Valls, Andrew

Can Terrorism be Justified?

pp. 65-80

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 5
Can Terrorism Be Justified?

Andrew Vails

A s the chapters in the previous section amply demonstrate, just war theory, de­
spite its ambiguities, provides a rich framework with which to assess the morality
of war. But interstate war is only the most conventional form of political violence.
The question arises, Is it the only form of political violence that may ever be
justified? If not, how are we to assess the morality of other cases of political
violence, particularly those involving nonstate actors? In short, does just war the­
ory apply to terrorism, and, if so, can terrorism satisfy its criteria?
In the public and scholarly reactions to political violence, a double standard
often is at work. When violence is committed by states, our assessment tends to
be quite permissive, giving states a great benefit of the doubt about the propriety
of their violent acts. However, when the violence is committed by nonstate actors,
we often react with horror, and the condemnations cannot come fast enough.
Hence, terrorism is almost universally condemned, whereas violence by states,
even when war has not been declared, is seen as legitimate, if not always fully
justified. This difference in assessments remains when innocent civilians are
killed in both cases and sometimes when such killing is deliberate. Even as
thoughtful a commentator as Michael Walzer, for example, seems to employ this
double standard. In his Just and Unjust Wars, Walzer considers whether “soldiers
and statesmen [can] override the rights of innocent people for the sake of their
own political community” and answers “affirmatively, though not without hesi­
tation and worry” (1992, 254). Walzer goes on to discuss a case in point, the
Allied bombing of German cities during World War II, arguing that, despite the
many civilians who deliberately were killed, the bombing was justified. However,
later in the book, Walzer rejects out of hand the possibility that terrorism might
sometimes be justified, on the grounds that it involves the deliberate killing of

65

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66 Chapter 5

innocents (1992, chapter 12). He never considers the possibility that stateless
communities might confront the same “supreme emergency” that justified, in his
view, the bombing of innocent German civilians. I will have more to say about
Walzer’s position below, but for now I wish to point out that, on the face of it at
least, his position seems quite inconsistent.
From a philosophical point of view, this double standard cannot be sustained.
As Coady (1985) argues, consistency requires that we apply the same standards
to both kinds of political violence, state and nonstate. Of course, it may turn out
that there are simply some criteria that states can satisfy that nonstate actors can­
not, so that the same standard applied to both inevitably leads to different conclu­
sions. There may be morally relevant features of states that make their use of
violence legitimate and its use by others illegitimate. However, I will argue that
this is not the case. I argue that, on the most plausible account of just war theory,
taking into account the ultimate moral basis of its criteria, violence undertaken
by nonstate actors can, in principle, satisfy the requirements of a just war.
To advance this view, I examine each criterion of just war theory in turn, ar­
guing in each case that terrorism committed by nonstate actors can satisfy the
criterion. The most controversial parts of my argument will no doubt be those
regarding just cause, legitimate authority, and discrimination, so I devote more
attention to these than to the others. I argue that, once we properly understand
the moral basis for each of these criteria, it is clear that some nonstate groups
may have the same right as states to commit violence and that they are just as
capable of committing that violence within the constraints imposed by just war
theory. My conclusion, then, is that if just war theory can justify violence com­
mitted by states, then terrorism committed by nonstate actors can also, under cer­
tain circumstances, be justified by it as well. But before commencing the substan­
tive argument, I must attend to some preliminary matters concerning the
definition of terrorism.

DEFINITIONAL ISSUES

There is little agreement on the question of how terrorism is best defined. In the
political arena, of course, the word is used by political actors for political pur­
poses, usually to paint their opponents as monsters. Scholars, on the other hand,
have at least attempted to arrive at a more detached position, seeking a definition
that captures the essence of terrorism. However, there is reason, in addition to the
lack of consensus, to doubt whether much progress has been made.
Most definitions of terrorism suffer from at least one of two difficulties. First,
they often define terrorism as murder or otherwise characterize it as intrinsically
wrong and unjustifiable. The trouble with this approach is that it prejudges the
substantive moral issue by a definitional consideration. I agree with Teichman,
who writes that “we ought not to begin by defining terrorism as a bad thing”

