Abstract
Because there is so much disagreement about how political terrorism (hereinafter terrorism) should be characterized, I shall begin by setting out how I will characterize it. The concept is a highly contested one, at least in part because the phenomena covered by it are subject to dispute. In the process of outlining the characterization I will give, I will register a disagreement I have with the position of some of the other contributors to this book who advance different understandings to mine. Given that the notion is so contested, I will not offer a definition or attempt to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct use of the term since I do not wish to make definitional issues the focus, or to give the impression that my account is not contested. Instead, I will list the features that, I think, best capture what terrorism involves. Even then I will not attempt to provide an exhaustive list, but will concentrate on the main features. Once I have made clear how I understand terrorism I will focus on terrorism as it is practiced by individuals, or groups other than states. It is not my intention to rule out the idea of state terrorism (which is the subject of separate contributions by Igor Primoratz and Douglas Lackey).1 On the contrary, I consider state terrorism to be widely practiced.
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Notes
Pace J. Teichman, Pacifism and the fust War (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 92, and Igor Primoratz, ‘What Is Terrorism?’ this volume, p. 21.
Cf. Grant Wardlaw, Political Terrorism, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 42.
Cf. Paul Wilkinson, Political Terrorism (London: Macmillan, 1974);
C.A.J. Coady, The Morality of Terrorism,’ Philosophy 60 (1985);
Michael Walzer, Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses,’ in S. Luper-Foy (ed.), Problems of International Justice (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1988);
Loren Lomasky, The Political Significance of Terrorism,’ in R.G. Frey and Christopher Morris (eds.), Violence, Terrorism and Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Coady, for example, defines terrorism as ‘a political act, ordinarily committed by an organized group, which involves the intentional killing or other severe harming of non-combatants or the threat of the same or intentional severe damage to the property of non-combatants or the threat of the same’ (p. 52). This at least has the merit that it acknowledges that terrorism may extend to damage to property. Igor Primoratz in ‘What is Terrorism?’ pp. 17–19, takes a tougher line in that he considers that terrorism necessarily involves the use, or the threat of the use, of violence against ‘innocent people’. Like Coady, he assumes that terrorism is seriously morally wrong. I think this is question-begging but even if he were able to show that charge to be unwarranted, terrorism, on his account, would remain impossible to justify.
Cf., for example, my ‘Revolutionary Terrorism, Crime and Morality,’ Social Theory and Practice 4 (1977), for one qualified defense. For a recent argument to the effect that the justifiability of modern warfare and terrorism is on a par see Andrew Valls, ‘Can Terrorism Be Justified?’ in Andrew Valls (ed.), Ethics in International Affairs (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). In After the Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), and ‘After the Terror: A Book and Further Thoughts,’ The Journal of Ethics 7 (2003), Ted Honderich argues that it is inconsistent to affirm a people’s (e.g., the Palestinian people’s) moral right to a homeland while denying them the right to the only possible means of getting it, namely the strategic use of terrorism. His claim, of course, raises the key issue of whether terrorism is the onlypossible means of getting such a homeland. In chapter 7 of A Delicate Balance: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About Teπorism (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 2002), Trudy Govier offers an assessment of whether terrorism can be defended morally by an appeal to justice.
So Jan Narveson, ‘Terrorism and Morality,’ in Frey and Morris (eds.), Violence, Terrorism and Justice, p. 14, relying on Edward Hyams, Terrorists and Terrorism (London: Dent, 1975). For helpful discussion of one element of the terrorism in Northern Ireland in the past century, see David George, ‘The Ethics of IRA Terrorism,’ in Valls (ed.), Ethics in International Affairs. George argues against the claim that the IRA has been engaged in a struggle akin to a just war.
See, e.g., Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977);
James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981);
Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
These remarks raise a number of complex issues which, unfortunately, I cannot adequately consider here. For an introduction to those issues see, e.g., Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1998).
Cf., R.M. Hare, ‘On Terrorism,’ Journal of Value Inquiry 13 (1979).
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Young, R. (2004). Political Terrorism as a Weapon of the Politically Powerless. In: Primoratz, I. (eds) Terrorism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230204546_5
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