Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2002, pp.

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The Definition of Terrorism

Charles L. Ruby*
Private Practice

This article addresses the definition of terrorism. It is intended to provide a foundation from which to understand the recent attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Although terrorism appears to be much less dangerous than other forms of violence, it seems to command more attention. In order to respond to terrorism, a clear definition is necessary. Terrorism is defined by Title 22 of the U.S. Code as politically motivated violence perpetrated in a clandestine manner against noncombatants. Experts on terrorism also include another aspect in the definition: the act is committed in order to create a fearful state of mind in an audience different from the victims. Whether or not an act is considered terrorism also depends on whether a legal, moral, or behavioral perspective is used to interpret the act. If a legal or moral perspective is used, the values of the interpreter are the focus rather than the act itself. A behavioral perspective appears to be best suited for interpreting and reacting to terrorism. The U.S. Department of State (2000) reported that international terrorists killed 405 people across the globe in 2000 (19 of these were U.S. citizens). As of the writing of this article, the most devastating single terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center towers were destroyed and the Pentagon was severely damaged by hijacked commercial airliners. In this debacle, approximately 6,000 people were killed. Even with this huge loss of life, though, terrorist deaths over the years have typically paled in comparison to other forms of more common fatal incidents. For example, nearly 42,000 people were killed in car accidents in the United States in 2000 (U.S. Department of Transportation, 2001) and over 15,500 people were murdered in the United States in 1999 (U.S. Department of Justice, 2000). Yet despite the fact that there are more traffic deaths or murders in the United
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Charles L. Ruby, The Pinnacle Center for Mental Health and Human Relations, 603 Post Office Rd., Ste 210, Waldorf, MD 20603 [e-mail: clruby@aol.com].

2002 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

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States in a few months than there are terrorist deaths worldwide for an entire year, the terrorist phenomenon firmly holds our attention. Why is this? Part of the answer has to do with the psychological aspects of terrorism. One only has to witness the aftermath of the above-mentioned attacks on New York City and Washington to understand the sheer terror and grief that results from sensational terrorist attacks. For many, terrorism seems to be a random and senseless form of violence perpetrated by very disturbed people. The idea that one is susceptible to such seemingly uncontrollable and bizarre attacks certainly leads to a heightened sense of anxiety. Another important psychological aspect of terrorism is the terrorists ideological or political motivation, making terrorism akin to war. This ideological/political aspect may engender a feeling of powerlessness in potential victims similar to the fatalistic resignation seen in soldiers on the battlefield who are just waiting for the bullet with their name on it. These psychological aspects are likely to make people more sensitive to terrorism than they are to the much greater probabilities of traffic accidents or criminal victimization. One might argue that the most difficult aspect of dealing with terrorism is defining it. The word terrorism has been used to describe a variety of violent acts from domestic altercations to gang violence to workplace homicide. But the popular view of terrorism does not include these acts. Just what do we mean by terrorism? Since 1983, the U.S. Department of State (2000) has used Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d), to define terrorism. In the introduction to the Departments Patterns of Global Terrorism, terrorism is defined as politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. This definition includes three key criteria that distinguish terrorism from other forms of violence. First, terrorism must be politically motivated. Terrorism is directed toward goals that are political; in other words, terrorist actions are intended to guide or influence governmental policy. Thus, violent acts such as robbery, homicide, and kidnapping, which are committed in the furtherance of personal or criminal goals, are not included. This criterion emphasizes that the social and psychological antecedents of personally or criminally motivated violence are different than the antecedents of terrorist violence. The goals of the New York City and Washington terrorists are to influence U.S. government policy in the Middle East. Second, terrorist violence is directed at noncombatants. Noncombatants are people who are not members of the military services or military members who are not actively involved in military hostilities. This criterion identifies terrorism as violence directed toward civilian populations or groups who are not prepared to defend against political violence. It includes military members who are attacked during peacetime (e.g., on June 25, 1996, a terrorist truck bomb exploded at the U.S. Air Force housing complex Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia).