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 67

(1989, 507). Moral conclusions should follow from moral reasoning, grappling
with the moral issues themselves. To decide a normative issue by definitional con­
siderations, then, ends the discussion before it begins.
The second shortcoming that many definitions of terrorism exhibit is being too
revisionist of its meaning in ordinary language. As I have noted, the word is often
used as a political weapon, so ordinary language will not settle the issue. Teich-
man (1989, 505) again is correct that any definition will necessarily be stipulative
to some extent. But ordinary language does, nevertheless, impose some con­
straints on the stipulative definition that we can accept. For example, Carl Well­
man defines terrorism as “the use or attempted use of terror as a means of coer­
cion” (1979, 251) and draws the conclusion that when he instills terror in his
students with threats of grade penalties on late papers, he commits terrorism.
Clearly this is not what most of us have in mind when we speak of terrorism, so
Wellman’s definition, even if taken as stipulative, is difficult to accept.
Some definitions of terrorism suffer from both of these shortcomings to some
degree. For example, those that maintain that terrorism is necessarily random or
indiscriminate seem both to depart markedly from ordinary usage—there are lots
of acts we call terrorist that specifically target military facilities and personnel—
and thereby to prejudge the moral issue. (I will argue below that terrorism need
not be indiscriminate at all.) The same can be said of definitions that insist that
the aim of terrorism must be to terrorize, that it targets some to threaten many
more (see, for example, Khatchadourian 1998). As Virginia Held has argued,
“We should probably not construe either the intention to spread fear or the inten­
tion to kill noncombatants as necessary for an act of political violence to be an
act of terrorism” (1991, 64). Annette Baier adds that “the terrorist may be ill
named” because what she sometimes wants is not to terrorize but “the shocked
attention of her audience population” (1994, 205).
With all of this disagreement, it would perhaps be desirable to avoid the use of
the term terrorism altogether and simply to speak instead of political violence. I
would be sympathetic to this position were it not for the fact that terrorism is
already too much a part of our political vocabulary to be avoided. Still, we can
with great plausibility simply define terrorism as a form of political violence, as
Held does: “I [see] terrorism as a form of violence to achieve political goals,
where creating fear is usually high among the intended effects” (1991, 64). This
is a promising approach, though I would drop as nonessential the stipulation that
terrorism is usually intended to spread fear. In addition, I would make two stipu­
lations of my own. First, “violence” can include damage to property as well as
harm to people. Blowing up a power plant can surely be an act of terrorism, even
if no one is injured. Second, for the purposes of this chapter, I am interested in
violence committed by nonstate actors. I do not thereby deny the existence of
state terrorism. Indeed, I endorse Gordon and Lopez’s discussion of it in their
chapter in this volume. However, for the purposes of my present argument, 1 as­
sume that when a state commits terrorism against its own citizens, this is a matter

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 68 Chapter 5

for domestic justice, and that when it commits violence outside of its own bor­
ders, just war theory can, fairly easily, be extended to cover these cases. The
problem for international ethics that I wish to address here is whether just war
theory can be extended to nonstate actors. So my stipulative definition of terror­
ism in this chapter is simply that it is violence committed by nonstate actors
against persons or property for political purposes. This definition appears to leave
open the normative issues involved and to be reasonably consistent with ordinary
language.

JU SAD BELLU M

It is somewhat misleading to speak of just war theory, for it is not a single theory
but, rather, a tradition within which there is a range of interpretation. That is, just
war theory is best thought of as providing a framework for discussion about
whether a war is just, rather than as providing a set of unambiguous criteria that
are easily applied. In what follows I rely on what I believe is the most plausible
and normatively appealing version of just war theory, one that is essentially the
same as the one articulated and developed by the preceding chapters. I begin with
the jus ad bellum criteria, concerning the justice of going to war, and then turn
to jus in hello criteria, which apply to the conduct of the war.

Just Cause
A just cause for a war is usually a defensive one. That is, a state is taken to have
a just cause when it defends itself against aggression, where aggression means
the violation or the imminent threat of the violation of its territorial integrity or
political independence (Walzer 1992). So the just cause provision of just war the­
ory holds, roughly, that the state has a right to defend itself against the aggression
of other states.
But on what is this right of the state based? Most students of international
ethics maintain that any right that a state enjoys is ultimately based on the rights
of its citizens. States in and of themselves have value only to the extent that they
serve some good for the latter. The moral status of the state is therefore deriva­
tive, not foundational, and it is derivative of the rights of the individuals within
it. This, it seems, is the dominant (liberal) view, and only an exceedingly statist
perspective would dispute it (Beitz 1979b; Walzer 1992).
The right that is usually cited as being the ground for the state’s right to defend
itself is the right of self-determination. The state is the manifestation of, as well
as the arena for, the right of a people to determine itself. It is because aggression
threatens the common life of the people within a state, as well as threatening
other goods they hold dear, that the state can defend its territory and indepen­
dence. This is clear, for example, from Walzer’s (1992, chapter 6) discussion of

