The 33 Strategies of War (88 page)

Six at the top means: Shock brings ruin and terrified gazing around. Going ahead brings misfortune. If it has not yet touched one's own body But has reached one's neighbor first, There is no blame. One's comrades have something to talk about. When inner shock is at its height, it robs a man of reflection and clarity of vision. In such a state of shock it is of course impossible to act with presence of mind. Then the right thing is to keep still until composure and clarity are restored. But this a man can do only when he himself is not yet infected by the agitation, although its disastrous effects are already visible in those around him. If he withdraws from the affair in time, he remains free of mistakes and injury. But his comrades, who no longer heed any warning, will in their excitement certainly be displeased with him. However, he must not take this into account.

T
HE
I C
HING
, C
HINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

In essence, this is terror: an intense, overpowering fear that we cannot manage or get rid of in the normal way. There is too much uncertainty, too many bad things that can happen to us.

During World War II, when the Germans bombed London, psychologists noted that when the bombing was frequent and somewhat regular, the people of the city became numb to it; they grew accustomed to the noise, discomfort, and carnage. But when the bombing was irregular and sporadic, fear became terror. It was much harder to deal with the uncertainty of when the next one would land.

It is a law of war and strategy that in the search for an advantage, anything will be tried and tested. And so it is that groups and individuals, seeing the immense power that terror can have over humans, have found a way to use terror as a strategy. People are crafty, resourceful, and adaptable creatures. The way to paralyze their will and destroy their capacity to think straight is to consciously create uncertainty, confusion, and an unmanageable fear.

Such strategic terror can take the form of exemplary acts of destruction. The masters of this art were the Mongols. They would level a few cities here and there, in as horrible a manner as possible. The terrifying legend of the Mongol Horde spread quickly. At its very approach to a city, panic would ensue as the inhabitants could only imagine the worst. More often than not, the city would surrender without a fight--the Mongols' goal all along. A relatively small army far from home, they could not afford long sieges or protracted wars.

This strategic terror can also be used for political purposes, to hold a group or nation together. In 1792 the French Revolution was spinning out of control. Foreign armies were on the verge of invading France; the country was hopelessly factionalized. The radicals, led by Robespierre, confronted this threat by initiating a war against the moderates, the Reign of Terror. Accused of counterrevolution, thousands were sent to the guillotine. No one knew who would be next. Although the radicals were relatively small in number, by creating such uncertainty and fear they were able to paralyze their opponents' will. Paradoxically, the Reign of Terror--which gives us the first recorded instance of the use of the words "terrorism" and "terrorist"--produced a degree of stability.

Although terror as a strategy can be employed by large armies and indeed whole states, it is most effectively practiced by those small in number. The reason is simple: the use of terror usually requires a willingness to kill innocent civilians in the name of a greater good and for a strategic purpose. For centuries, with a few notable exceptions such as the Mongols, military leaders were unwilling to go so far. Meanwhile a state that inflicted mass terror on its own populace would unleash demons and create a chaos it might find hard to control. But small groups have no such problems. Being so few in number, they cannot hope to wage a conventional war or even a guerrilla campaign. Terror is their strategy of last resort. Taking on a much larger enemy, they are often desperate, and they have a cause to which they are utterly committed. Ethical considerations pale in comparison. And creating chaos is part of their strategy.

Terrorism was limited for many centuries by its tools: the sword, the knife, the gun, all agents of individual killing. Then, in the nineteenth century, a single campaign produced a radical innovation, giving birth to terrorism as we know it today.

In the late 1870s, a group of Russian radicals, mostly from the intelligentsia, had been agitating for a peasant-led revolution. Eventually they realized that their cause was hopeless: the peasants were unprepared to take this kind of action, and, more important, the czarist regime and its repressive forces were far too powerful. Czar Alexander II had recently initiated what became known as the White Terror, a brutal crackdown on any form of dissidence. It was almost impossible for the radicals to operate in the open, let alone spread their influence. Yet if they did nothing, the czar's strength would only grow.

And so from among these radicals, a group emerged bent on waging a terrorist war. They called themselves Narodnaya Volia, or "People's Will." To keep their organization clandestine, they kept it small. They dressed inconspicuously, melting into the crowd. And they began to make bombs. Once they had assassinated a number of government ministers, the czar became a virtual prisoner in his palace. Deranged with the desire to hunt the terrorists down, he directed all of his energies toward this goal, with the result that much of his administration became dysfunctional.

The basis of Mongol warfare was unadulterated terror. Massacre, rapine and torture were the price of defeat, whether enforced or negotiated.... The whole apparatus of terror was remorselessly applied to sap the victim's will to resist, and in practical terms this policy of "frightfulness" certainly paid short-term dividends. Whole armies were known to dissolve into fear-ridden fragments at the news of the approach of the
toumans
.... Many enemies were paralysed...before a
[
Mongol
]
army crossed their frontiers.

T
HE
A
RT OF
W
ARFARE ON
L
AND
, D
AVID
C
HANDLER
, 1974

In 1880 the radicals were able to explode a bomb in the Winter Palace, the czar's residence in St. Petersburg. Then, finally, the following year another bomb killed Alexander himself. The government naturally responded with repression still harsher than the policy already in place, erecting a virtual police state. In spite of this, in 1888, Alexander Ulianov--the brother of Vladimir Lenin and a member of Narodnaya Volia--nearly succeeded in killing Alexander's successor, Czar Alexander III.

