This definition was carefully crafted to distinguish between terrorism and other kinds of violence. The act of terrorism is defined independent of the cause that motivates it. People employ terrorist violence in the name of many causes. The tendency to label as terrorism any violent act of which we do not approve is erroneous. Terrorism is a specific kind of violence.

The official definition says that terrorism is calculated. Terrorists generally know what they are doing. Their selection of a target is planned and rational. They know the effect they seek. Terrorist violence is neither spontaneous nor random. Terrorism is intended to produce fear; by implication, that fear is engendered in someone other than the victim. In other words, terrorism is a psychological act conducted for its impact on an audience.

Finally, the definition addresses goals. Terrorism may be motivated by political, religious, or ideological objectives. In a sense, terrorist goals are always political, as extremists driven by religious or ideological beliefs usually seek political power to compel society to conform to their views. The objectives of terrorism distinguish it from other violent acts aimed at personal gain, such as criminal violence. However, the definition permits including violence by organized crime when it seeks to influence government policy. Some drug cartels and other international criminal organizations engage in political action when their activities influence governmental functioning. The essence of terrorism is the intent to induce fear in someone other than its victims to make a government or other audience change its political behavior.

Terrorism is common practice in insurgencies, but insurgents are not necessarily terrorists if they comply with the rules of war and do not engage in those forms of violence identified as terrorist acts. While the legal distinction is clear, it rarely inhibits terrorists who convince themselves that their actions are justified by a higher law. Their single-minded dedication to a goal, however poorly it may be articulated, renders legal sanctions relatively ineffective. In contrast, war is subject to rules of international law. Terrorists recognize no rules. No person, place, or object of value is immune from terrorist attack. There are no innocents.

This situation did not always prevail. Throughout history, extremists have practiced terrorism to generate fear and compel a change in behavior. Frequently, terrorism was incidental to other forms of violence, such as war or insurgency. Before the nineteenth century, terrorists usually granted certain categories of people immunity from attack. Like other warriors, terrorists recognized innocents-- people not involved in conflict. Terrorists usually excluded women, children, and the elderly from target lists. For example, in late nineteenth-century Russia, radicals planning the assassination of Tsar Alexander II aborted several planned attacks because they risked harming innocent people. Old-school terrorism was direct; it intended to produce a political effect through the injury or death of the victim.

The development of bureaucratic states led to a profound change in terrorism. Modern governments have a continuity that older, personalistic governments did not. Terrorists found that the death of a single individual, even a monarch, did not necessarily produce the policy changes they sought. Terrorists reacted by turning to an indirect method of attack. By the early twentieth century, terrorists began to attack people previously considered innocents to generate political pressure. These indirect attacks create a public atmosphere of anxiety and undermine confidence in government. Their unpredictability and apparent randomness make it virtually impossible for governments to protect all potential victims. The public demands protection that the state cannot give. Frustrated and fearful, the people then demand that the government make concessions to stop the attacks.

Modern terrorism offers its practitioners many advantages. First, by not recognizing innocents, terrorists have an infinite number of targets. They select their target and determine when, where, and how to attack. The range of choices gives terrorists a high probability of success with minimum risk. If the attack goes wrong or fails to produce the intended results, the terrorists can deny responsibility.

Ironically, as democratic governments become more common it may be easier for terrorists to operate. The terrorist bombings of the New York City World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City Federal Building prove how easy it is for terrorists to operate in a free and democratic society. Authoritarian governments whose populace may have a better reason to revolt may also be less constrained by requirements for due process and impartial justice when combatting terrorists.

Rational Motivation

Groups considering terrorism as an option ask a crucial question: Can terrorism induce enough anxiety to attain its goals without causing a backlash that will destroy the cause and perhaps the terrorists themselves? To misjudge the answer is to risk disaster. Recent history offers examples of several groups that had apparently good prospects for success which paid the price of misjudging reaction to terrorism. In the early 1970s, the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) and Montoneros in Argentina misjudged a hostile popular reaction to terrorism. They pushed the societies beyond their threshold of tolerance and were destroyed as a result. The same is true of several groups operating in Turkey in the late 1970s and, possibly, several Mafiosi families in Italy in the 1990s.

Psychological Motivation

Terrorist groups with strong internal motivations find it necessary to justify the group's existence continuously. A terrorist group must terrorize. As a minimum, it must commit violent acts to maintain group self-esteem and legitimacy. Thus, terrorists sometimes carry out attacks that are objectively nonproductive or even counterproductive to their announced goal.