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 69

intervention. Drawing on John Stuart Mill (1984), Walzer argues that states gen­
erally ought not to intervene in the affairs of other states because to do so would
be to violate the right of self-determination of the community within the state.
However, once the right of self-determination is recognized, its implications go
beyond a right against intervention or a right of defense. Walzer makes this clear
as well, as his discussion of Mill’s argument for nonintervention is followed im­
mediately by exceptions to the rule, one of which is secession. When a secession­
ist movement has demonstrated that it represents the will of its people, other
states may intervene to aid the secession because, in this case, secession reflects
the self-determination of that people.
In the twenty years since Walzer presented this argument, a great deal of work
has been done on nationalism, self-determination, and secession. Despite the
range of views that has developed, it is fair to say that something of an overlap­
ping consensus has formed, namely, that under certain circumstances, certain
kinds of groups enjoy a right of self-determination that entitles them to their own
state or at least to some autonomy in a federal arrangement within an existing
state. The debate is mostly over what these circumstances are and what kinds of
groups enjoy the right. For example, Allen Buchanan, in his important book Se­
cession (1991), argues that the circumstances must include a historical injustice
before a group is entitled to secede. Others are more permissive. Christopher
Wellman (1995) and Daniel Philpott (1995) argue that past injustice is not re­
quired to entitle a group to secession and, indeed, that any group within a terri­
tory may secede, even if it is not plausibly seen as constituting a nation.
The modal position in the debate is, perhaps, somewhere between these posi­
tions, holding that certain groups, even absent a history of injustice, have a right
to self-determination but that this applies not to just any group but only to “peo­
ples” or “nations.” This is essentially the position taken by Kymlicka (1995),
Tamir (1993), Miller (1995), and Margalit and Raz (1990). There are, of course,
important differences among these authors. Kymlicka argues that groups with
“societal cultures” have a right to self-government but not necessarily secession.
Margalit and Raz advance a similar argument, and their notion of an “encom­
passing group” is very close to Kymlicka’s “societal culture.” Tamir emphasizes
that, in her view, the right to self-determination is a cultural right, not a political
one, and does not necessarily support a right to political independence. Miller
does interpret the right of self-determination as a right to a state, but he hesitates
to call it a right, for it may not always be achievable due to the legitimate claims
of others. (His concern would perhaps be alleviated by following Philpott in
speaking of a “prima facie” right.)
For the purposes of my present argument, I need not enter this important de­
bate but only point out that any one of these views can support the weak claim I
wish to make. The claim is that under some circumstances, some groups enjoy a
right to self-determination. The circumstances may include—or, following Bu­
chanan, even be limited to—cases of injustice toward the group, or, in a more

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 70 Chapter 5

permissive view, it may not. This right may be enjoyed only by nations or by any
group within a territory. It may be that the right of self-determination does not
automatically ground a right to political independence, but if some form of self-
determination cannot be realized within an existing state, then it can, under these
circumstances, ground such a right. For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion
that follows I refer to nations or peoples as having a right of self-determination,
but this does not commit me to the view that other kinds of groups do not enjoy
this right. Similarly, I will sometimes fail to distinguish between a right of self-
determination and a right to a state, despite realizing that the former does not
necessarily entail the latter. I will assume that in some cases—say, when a federal
arrangement cannot be worked out—one can ground the right to a state on the
right to self-determination.
My conclusion about the just cause requirement is obvious. Groups other than
those constituted by the state in which they live can have a just cause to defend
their right of self-determination. While just war theory relies on the rights of the
citizens to ground the right of a state to defend itself, other communities within
a state may have that same right. When the communal life of a nation is seriously
threatened by a state, that nation has a just cause to defend itself. In the case in
which the whole nation is within a single state, this can justify secession. In a
case in which the community is stateless, as with colonial rule, it is probably less
accurate to speak of secession than national liberation.
This is not a radical conclusion. Indeed, it is recognized and endorsed by the
United Nations, as Khatchadourian points out: “The UN definition of ‘just cause’
recognizes the rights of peoples as well as states,” and in Article 7 of the defini­
tion of aggression, the United Nations refers to “the right to self-determination,
freedom, and independence, as derived from the Charter, of peoples forcibly de­
prived of that right” (1998, 41). So both morally and legally, “peoples” or “na­
tions” enjoy a right to self-determination. When that right is frustrated, such
peoples, I have argued, have the same just cause that states have when the self-
determination of their citizens is threatened.

