21 Lessons for the 21st Century(53)
But the terrorists have little choice. They are so weak that they cannot wage war. So they opt instead to produce a theatrical spectacle that will hopefully provoke the enemy and cause him to overreact. Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our imagination and turns it against us. By killing a handful of people the terrorists cause millions to fear for their lives. In order to calm these fears, governments react to the theatre of terror with a show of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves.
Terrorists don’t think like army generals. Instead, they think like theatre producers. The public memory of the 9/11 attacks testifies that everyone understands this intuitively. If you ask people what happened on 9/11, they are likely to say that al-Qaeda knocked down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Yet the attack involved not merely the towers, but two other actions, in particular a successful attack on the Pentagon. How come few people remember that?
If the 9/11 operation was a conventional military campaign, the Pentagon attack should have received most of the attention. In this attack al-Qaeda managed to destroy part of the enemy’s central headquarters, killing and wounding senior commanders and analysts. Why is it that public memory gives far more importance to the destruction of two civilian buildings, and the killing of brokers, accountants and clerks?
It is because the Pentagon is a relatively flat and unassuming building, whereas the World Trade Center was a tall phallic totem whose collapse made an immense audiovisual effect. Nobody who saw the images of its collapse could ever forget them. Because we intuitively understand that terrorism is theatre, we judge it by its emotional rather than material impact.
Like terrorists, those combating terrorism should also think more like theatre producers and less like army generals. Above all, if we want to combat terrorism effectively we must realise that nothing the terrorists do can defeat us. We are the only ones who can defeat ourselves, if we overreact in a misguided way to the terrorist provocations.
Terrorists undertake an impossible mission: to change the political balance of power through violence, despite having no army. To achieve their aim, terrorists present the state with an impossible challenge of their own: to prove that it can protect all its citizens from political violence, anywhere, any time. The terrorists hope that when the state tries to fulfil this impossible mission, it will reshuffle the political cards, and hand them some unforeseen ace.
True, when the state rises to the challenge, it usually succeeds in crushing the terrorists. Hundreds of terrorist organisations were wiped out over the last few decades by various states. In 2002–4 Israel proved that even the most ferocious terror campaigns can be suppressed by brute force.10 Terrorists know full well that the chances in such a confrontation are against them. But since they are very weak, and have no other military option, they have nothing to lose and much to gain. Once in a while the political storm created by counter-terrorist campaigns does benefit the terrorists, which is why the gamble makes sense. A terrorist is like a gambler holding a particularly bad hand, who tries to convince his rivals to reshuffle the cards. He cannot lose anything, and he may win everything.
A small coin in a big empty jar
Why should the state agree to reshuffle the cards? Since the material damage caused by terrorism is negligible, the state could theoretically do nothing about it, or take strong but discreet measures far from the cameras and microphones. Indeed, states often do exactly that. But every now and then states lose their tempers, and react far too forcefully and publicly, thus playing into the hands of the terrorists. Why are states so sensitive to terrorist provocations?
States find it difficult to withstand these provocations because the legitimacy of the modern state is based on its promise to keep the public sphere free of political violence. A regime can withstand terrible catastrophes, and even ignore them, provided its legitimacy is not based on preventing them. On the other hand, a regime may collapse due to a minor problem, if it is seen as undermining its legitimacy. In the fourteenth century the Black Death killed between a quarter and a half of European populations, yet no king lost his throne as a result, and no king made much of an effort to overcome the plague. Nobody back then thought that preventing plagues was part of a king’s job. On the other hand, rulers who allowed religious heresy to spread in their dominions risked losing their crowns, and even their heads.
Today, a government may take a softer approach to domestic and sexual violence than to terrorism, because despite the impact of movements such as #MeToo, rape does not undermine the government’s legitimacy. In France, for example, more than 10,000 rape cases are reported to the authorities each year, with probably tens of thousands of additional cases left unreported.11 Rapists and abusive husbands, however, are not perceived as an existential threat to the French state, because historically the state did not build itself on the promise to eliminate sexual violence. In contrast, the much rarer cases of terrorism are viewed as a deadly threat to the French Republic, because over the last few centuries modern Western states have gradually established their legitimacy on the explicit promise to tolerate no political violence within their borders.
Back in the Middle Ages, the public sphere was full of political violence. Indeed, the ability to use violence was the entry ticket to the political game, and whoever lacked this ability had no political voice. Numerous noble families retained armed forces, as did towns, guilds, churches and monasteries. When a former abbot died and a dispute arose about the succession, the rival factions – comprising monks, local strongmen and concerned neighbours – often used armed force to decide the issue.