Another result of psychological motivation is the intensity of group dynamics among terrorists. They tend to demand unanimity and be intolerant of dissent. With the enemy clearly identified and unequivocally evil, pressure to escalate the frequency and intensity of operations is ever present. The need to belong to the group discourages resignations, and the fear of compromise disallows their acceptance. Compromise is rejected, and terrorist groups lean toward maximalist positions. Having placed themselves beyond the pale, forever unacceptable to ordinary society, they cannot accept compromise. They consider negotiation dishonorable, if not treasonous. This may explain why terrorist groups are prone to fracturing and why the splinters are frequently more violent than their parent group.

The Jewish experience in Palestine is a classic example of splintering. In 1931, Haganah B broke from Haganah; in 1936, Irgun Svai Leumi split from Haganah B; and in 1940, Lochamei Herut Israel, or the Stern Gang, broke from Irgun. Each successive group was more rigid and violence-prone than its parent.

The psychodynamics also make the announced group goal nearly impossible to achieve. A group that achieves its stated purpose is no longer needed; thus, success threatens the psychological well-being of its members. When a terrorist group approaches its stated goal, it is inclined to redefine it. The group may reject the achievement as false or inadequate or the result of the duplicity of "them." Nicaragua's Recontras, The Basque ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, "Basque Fatherland and Liberty"), and many Palestinian radical groups apparently suffer from fear of success. One effective psychological defense against success is to define goals so broadly that they are impossible to achieve. Even if the world proclaims the success of a political movement, the terrorists can deny it and fight on.

Cultural Motivation

The treatment of life in general and individual life in particular is a cultural characteristic that has a tremendous impact on terrorism. In societies in which people identify themselves in terms of group membership (family, clan, tribe), there may be a willingness to self-sacrifice seldom seen elsewhere. (Note, however, that American soldiers are less surprised at heroic sacrifice for one's military unit; the difference among cultures is in the group with which one identifies.) At times, terrorists seem to be eager to give their lives for their organization and cause. The lives of "others," being wholly evil in the terrorists' value system, can be destroyed with little or no remorse.

Other factors include the manner in which aggression is channeled and the concepts of social organization. For example, the ambient level of violence is shaped by the political structure and its provisions for power transfer. Some political systems have no effective nonviolent means for the succession to power. A culture may have a high tolerance for nonpolitical violence, such as banditry or ethnic "turf" battles, and remain relatively free of political violence. The United States, for example, is one of the most violent societies in the world. Yet, political violence remains an aberration. By contrast, France and Germany, with low tolerance for violent crime, have a history of political violence.

A major cultural determinate of terrorism is the perception of "outsiders" and anticipation of a threat to ethnic group survival. Fear of cultural extermination leads to violence which, to someone who does not experience it, seems irrational. All human beings are sensitive to threats to the values by which they identify themselves. These include language, religion, group membership, and homeland or native territory. The possibility of losing any of these can trigger defensive, even xenophobic, reactions.

Terrorist groups that are not supported by a government usually create a support structure of sympathizers and people who have been coerced into helping them. The support structure may comprise active and passive members. It furnishes the active terrorists with logistic support, intelligence, dissemination of propaganda, recruiting, and money.

Terrorist recruitment and training are, predictably, security-sensitive. Among groups that are not ethnic-based, the usual sources of recruits are high school and college students who show commitment to the cause. Ethnically based terrorist groups recruit new members personally known to them, people whose backgrounds are known and who often have family ties to the organization. Intelligence penetration of organizations recruited in this way is extremely difficult.

Terrorist training varies considerably. Those with military experience or who have received prolonged training at sophisticated facilities are the equals of most state security forces. At the other end of the spectrum are "throw away" operatives who get little more than inspirational talks before being activated. Typical training includes instruction in the use of small arms and explosives along with intelligence collection and indoctrination in the group's cause.

Contemporary terrorist actions include the traditional assassinations, bombings, arson, hostage-taking, hijacking, kidnapping, seizure and occupation of a building, attacks on a facility, sabotage, and perpetration of hoaxes. Newer categories of operations include ecological terrorism and the still largely potential "high-tech" terrorism using nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons and materials. Target selection considerations are equally diverse but include the target's value in terms of its contribution to group goals, its accessibility given group capabilities, and the purpose of the attack, such as to gain attention, collect resources, eliminate a threat, or demonstrate a capability. All these factors are reflected in the group's organization and training.

COMBATTING TERRORISM PROGRAM

Combatting Terrorism and the Principles of Stability and Support Operations

Objective

Unity of Effort

Unfortunately, it is easier to prescribe unity of effort than to achieve it. In circumstances where multiple police and intelligence agencies have vague and overlapping charters and jurisdictions, friction is bound to occur. As in other aspects of stability and support operations, the solution lies in negotiation and consensus-building. Fortunately, experience has proved that cooperation at the local unit or installation level is relatively easy to obtain.