Legitimate Authority
The legitimate authority requirement is usually interpreted to mean that only
states can go to war justly. It rules out private groups waging private wars and
claiming them to be just. The state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force,
so it is a necessary condition for a just war that it be undertaken by the entity
that is uniquely authorized to wield the sword. To allow other entities, groups, or
agencies to undertake violence would be to invite chaos. Such violence is seen
as merely private violence, crime.
The equation of legitimate authority with states has, however, been criticized
by a number of philosophers—and with good reason. Gilbert has argued that “the
equation of proper authority with a lawful claim to it should be resisted” (1994,

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 71

29). Tony Coates (1997, chapter 5) has argued at some length and quite persua­
sively that to equate legitimate authority with state sovereignty is to rob the re­
quirement of the moral force that it historically has had. The result is that the
principle has become too permissive by assuming that any de facto state may
wage war. This requirement, then, is too easily and quickly “checked off” : If a
war is waged by a state, this requirement is satisfied. This interpretation has
meant that “the criterion of legitimate authority has become the most neglected
of all the criteria that have been traditionally employed in the moral assessment
of war” (Coates 1997, 123). Contrary to this tendency in recent just war thinking,
Coates argues that we must subject to close scrutiny a given state’s claim to rep­
resent the interests and rights of its people.
When we reject the view that all states are legitimate authorities, we may also
ask if some nonstates may be legitimate authorities. The considerations just ad­
duced suggest that being a state is not sufficient for being a legitimate authority.
Perhaps it is not necessary either. What matters is the plausibility of the claim to
represent the interests and rights of a people. I would like to argue that some
nonstate entities or organizations may present a very plausible case for being a
people’s representative. Surely it is sufficient for this that the organization is
widely seen as their representative by the members of the nation itself. If an orga­
nization claims to act on behalf of a people and is widely seen by that people as
legitimately doing so, then the rest of us should look on that organization as the
legitimate authority of the people for the purposes of assessing its entitlement to
engage in violence on their behalf.
The alternative view, that only states may be legitimate authorities, “leads to
political quietism [and is] conservative and uncritical” (Coates 1997, 128). Once
we acknowledge that stateless peoples may have the right to self-determination,
it would render that right otiose to deny that the right could be defended and
vindicated by some nonstate entity. As Dugard (1982, 83) has pointed out, in the
case of colonial domination, there is no victim state, though there is a victim
people. If we are to grant that a colonized people has a right to self-determination,
it seems that we must grant that a nonstate organization—a would-be state, per­
haps—can act as a legitimate authority and justly engage in violence on behalf
of the people. Examples are not difficult to find. Coates cites the Kurds and the
Marsh Arabs in Iraq and asks, “Must such persecuted communities be denied the
right of collective self-defense simply because, through some historical accident,
they lack the formal character of states?” (1997, 128).
It must be emphasized that the position advocated here requires that the organi­
zation not only claim representative status but be perceived to enjoy that status
by the people it claims to represent. This is a rather conservative requirement
because it rules out “vanguard” organizations that claim representative status de­
spite lack of support among the people themselves. The position defended here
is also more stringent than that suggested by Wilkins, who writes that it might
“be enough for a terrorist movement simply to claim to represent the aspirations

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or the moral rights of a people” (1992, 71). While I agree that “moral authority
may be all that matters” (Wilkins 1992, 72), I would argue that moral authority
requires not merely claiming to represent a people but also being seen by the
people themselves as their representative.
How do we know whether this is the case? No single answer can be given here.
Certainly the standard should not be higher than that used for states. In the case
of states, for example, elections are not required for legitimacy, as understood in
just war theory. There are many members of the international community in good
standing that are not democratic regimes, authorized by elections. In the case of
nonstate entities, no doubt a number of factors will weigh in, either for or against
the claim to representativeness, and, in the absence of legal procedures (or public
opinion polls), we may have to make an all-things-considered judgment. No
doubt there will be some disagreement in particular cases, but all that is required
for the present argument is that, in principle, nonstate organizations may enjoy
the moral status of legitimate authorities.

Right Intention
If a national group can have a just cause, and if a nonstate entity can be a legiti­
mate authority to engage in violence on behalf of that group, it seems unproblem­
atic that those engaging in violence can be rightly motivated by that just cause.
Hence, if just cause and legitimate authority can be satisfied, there seems to be
no reason to think that the requirement of right intention cannot be satisfied. This
is not to say, of course, that if the first two are satisfied, the latter is as well, but
only that if the first two requirements are met, the latter can be. All that it requires
is that the relevant actors be motivated by the just cause and not some other end.