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The third criterion of the State Departments definition of terrorism is that subnational groups or clandestine agents commit terrorist attacks. Under this criterion, political violence by nation-states is not terrorism, even when there is a probability that noncombatants will be killed (e.g., the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor; the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya). This third criterion should to be addressed more fully. Notwithstanding the importance of the subnational quality of terrorist perpetrators, the crux of this criterion is the clandestine nature of terrorism. Victims of terrorism cannot anticipate the attack because of this clandestine feature. On the other hand, in situations of declared war or announced conflict, such as in England during World War II or more recently in Iraq in the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s, the citizens of those countries had some expectation of an attack. Also, there is an expectation that attacks will focus on industrial or military complexes. Theoretically, then, noncombatants could avoid those target areas, even though many times they cannot, and even though those waging these conventional forms of war are willing to accept such collateral killing of noncombatants. This open nature of conventional conflict is the antithesis of terrorism and is what makes terrorism so unpredictable and alarming. However, national entities can operate in a clandestine manner just as subnational entities do. Certainly, if a nation-state sent special forces into another country and bombed a restaurant full of civilian patrons in order to convince that countrys government to change policies, it would not meet the subnational part of this criterion but would most likely still be considered terrorism under the clandestine part. So the more important component of this definition criterion is that terrorists act in a clandestine manner. In addition to the political motivation of the acts, the targeting of noncombatants, and the subnational/clandestine nature of the perpetrators, two other important definition criteria have been stressed in the psychology of terrorism literature. Kaplan (1981) said that terrorism is intended to create an extremely fearful state of mind. Furthermore, this fearful state is not intended for the terrorist victim; rather, it is intended for an audience who may, in fact, have no relationship to the victims. Oots (1990, p. 145) similarly emphasized that terrorism was intended to create extreme fear and/or anxiety-inducing effects in a target audience larger than the immediate victims. Likewise, the definition of terrorism in the U.S. Armys textbook on military medicine echoes that terrorism is partly defined by its creation of fear in an audience beyond the immediate victim (Jones & Fong, 1994). Taylor (1988) went to great lengths in trying to define terrorism. His discussion elaborated on three perspectives that people use in determining whether or not an act is terrorism. He presented these differing perspectives to emphasize that even with a firm set of definition criteria, as delineated above, different people can interpret an act differently depending on their perspective. First, some people see terrorism as a legal issue. With this perspective, an act is considered terrorism only

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if it is illegal. Governments are likely to use this perspective to interpret terrorism; however, the determination that an act is terrorism under this perspective depends on which government is doing the interpreting. Obviously, not all nations will have the same definition of what is legal. Two governments, therefore, may view the same incident differently. A second perspective is moral in nature and would consider an act to be terrorism only if it had no moral justification. Some groups are willing to commit politically motivated illegal violence but do so with the belief that it is a necessary and morally justified act. As an example, the Provisional Irish Republican Army considers its violent attacks morally justified in that its goal is to eliminate British dominance in Northern Ireland, a political condition it sees as immoral on the part of Great Britain. Thus, it does not interpret what it is doing as terrorism (or at the least, it does not attach a derogatory quality to its actions). Sometimes governments can also use this perspective. For instance, there has been much talk in the weeks since the New York City and Washington terrorist attacks about the jihad (holy war) being waged by some Middle Eastern and Central Asian peoples against evil in the world, usually seen as Western capitalism and immoral excesses. Politically motivated violence against noncombatants in the name of the jihad is considered morally justifiedand therefore not terrorismby those governments and groups who engage in it. As another example, the moral perspective was used in the 1980s when referring to the Nicaraguan Contras. There is no question that the Contras were a subnational and clandestine group who committed politically motivated violence against a government (and many collateral victims) that was not in a state of declared hostilities. Yet the term freedom fighters was used in describing the Contras to highlight the belief that their attacks against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua were morally justified. We have recently been reminded that Osama Bin Laden (the individual currently suspected of orchestrating the New York City and Washington terrorist attacks) was part of a freedom fighter group that the United States supported against the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. As with a legal perspective, the use of a moral one in interpreting terrorism can result in different viewpoints concerning the same act, depending on the mores of the people doing the interpreting. Taylors third and final perspective is behavioral. With this perspective, terrorism is defined purely by the behaviors involved, regardless of the laws or morality of those doing the defining. In reasoning from this perspective, different interpreters will necessarily arrive at the same conclusions as to whether or not a particular act is terrorism. If one uses a legal or moral perspective on terrorism, laws and mores become the focus, not the terrorist behavior itself. Taylor (1988) quoted the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1972 to emphasize that governments frequently have a legal or moral perspective:

Definition of Terrorism The fact is, of course, that there is a vast amount of hypocrisy on the subject of political terrorism. We all righteously condemn itexcept where we ourselves or friends of ours are engaging in it. Then we ignore it, or gloss over it, or attach to it tags like liberation or defence of the free world or national honour to make it seem like something other than what it is. (p. 3)

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When studying the construct of terrorism from a psychological perspective, we need to use a reliable definition. It is for this reason that the behavioral perspective seems to be the best one for behavioral scientists and mental health professionals to use. This is the only one of the three that permits a reliable operational definition of terrorism regardless of who measures it. This is not to say that when studying terrorist behavior one should ignore the influence of the perpetrators and the victims social and cultural values. Indeed, the fact that some governments view terrorism as illegal and some groups see it as immoral will be crucial parts of any good definition. The point is that not all governments or all groups will consider a particular act illegal and/or immoral. There are numerous examples of politically and ideologically motivated violence that do not carry the derogatory baggage terrorism does. Undoubtedly, the characteristic of terrorism that distinguishes it from these other forms of political violence (e.g., war, police actions) is that it is committed outside the rules of some society. This illegal and/or immoral aspect of terrorism says something about the mindset of those who are willing to violate those legal and moral rules, but it does not necessarily make them any more or less valid in their motivation. The above discussion leads us to a useful operational definition of terrorism. Bear in mind that this definition is purely a heuristic tool used to establish reliable parameters for the construct we refer to as terrorism. There will, however, be some areas of gray where terrorist and nonterrorist acts according to this definition will seem to be very similar, especially as they affect people psychologically. For instance, consider the case of special forces used to initiate open hostilities against an enemy country prior to the actual public declaration of the hostilities. Are these people terrorists? Another example may be when torture is used against people by clandestine elements of their own government. Should these government agents be considered terrorists? The September 11 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were driven by political goals, namely, the elimination of the U.S. presence in the Middle East. Additionally, the perpetrators clandestinely attacked noncombatants in order to create an extremely fearful state of mind in an audience different than the victims (i.e., the capitalist/Western world). Those attacks would meet the above definition of terrorism. However, observers will be more or less likely to consider the September 11 acts as terrorism depending on the perspective they use to frame those acts. The use of a legal or moral model may obscure important variables that influence the development of terrorist groups and terrorist actions. These two perspectives will also minimize the fact that different people have different laws and

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morality. The taking of such perspectives may lead to a limited understanding of the attacks and and increased focus on the observers biases rather than on the acts themselves. With a behavioral model in use, these terrorist acts can been more clearly seen for what they are. However, the use of the behavioral perspective may also dictate that governments reassess whether or not other acts of political violence they have condoned and are condoning also meet this definition, regardless of how moral or legal they may be. References
Jones, F., & Fong, Y. (1994). Military psychiatry and terrorism. In Department of the Army, Textbook of military medicine (pp. 264269). Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army. Kaplan, A. (1981). The psychodynamics of terrorism. In Y. Alexander & J. Gleason (Eds.), Behavioral and quantitative perspectives on terrorism (pp. 3550). New York: Pergamon. Oots, K. (1990). Bargaining with terrorists: Organizational considerations. Terrorism, 13, 145158. Taylor, M. (1988). The terrorist. London: Brasseys Defence. U.S. Department of Justice. (2000). Homicide trends in the U.S. [On-line]. Available: http://www.ojp. usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm U.S. Department of State. (2000). Patterns of global terrorism, 2000 [On-line]. Available: http://www. governmentguide.com/govsite.adp?bread=*Main&url=http%3A//www.governmentguide.com /ams/clickThruRedirect.adp%3F55076483%2C16920155%2Chttp%3A//www.state.gov U.S. Department of Transportation. (2001). 2000 Annual AssessmentMotor Vehicle Traffic Crash Fatality and Injury Estimates for 2000 [On-line]. Available: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ people/ncsa/Reports/Assess2K.pdf

CHARLES L. RUBY received his PhD from Florida State University in 1995. He is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who worked 16 years in criminal and counterintelligence matters and spent the last 4 years of his military career as an investigative psychologist. He is currently in private practice as a clinical and forensic psychologist in southern Maryland.