The capture and execution of Ulianov brought the activities of Narodnaya Volia to a close, but the group had already begun to inspire a wave of terrorist strikes internationally, including the anarchist assassinations of the American presidents James A. Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901. And with Narodnaya all the elements of modern terrorism are in place. The group thought bombs better than guns, being more dramatic and more frightening. They believed that if they killed enough ministers of the government, extending upward to the czar himself, the regime would either collapse or go to extremes to try to defend itself. That repressive reaction, though, would in the long run play into the radicals' hands, fomenting a discontent that would eventually spark a revolution. Meanwhile the bombing campaign would win the group coverage in the press, indirectly publicizing their cause to sympathizers around the world. They called this "the propaganda of the deed."

"This is what you should try for. An attempt upon a crowned head or on a president is sensational enough in a way, but not so much as it used to be. It has entered into a general conception of the existence of all chiefs of state. It's almost conventional--especially since so many presidents have been assassinated. Now let us take an outrage upon--say a church. Horrible enough at first sight, no doubt, and yet not so effective as a person of an ordinary mind might think. No matter how revolutionary and anarchist in inception, there would be fools enough to give such an outrage the character of a religious manifestation. And that would detract from the especial alarming significance we wish to give to the act. A murderous attempt on a restaurant or a theatre would suffer in the same way from the suggestion of non-political passion; the exasperation of a hungry man, an act of social revenge. All this is used up; it is no longer instructive as an object lesson in revolutionary anarchism. Every newspaper has ready-made phrases to explain such manifestations away. I am about to give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view; from the point of view you pretend to have been serving for the last eleven years. I will try not to talk above your head. The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted. Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can't count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any other object. You anarchists should make it clear that you are perfectly determined to make a clean sweep of the whole social creation......What is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable, in fact, mad? Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes. Moreover, I am a civilized man. I would never dream of directing you to organize a mere butchery even if I expected the best results from it. But I wouldn't expect from a butchery the results I want. Murder is always with us. It is almost an institution. The demonstration must be against learning--science. But not every science will do. The attack must have all the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy...."

T
HE
S
ECRET
A
GENT
, J
OSEPH
C
ONRAD
, 1857-1924

Narodnaya Volia aimed principally at the government but was willing to kill civilians in the process. The fall of the czarist government was worth a few lives lost, and in the end the bombs were less deadly than their alternative, which was civil war. At the very least, Narodnaya Volia would show the Russian people that the government was not the untouchable monolithic power that it made itself seem; it was vulnerable. The group's members understood that the regime was quite likely to be able to liquidate them in time, but they were willing to die for their cause.

Narodnaya Volia saw that it could use one relatively small event--a bomb blast--to set off a chain reaction: fear in the administration would produce harsh repression, which would win the group publicity and sympathy and heighten the government's unpopularity, which would lead to more radicalism, which would lead to more repression, and so on until the whole cycle collapsed in turmoil. Narodnaya Volia was weak and small, yet simple but dramatic acts of violence could give it a disproportionate power to sow chaos and uncertainty, creating the appearance of strength among police and public. In fact, its smallness and inconspicuousness gave it a tremendous edge: at enormous expense, a cumbersome force of thousands of police would have to search out a tiny, clandestine band that had the advantages of mobility, surprise, and relative invisibility. Besides giving the terrorists the chance to present themselves as heroic underdogs, the asymmetry of forces made them almost impossible to fight.

This asymmetry brings war to its ultimate extreme: the smallest number of people waging war against an enormous power, leveraging their smallness and desperation into a potent weapon. The dilemma that all terrorism presents, and the reason it attracts so many and is so potent, is that terrorists have a great deal less to lose than the armies arrayed against them, and a great deal to gain through terror.

It is often argued that terrorist groups like Narodnaya Volia are doomed to failure: inviting severe repression, they play into the hands of the authorities, who can effectively claim carte blanche to fight this threat--and in the end they bring about no real change. But this argument misses the point and misreads terrorism. Narodnaya Volia awakened millions of Russians to its cause, and its techniques were copied around the world. It also profoundly unbalanced the czarist regime, which responded irrationally and heavy-handedly, devoting resources to repression that could have been better applied to reforms that might have prolonged its stay in power. The repression also incubated a much more potent revolutionary group, the burgeoning communist movement.

In essence, terrorists kick a rock in order to start an avalanche. If no landslide follows, little is lost, except perhaps their own lives, which they are willing to sacrifice in their devotion to their cause. If mayhem and chaos ensue, though, they have great power to influence events. Terrorists are often reacting against an extremely static situation in which change by any route is blocked. In their desperation they can often break up the status quo.

It is a mistake to judge war by the rubric of victory or defeat: both states have shades and gradations. Few victories in history are total or bring about lasting peace; few defeats lead to permanent destruction. The ability to effect some kind of change, to attain a limited goal, is what makes terrorism so alluring, particularly to those who are otherwise powerless.

For instance, terrorism can be used quite effectively for the limited goal of gaining publicity for a cause. Once this is achieved, a public presence is established that can be translated into political power. When Palestinian terrorists hijacked an El Al plane in 1968, they captured the attention of the mass media all over the world. In the years to come, they would stage-manage other terrorist acts that played well on television, including the infamous attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. Although such acts made them hated by most in non-Arab countries, they were willing to live with that--the publicity for their cause, and the power that came from it, was all they were after. As the writer Brian Jenkins notes, "Insurgents fought in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea for fourteen years using the standard tactics of rural guerrilla warfare. The world hardly noticed their struggle, while an approximately equal number of Palestinian commandos employing terrorist tactics have in a few years become a primary concern to the world."