Last Resort
Can terrorist violence, undertaken by the representatives of a stateless nation to
vindicate their right of self-determination, be a last resort? Some have doubted
that it can. For example, Walzer refers to the claim of last resort as one of the
“excuses” sometimes offered for terrorism. He suggests that terrorism is usually
a first resort, not a last one, and that to truly be a last resort, “one must indeed
try everything (which is a lot of things), and not just once. . . . Politics is an art
of repetition” (1988, 239). Terrorists, according to Walzer, often claim that their
resort to violence is a last resort but in fact it never is and never can be.
Two problems arise concerning Walzer’s position. First, related to the defini­
tional issues discussed above and taken up again below when discrimination is
treated, Walzer takes terrorism to be “an attack upon the innocent,” and he
“take[s] the principle for granted: that every act of terrorism is a wrongful act”
(1988, 238). Given the understanding of terrorism as murder, it can never be a
justified last resort. But as Fullinwider (1988) argues in his response to Walzer,

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 73

it is puzzling both that Walzer construes terrorism this way, for not all terrorism
is random murder, and that Walzer simply takes it for granted that nothing can
justify terrorism. Walzer’s position is undermined by a prejudicial definition of
terrorism that begs the substantive moral questions, reflected in the fact that he
characterizes arguments in defense of terrorism as mere “excuses.”
The second problem is that again Walzer appears to use a double standard.
While he does not say so explicitly in the paper under discussion, Walzer else­
where clearly endorses the resort to war by states. Here, however, he argues that,
because “politics is an art of repetition,” the last resort is never arrived at for
nonstate actors contemplating violence. But why is it that the territorial integrity
and political independence of, say, Britain, justify the resort to violence—even
violence that targets civilians—but the right of self-determination of a stateless
nation never does? Why can states arrive at last resort, while stateless nations
cannot? Walzer never provides an answer to this question.
The fact is that judgment is called for by all political actors contemplating
violence, and among the judgments that must be made is whether last resort has
been. This is a judgment about whether all reasonable nonviolent measures have
been tried, been tried a reasonable number of times, and been given a reasonable
amount of time to work. There will always be room for argument about what
reasonable means here, what it requires in a particular case, but I see no justifi­
cation for employing a double standard for what it means, one for states, another
for nonstate actors. If states may reach the point of deciding that all nonviolent
measures have failed, then so too can nonstate actors.

Probability of Success
Whether terrorism ever has any probability of success, or enough probability of
success to justify embarking on a terrorist campaign, depends on a number of
factors, including the time horizon one has in mind. Whether one considers the
case of state actors deciding to embark on a war or nonstate actors embarking on
terrorism, a prospective judgment is required, and prospective judgments are lia­
ble to miscalculations and incorrect estimations of many factors. Still, one must
make a judgment, and if one judges that the end has little chance of being
achieved through violence, the probability of success criterion requires that the
violence not be commenced.
Does terrorism ever have any probability of success? There are differing views
of the historical record on this question. For example, Walzer thinks not. He
writes, “No nation that I know of owes its freedom to a campaign of random
murder” (1988, 240). Again, we find that Walzer’s analysis is hindered by his
conception of what terrorism is, and so it is of little help to us here. To those who
have a less loaded notion of terrorism, the evidence appears more ambiguous.
Held provides a brief, well-balanced discussion of the issue. She cites authors
who have argued on both sides of the question, including one who uses the bomb­

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 74 Chapter 5

ing of the U.S. Marines’ barracks in Beirut in 1982 (which prompted an Ameri­
can withdrawal) as an example of a successful terrorist attack. Held concludes
that “it may be impossible to predict whether an act of terrorism will in fact have
its intended effect” but notes that in this it is no different from other prospective
judgments (1991, 71). Similarly, Teichman concludes that the historical evidence
on the effectiveness of terrorism is “both ambiguous and incomplete” (1989,
517). And Baier suggests that, at the least, “the prospects for the success of a
cause do not seem in the past to have been reduced by resort to unauthorized
force, by violent demonstrations that cost some innocent lives” (1994, 208). Fi­
nally, Wilkins (1992, 39) believes that some terrorist campaigns have indeed ac­
complished their goal of national independence and cites Algeria and Kenya as
examples.
I am not in a position to judge all of the historical evidence that may be rele­
vant to this issue. However, it seems clear that we cannot say that it is never the
case that terrorism has some prospect of success. Perhaps in most cases—the vast
majority of them, even—there is little hope of success. Still, we cannot rule out
that terrorism can satisfy the probability of success criterion.

Proportionality
The proportionality criterion within jus ad bellum also requires a prospective
judgment—whether the overall costs of the violent conflict will be outweighed
by the overall benefits. In addition to the difficulties inherent in prospective judg­
ments, this criterion is problematic in that it seems to require us to measure the
value of costs and benefits that may not be amenable to measurement and seems
to assume that all goods are commensurable, that their value can be compared.
As a result, there is probably no way to make these kinds of judgments with any
great degree of precision.
Still, it seems clear that terrorism can satisfy this criterion at least as well as
conventional war. Given the large scale of destruction that often characterizes
modern warfare, and given that some very destructive wars are almost universally
considered just, it appears that just war theory can countenance a great deal of
violence if the end is of sufficient value. If modern warfare is sometimes justified,
terrorism, in which the violence is usually on a far smaller scale, can be justified
as well. This is especially clear if the end of the violence is the same or similar
in both cases, such as when a nation wishes to vindicate its right to self-determi­
nation.

