Our topic for this week is what is terrorism. Trying to define terrorism and understand the actions that we're going to be studying in this course, 9/11 and it's aftermath. And one of the key debates in that area, is whether terrorism can be executed by a state, or if only the use of political violence by a non-state actor is terrorism. And this lecture goes a little bit deeper into that very important topic. Our first point of view is represented by Martin Miller in the chapter, in the readings for this course. And his argument is indeed that states can engage in terroristic violence. Now he's not saying that all political violence by states is terrorism. War for example, an interstate conflict, he thinks it should be in a separate category and it's not terrorism. Also things like genocide, he would put in a totally separate category. But in Miller's view, when a state uses political violence against its own citizens to essentially suppress an uprising. Either a small group, an insurgency, or a small non-state actor, it is engaging, essentially, in terroristic activity. It's using power, fear, and violence for political end. And likewise at the same time, the non-state actors, and in this instance, the conflict portrayed here, the Russian revolutionaries are trying to bring down the Tsar over the course of the 19th century in Russia. Their actions are terroristic as well, their actions against the government, their actions using political violence against the government or against civilians. And when there is this internal struggle for power and it's being played out with the use of violence, Miller argues that both parties are engaged in terrorism. And there's some good arguments in favor of this. Why should we consider actions by a small, powerless, non-state actors to be terrorism? And the actions by the powerful state not to be terrorism? Indeed if you look at the quantum of violence, the amount of violence that each can impose, even the greatest terrorist attack caused terrible casualties of about 3,000 people. Whereas actions by regimes, states against their own people to try to maintain political power, whether it was the Russian revolutionaries, or the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, or unfortunately many more historical examples. The numbers of victims can go into the tens, hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of people. So why not consider both of them terrorism? Likewise in some regards of political matter, we should have a sense of equivalency that when violence is being used against civilians, we should call it terrorism and give it that pejorative term. Whether it's being done by a group of rebels as is the Syrian rebels taking action against the state, using political violence. But also of course, the actions of the state, which are actually causing far more civilian casualties in this instance, than the other way around. This approach that Miller takes, has the virtue in some regard of putting them on the same plane. The second view, which is really represented by the Richardson article, is that states and non-state actors are fundamentally different. And the way they use political violence is also a fundamentally different. Therefore we should treat them differently. And the terrorism is only actions taken by a non-state actor. Political violence used by non-state actor, and that the argument is that, states have far different and much vaster capabilities. States, even despotic ones, at least are states. They have some legitimacy of authority to govern over a territory, and therefore have a totally different character than a non-state actor. And that countering state violence is so much different than trying to counter non-state violence. It blurs clarity to try to put them in the same category. That if we want to talk about terrorism, counter-terrorism, we need to be focused on violence by non-state actors because of its unique character. Let me go a little bit further into depth about some of these other differences. States have territory. We know where North Korea is, for example. We know where its leadership and its people reside. A group like Al-Qaeda is amorphous. It exists globally. It has no fixed address. And therefore, it's very hard to find where Al-Qaeda might be and to hold individuals accountable. Even an exclusively domestic terrorist group doesn't have a fixed location, doesn't have a headquarters like a government does, so states have territory, non-state actors do not. States, to survive, have to have relations with other states, even nomad states, even isolationist states. Like, for example, North Korea, has to have a relationship with China, in order to exist. And that means, other states have influence over the state actor, and the state actors aren't in many ways dependent on an international relations for their ultimate survival. They have to have a currency that other countries accept. They have to engage in trade, they have borders. Non-state actors are totally different in that regard. They don't have to worry about relationships with other states. And therefore, their political violence when they use it, is really unconstrained from the considerations of international relations. Where states, even if they're using violence against their own citizens, have to worry very much about how other states will react. How it will affect their commerce, their trade. And therefor, it's really different category of political violence. Even the most despotic states are responsible for a population. They have to make sure that they survive. That they have food, clothing, housing, that they have an economy that functions to some regard. Even tyrannical states have to depend upon the support of their population ultimately to stay in power. Non-state actors don't have that obligation at all. They can take one of the actions that are going to lead to violence against them or people that live near them. And they don't have to worry that the civilian populations will be suffering great consequences. And so in that regard, they are much more much less restrained, more unrestrained than a state actors have to be. States are agreeing and are obliged to comply with international law. Now many don't or when they take certain actions, they try to couch them in a way that they say complies with international law even though it doesn't. But states have to care about that. First of all, because international law protects them, but also they have to be worried about collective action being taken against them when they do violate international law. Either economic sanctions or potentially collective security actions taken against them when they disobey international law. So they have that constraining against them where non-state actors don't care about international law and they don't feel at all constrained by it. So for all of these reasons, non-state actors in my view, have a much different restraints on them. They have much more freedom of movement, much more ability to use political violence in a unrestrained way. They have less firepower than states do, and that affects their influence as well. I think all of these differences make terrorism by non-state actors a specific class of political violence, that we can latch onto and study, and try to understand its characteristics. Where if we consider state violence and non-state violence together, it makes it a little bit harder to study in a systematic way. Now that's just my view, certainly there are learned scholars on both sides of this question. And it'll really be up to you to determine for yourself how you feel about that issue.
