much has been written about Northern Ireland, like South East Asia, that the essentials have become obscured. This has been made worse by the fact that almost all those who write are, with varying degrees of passion, partisans of one side or the other.

Northern Ireland, however, is of unique interest to the student of political violence for a number of reasons. Firstly, though most of the killing has been in the urban environment of Belfast, a significant proportion of it has been in remote rural areas near the border with the Republic, especially in South Armagh. Secondly, the...

Like the I.R.A., the Palestinian terrorists are motivated by nationalism; their grievance is deeply rooted in history, again arising from the settlement of aliens in their country. They are split into various Marxist and nationalist factions which periodically fight each other; and they receive strong financial backing from sympathizers in the rich world—in their case the Arab oil world instead of the U.S.A.

They differ from the I.R.A. in that they are predominantly led by intellectuals, even though some of the rank and file are found from deprived members of the refugee community; they operate all over the world,...

The OPEC kidnapping and the Entebbe hi-jack, like the Lod Airport massacre in May 1972, again demonstrated the willingness of the Palestinians to employ members of other international terrorist movements. At Vienna, the leader was reputed to be a Latin American (using the name of Carlos) wanted for offences in Paris and elsewhere, and he shot one of the three people killed. The other two were shot by a West German girl who had earlier been imprisoned for offences with the Baader-Meinhof gang and had been set free as part of the political blackmail paid for the release of Peter...

Can terrorism be eradicated? Obviously not completely, any more than wasps, rats or snakes can be eradicated completely. Can it be defeated? It can, in the sense of making it not pay. Can society be protected against it? Again, not completely. So long as there are wasps and snakes, some people will be stung and bitten. The hazard of terrorism can, however, be kept down to the level of other hazards. The problem is to do this without excessive disruption to daily life, and without too much diversion of resources from more constructive activities; and especially without so restricting civil...

What price should a community be prepared to pay in terms of sacrifice of civil liberties to defeat terrorism? This depends on the climate of public opinion. The government’s dilemma in deciding how far to go with anti-terrorist measures has much in common with its dilemma in deciding how far to stand firm in the face of terrorist blackmail—which was discussed in Chapter 1. In both cases, the government should go only so far as it can carry public opinion with it. Otherwise, if it seems to its own public to be over-reacting or showing excessive ruthlessness, it may...