JUS IN BELLO

Even if terrorism can meet all the criteria of jus ad bellum, it may not be able to
meet those of jus in bello, for terrorism is often condemned, not so much for who

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 75

carries it out and why but for how it is carried out. Arguing that it can satisfy
the requirements of jus in bello, then, may be the greatest challenge facing my
argument.

Proportionality
The challenge, however, does not come from the proportionality requirement of
jus in bello. Like its counterpart in jus ad bellum, the criterion requires propor­
tionality between the costs of an action and the benefits to be achieved, but now
the requirement is applied to particular acts within the war. It forbids, then, con­
ducting the war in such a way that it involves inordinate costs, costs that are dis­
proportionate to the gains.
Again, there seems to be no reason to believe that terrorist acts could not sat­
isfy this requirement. Given that the scale of the death and destruction usually
involved in terrorist acts pales in comparison with that involved in wars com­
monly thought to be just, it would seem that terrorism would satisfy this require­
ment more easily than war (assuming that the goods to be achieved are not dis­
similar). So if the means of terrorism is what places it beyond the moral pale for
many people, it is probably not because of its disproportionality.

Discrimination
The principle of discrimination holds that in waging a war we must distinguish
between legitimate and illegitimate targets of attack. The usual way of making
this distinction is to classify persons according to their status as combatants and
noncombatants and to maintain that only combatants may be attacked. However,
there is some disagreement as to the moral basis of this distinction, which creates
disagreement as to where exactly this line should be drawn. While usually based
on the notion of moral innocence, noncombatant status, it can be argued, has
little to do with innocence, for often combatants are conscripts, while those truly
responsible for aggression are usually not liable (practically, not morally) to at­
tack. Moreover, many who provide essential support to the war effort are not
combatants.
For the moment, though, let us accept the conventional view that discrimina­
tion requires that violence be directed at military targets. Assuming the line can
be clearly drawn, two points can be made about terrorism and discrimination.
The first is that, a priori, it is possible for terrorism to discriminate and still be
terrorism. This follows from the argument presented above that, as a matter of
definition, it is implausible to define terrorism as intrinsically indiscriminate.
Those who define terrorism as random or indiscriminate will disagree and main­
tain that “discriminate terrorism” is an oxymoron, a conceptual impossibility.
Here I can only repeat that this position departs substantially from ordinary lan­
guage and does so in a way that prejudges the moral issues involved. However,

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76 Chapter 5

if my argument above does not convince on this question, there is little more to
be said here
Luckily, the issue is not a purely a priori one. The fact is that terrorists, or at
least those called terrorists by almost everyone, in fact do often discriminate. One
example, cited above, is the bombing of the barracks in Beirut, which killed some
240 American soldiers. Whatever one wants to say to condemn the attack, one
cannot say that it was indiscriminate. Fullinwider cites the example of the kidnap­
ping, trail, and killing of Aldo Moro by the Italian Red Brigades in 1978 and
argues that, whatever else one might want to say about it, there was nothing
indiscriminate about the taking of Aldo Moro (1988, 250). Coady (1985, 63)
cites another example, that of an American diplomat in Uruguay who was tar­
geted and killed in 1970 because of the assistance he was providing to the author­
itarian regime. These may be the exceptions rather than the rule, but it clearly is
not accurate to say that terrorists—and there was never any doubt that these were
acts of terrorism—never discriminate.
It might be useful to look, one last time, at Walzer’s position on this issue
because, from the point of view I have developed, he errs on both the conceptual
and the empirical question. Walzer maintains that “terrorism in the strict sense,
the random murder of innocent people, emerged . . . only in the period alter
World War II” (1992, 198). Previously, nonstate actors, especially revolutionar­
ies, who committed violence did discriminate. Walzer gives several examples of
this in which Russian revolutionaries, the Irish Republican Army, and the Stern
Gang in the Middle East went to great lengths to not kill civilians. He also notes
that these people were called terrorists. Yet he refuses to say that they were terror­
ists, insisting instead that they were not, really, and using scare quotes when he
himself calls them terrorists. This is tortured analysis indeed. Why not simply
acknowledge that these earlier terrorists were indeed terrorists while also main­
taining, if evidence supports it, that today more terrorists are more indiscriminate
than in the past? I suspect that Walzer and I would agree in our moral assessment
of particular acts. Our main difference is that he believes that calling an act ter­
rorism (without the scare quotes) settles the question.
All of this is consistent with the assumption that a clear line can be drawn
between combatants and noncombatants. However, the more reasonable view
may be that combatancy status, and therefore liability to attack, are matters of
degree. This is suggested by Holmes (1989, 187), and though Holmes writes as
a pacifist critic of just war theory, his suggestion is one that just war theorists
may nevertheless want to endorse. Holmes conceives of a spectrum along which
we can place classes of individuals, according to their degree of responsibility
for an aggressive war. At one end he would place political leaders who undertake
the aggression, followed by soldiers, contributors to the war, supporters, and, fi­
nally, at the other end of the spectrum, noncontributors and nonsupporters. This
view does indeed better capture our moral intuitions about liability to attack and