Legitimacy

Patience and Perseverance

Restraint

Security

In combatting terrorism, intelligence is extraordinarily important. The essential elements of information (EEI) differ somewhat from those normally found in traditional combat situations. In addition to the terrorists' strength, skills, equipment, logistic capabilities, leader profiles, source of supply, and tactics, more specific information is needed. This includes the groups' goals, affiliations, indication of their willingness to kill or die for their cause, and significant events in their history, such as the death of martyrs or some symbolic event. The specific EEI are particularly important because most terrorist groups are interested in symbolically significant targets rather than in targets that would be operationally more damaging to US forces. For example, a communications center is operationally significant, but a terrorist interested in publicity to influence US policy might find a few off-duty personnel or a motor pool more appealing and probably less protected. Unless terrorists' specific interests are known, predicting the likely target is pure chance.

US POLICY FOR COMBATTING TERRORISM

The United States considers all terrorist acts criminal and intolerable and condemns them without regard for their motivation. The United States will support all lawful measures to prevent terrorism and bring perpetrators to justice. We will not make any concessions to terrorist blackmail because to do so will merely invite more terrorist actions. (No concessions does not mean no negotiations.)

DOD has identified five threat levels to standardize reporting. They are based on terrorists' existence, capability, intentions, history, targeting, and the security environment. The five levels are described below:

• Critical, which means that a terrorist group has entered the country or is able to do so. It has the capability to attack and is engaged in target selection. Its history and intentions may or may not be known.
• High indicates that a terrorist group exists which has the capability, history, and intention to attack.
• Medium describes the same conditions as high except that intentions are unknown.
• Low is a situation in which terrorist groups exist and have a capability to attack. Their history may or may not be known.
• Negligible describes a situation in which the existence or capability of terrorist groups may or may not be present.

Threat levels are not the same as threat conditions (THREATCON); the latter are a matter of command decision that implements countermeasures. THREATCONs and actions to implement them are described in AR 525-13 (1992), Joint Pub 3-07.2 (1993), and DOD Directive 2000.12 (1990).

TERRORISM IN THE FUTURE

Future terrorism is likely to include higher than ever levels of violence. Hijackings, kidnappings, and drive-by shootings will continue, but their shock effect has decreased with familiarity. Since terrorists need publicity to inspire fear, familiarity causes them to seek more unusual events that capture and hold public attention.

The March 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City may be typical of future terrorist attacks. If the bombing had gone as planned by the perpetrators, there might have been thousands of deaths. There was also a conspiracy to attack symbolic landmarks, including the Holland Tunnel and the United Nations headquarters, in and around New York that would have affected thousands of people and caused millions in property damage. It is not difficult to imagine the psychological effect of these types of attacks on the U.S. public.

Although technology aids in the defense against terrorism, it also provides terrorists with increased opportunities. Terrorists can operate in cyber space to destroy or manipulate information for their own purposes. Skilled "hackers" with terrorist intent can access all but the most secure data banks, stealing or changing information, or destroying it. This gives them the potential, for example, of manipulating the stock market for their own profit or to precipitate inflation or depression. There is evidence of large-scale counterfeiting of American currency to purchase weapons. This could cause serious economic disruption. Access to police and other security files can keep terrorists one step ahead of their government opponents.

Terrorists can follow the example of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and create ecological disasters by starting fires and causing chemical spills. For example, the forests of the American Northwest are vulnerable to arson. Seeking more spectacular attacks, terrorists may poison water supplies or blow up dams and levees. Chemical weapons have become increasingly powerful and easy to produce. Triggering devices have become more sophisticated. The potential for using weapons of mass destruction, including biological and nuclear material, exists.

Parallel to these ominous developments favoring the terrorist is a disturbing trend to resort to violence for an ever-widening range of causes. Terrorism is practiced on a global scale in support of criminal business initiatives, various social issues (for example, environmental and antiabortion extremists), ethnic conflicts (ranging from US street gangs to conflicts in Central Africa and South Asia), religious interpretation, traditional political power struggles, and insurgencies. Combined, these factors bode ill for the future and demand the attention of military commanders.

US military personnel will continue to be targets for terrorists for the same reason they have in the past. Collectively and individually, they symbolize US power. While no one will challenge the United States on the conventional battlefield in the foreseeable future, terrorist acts are likely to be the preferred form for expressing hostility toward the remaining superpower. Relative to the other forms of political violence, terrorism remains cheap and successful regarding limited objectives and carries low risk to the perpetrator. The activities that are likely to engage US military personnel in the near future occur in situations favorable to terrorism. These include peace operations; humanitarian assistance; and foreign internal defense where governments have failed, ethnic conflict prevails, widespread banditry exists, and weapons are readily available.