Doug Casey on terrorism

The fact is, believe it or not, there are over 100 distinct definitions of terrorism out there, mostly put out by various US government agencies. Perhaps they can’t agree on a definition because it’s useful to leave the concept as a floating abstraction to be used when convenient. 

I would define terrorism as a tactic of warfare intended to have mainly psychological effects on a civilian population. 

But, remember, terrorism is a tactic of warfare—like artillery barrages, cavalry charges, frontal assaults, and a hundred other tactics.  They’re all nasty.  But properly applied, terrorism can often achieve an objective with vastly fewer casualties than the alternatives. 

Napoleon said, quite correctly, that in warfare, the psychological is to the physical as three is to one.  That’s why there’s an emphasis on winning—or at least changing—the hearts and minds of both the enemy’s troops and his people. Terror is one way to do that.  And it’s typically the lowest-cost alternative.  The US, currently still a rich country, rails against “terror” because it’s mainly a poor man’s tactic.  But we use it when it suits us. 

In the last century or so, the US has fought a lot of guerrilla conflicts.  But it typically forgets that when you’re an outside third party fighting a guerrilla war in someone else’s homeland, you’re almost certainly on the wrong side because guerrilla wars are people’s wars.  And it’s a thin line between a guerrilla war and terrorism.  I’m a freedom fighter; you’re a rebel; he’s a terrorist. 

Governments have always used terror.  The Assyrians—proto–Middle Easterners, if you will—liked to scare enemies by skinning alive those who resisted.  Genghis Khan and Tamerlane purposefully used terror by piling up skulls into pyramids.  The Romans purposefully committed genocide as a method of warfare on occasion and reserved crucifixion as a terror punishment. 

Let’s not be too sanctimonious about terrorism.  Bombing cities, which are by definition full of civilians, is just state terrorism, tarted up, justified, and rationalized with legalities and rhetoric.  The real enemy here isn’t terrorism, writ small or large, it’s politics.  The real enemies are the institutions of politics and governments themselves.

~ Doug Casey, "Middle East Conflict and What Comes Next," International Man, October 26, 2023