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 11

avoids debates (which are probably not resolvable) about where the absolute line
between combatants and noncombatants is to be drawn.
If correct, this view further complicates the question of whether and when ter­
rorism discriminates. It means we must speak of more and less discriminate vio­
lence, and it forces us to ask questions like, To what extent were the targets of
violence implicated in unjust aggression? Children, for example, would be
clearly off-limits, but nonmilitary adults who actively take part in frustrating a
people’s right to self-determination may not be. With terrorism, as with war, the
question to ask may not be, Was the act discriminate, yes or no? but, rather, How
discriminate was the violence? Our judgment on this matter, and hence our moral
appraisal of the violence, is likely to be more nuanced if we ask the latter question
than if we assume that a simple yes or no settles the matter. After all, is our
judgment really the same—and ought it be—when a school bus is attacked as
when gun-toting citizens are attacked? Terrorism, it seems, can be more discrimi­
nate or less so, and our judgments ought to reflect the important matters of degree
involved.
One final issue is worth mentioning, if only briefly. Even if one were to grant
that terrorism necessarily involves the killing of innocents, this alone does not
place it beyond the scope of just war theory, for innocents may be killed in a just
war. All that just war theory requires is that innocents not be targeted. The basis
for this position is the principle of double effect, which holds, roughly, that inno­
cents may be killed as long as their deaths are not the intended effects of violence
but, rather, the unintended (though perhaps fully foreseen) side effects of vio­
lence. So the most that can be said against my position, even granting that terror­
ism involves the killing of innocents, is that the difference between (just) war and
terrorism is that in the former innocents are not targeted but (routinely) killed
while in the latter they are targeted and killed. Whether this is a crucial distinc­
tion is a question that would require us to go too far afield at this point. Perhaps
it is enough to say that if there are reasons to reject the principle of double effect,
such as those offered by Holmes (1989, 193-200), there is all the more basis to
think that terrorism and war are not so morally different from each other.

CONCLUSION

I have argued that terrorism, understood as political violence committed by nons­

tate actors, can be assessed from the point of view of just war theory and that
terrorist acts can indeed satisfy the theory’s criteria. Though stateless, some
groups can nevertheless have a just cause when their right to self-determination
is frustrated. Under such circumstances, a representative organization can be a
morally legitimate authority to carry out violence as a last resort to defend the
group’s rights. Such violence must conform to the other criteria, especially dis­
crimination, but terrorism, I have argued, can do so.

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 78 Chapter 5

The argument has taken place entirely within the just war tradition but can be
endorsed from other perspectives as well. For example, Annette Baier, though no
just war theorist, comes to a very similar conclusion:

It is fairly easy to say that the clearer it is that the terrorist’s group’s case is not being
listened to in decision making affecting it and that the less violent ways to get atten­
tion have been tried in vain, the more excuse the terrorist has; that his case is better
the more plausible his claim to represent his group’s sense of injustice or wrong, not
just his own; that the more limited, the less indiscriminate, his violence, the less
outrage will we feel for his inhumanity. Those are not daring conclusions. [1994,
217]

Indeed they are not daring conclusions, and mine certainly are not. I have avoided
consequentialist arguments that might, on utilitarian grounds, justify violence for
the greater good to be achieved. I have not endorsed the notion of collective guilt,
which, in my view, goes too far in eroding the distinction between combatants
and noncombatants (see Wilkins 1992). My argument would not support the vio­
lence of a vanguard party, committing violence in the hope of winning the sup­
port of those it claims to already represent. Hence, the argument presented here
places real, stringent moral limits on violence committed by nonstate actors.
Indeed, placing limits on violence is what just war theory is all about. As
Coates argues in his contribution to this volume, the main purpose of just war
theory is to constrain violence. Coates emphasizes that just war theory should
not convince perpetrators of violence of their own righteousness but, rather, is
meant to instill a sense of limits and restraint. If we assume that terrorism is be­
yond the pale, however, we deprive ourselves of the capacity to impose some
moral limits. If terrorists are monsters, then there is no reasoning with them.
However, if we take their claims seriously, if we assess their violence by the same
standards used to assess the violence of states, we at least have a chance that just
war theory will impose some restraint on them, as it does (or at least is supposed
to) with states.
It is important to be clear about what I have not argued here. I have not de­
fended terrorism in general, nor certainly have I defended any particular act of
violence. It follows from my argument not that terrorism can be justified but that
if war can be justified, then terrorism can be as well. I wish to emphasize the
conditional nature of the conclusion. I have not established just war theory as the
best or the only framework within which to think about the moral issues raised
by political violence. Instead I have relied on it because it is the most developed
and widely used in thinking about violence carried out by states. I have done so
because the double standard that is often used in assessing violence committed
by states and nonstate actors seems indefensible. Applying just war theory to
both, I believe, is a plausible way to bring both kinds of violence under one stan­
dard.

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 Can Terrorism Be Justified? 79

I have little doubt that most terrorist acts do not satisfy all of the criteria of just
war theory and that many of them fall far short. In such cases we are well justified
in condemning them. But the condemnation must follow, not precede, examina­
tion of the case and is not settled by calling the act terrorism and its perpetrators
terrorists. I agree with Fullinwider that, while terrorism often fails to be morally
justified, “this failure is contingent, not necessary. We cannot define terrorism
into a moral comer where we do not have to worry any more about justification”
(1988, 257). Furthermore, failure to satisfy the requirements of just war theory
is not unique to acts of terrorism. The same could be said of wars themselves.
How many wars, after all, are undertaken and waged within the constraints im­
posed by the theory?
The conditional nature of the conclusion, if the above argument is sound,
forces a choice. Either both interstate war and terrorism can be justified or neither
can be. For my part, I must confess to being sorely tempted by the latter position,
that neither war nor terrorism can be justified. This temptation is bolstered by
pacifist arguments, such as that presented by Holmes (1989, chapter 6), that the
killing of innocents is a perfectly predictable effect of modern warfare, the impli­
cation of which is that no modem war can be just. That is, even if we can imagine
a modern just war, it is not a realistic possibility. Though the pacifist position is
tempting, it also seems clear that some evils are great enough to require a re­
sponse, even a violent response. And once we grant that states may respond vio­
lently, there seems no principled reason to deny that same right to certain nons­
tate groups that enjoy a right to self-determination.

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 About the Contributors 241

tions (Westview, 1996). He is currently working on strategies for dealing with

diversities of belief and culture within societies and across cultures.

George Klay Kieh is an associate professor of political science and international

studies at Morehouse College and was the founding director of the Morehouse
Center for International Studies. His research and teaching interests are in foreign
policy, conflict, international cooperation, political economy, and African poli­
tics. He is the author of numerous articles in academic journals and of Depen­
dency and the Foreign Policy o f a Small Power: The Liberian Case (Edwin Mel­
lon, 1992). He is currently researching state collapse in Africa.

George A. Lopez is a professor of government and international studies and a

fellow of the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses
on gross violations of human rights and other forms of state violence, especially
economic sanctions. He is coeditor of two recent volumes, Peace and Security:
The Next Generation (with Nancy Myers, 1997), and Political Gain and Civilian
Pain: Humanitarian Impacts o f Economic Sanctions (with Thomas G. Weiss,
David Cortright, and Larry Minear, 1997), both published by Rowman and Lit­
tlefield.

Emil Nagengast is an assistant professor of international politics at Juniata Col­

lege in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. His area of expertise is German relations with
East Europe. His articles have appeared in Review o f Contemporary’ German Af­
fairs, European Studies Journal, International Politics, Peace Review, German
Politics, East European Quarterly, and Current Politics and Economics o f Eu­
rope. His is currently working on a book that examines the ideological evolution
of German Ostpolitik.

Andrew Vails is an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College.

His areas of interest include modern political thought, theories of social justice,
applied ethics, and critical race theory. He is a contributor to several edited vol­
umes, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Social Theory and Practice,
The Review o f Politics, American Political Science Review, and Constellations.
He is currently working on a book on racial justice.

David A. Welch is an associate professor of political science at the University of

Toronto. His publications include Justice and the Genesis o f War (Cambridge
University Press, 1993); Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the
Soviet Collapse (with James G. Blight and Bruce J. Allyn; Pantheon, 1993); Cuba
on the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (with
James G. Blight; Hill & Wang, 1989); and articles in Foreign Affairs, Interna­
tional Journal, International Security, Journal o f Conflict Resolution, Ethics and
International Affairs, and Security Studies. He is currently working on decision
making and the Vietnam War.

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