The 33 Strategies of War (89 page)

In a world dominated by appearances, in which value is determined by public presence, terrorism can offer a spectacular shortcut to publicity--and terrorists accordingly tailor their violence to the media, particularly television. They make it too gruesome, too compelling, to ignore. Reporters and pundits can profess to be shocked and disgusted, but they are helpless: it is their job to spread the news, yet in essence they are spreading the virus that can only aid the terrorists by giving them such presence. The effect does not go unnoticed among the small and powerless, making the use of terrorism perversely appealing to a new generation.

Yet for all its strengths, terrorism also has limitations that have proved the death of many a violent campaign, and those opposing it must know and exploit this. The strategy's main weakness is the terrorists' lack of ties to the public or to a real political base. Often isolated, living in hiding, they are prone to lose contact with reality, overestimating their own power and overplaying their hand. Although their use of violence must be strategic to succeed, their alienation from the public makes it hard for them to maintain a sense of balance. The members of Narodnaya Volia had a somewhat developed understanding of the Russian serfs, but more recent terrorist groups, such as the Weathermen in the United States and the Red Brigades in Italy, have been so divorced from the public as to verge on the delusional. Accentuating the terrorists' isolation and denying them a political base should be part of any effective counterstrategy against them.

When Odawara Castle fell to the attackers in the Meio period (the end of the fifteenth century), Akiko, who had been a maid in the service of Mori Fujiyori, the lord of the castle, escaped with a cat which had been her pet for years, and then the cat became a wild supernatural monster which terrorized the people, finally even preying on infants in the village. The local officials joined with the people in attempts to catch it, but with its strange powers of appearing and disappearing, the swordsmen and archers could find nothing to attack, and men and women went in dread day and night. Then in December of the second year of Eisho (1505), priest Yakkoku went up on to the dais at Hokokuji and drew the picture of a cat, which he displayed to the congregation with the words: "As I have drawn it, so I kill it with Katzu!, that the fears may be removed from the hearts of the people." He gave the shout, and tore to pieces the picture of the cat. On that day a woodcutter in the valley near the Takuma villa heard a terrible screech; he guided a company of archers to the upper part of the valley, where they found the body of the cat-monster, as big as a bear-cub, dead on a rock. The people agreed that this had been the result of the master's Katzu!

Terrorism is usually born out of feelings of weakness and despair, combined with a conviction that the cause one stands for, whether public or personal, is worth both the inflicting and the suffering of any kind of damage. A world in which the faces of power are often large and apparently invulnerable only makes the strategy more appealing. In this sense terrorism can become a kind of style, a mode of behavior that filters down into society itself.

In the 1920s and '30s, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan butted heads with the extremely conservative medical societies that dominated almost all aspects of psychoanalytic practice. Realizing the futility of taking on these authorities in a conventional way, Lacan developed a style that can fairly be described as terroristic. His sessions with his patients, for example, were often cut short before the usual fifty minutes were up; they could last any period of time that he saw fit and were sometimes as brief as ten minutes. This deliberate provocation to the medical establishment caused a great deal of scandal, setting off a chain reaction that shook the psychoanalytic community for years. (These sessions were also quite terrorizing for the patients, who could never be sure when Lacan would end them and so were forced to concentrate and make every moment count--all of which had great therapeutic value, according to Lacan.) Having gained much publicity this way, Lacan kept stirring the pot with new provocative acts, culminating in the creation of his own rival school and professional society. His books are written in a style to match this strategy: violent and arcane. It was as if he occasionally liked to throw little bombs into the world, thriving on the terror and attention they got him.

People who feel weak and powerless are often tempted into outbursts of anger or irrational behavior, which keeps those around them in suspense as to when the next attack will come. These fits of temper, like other, more serious kinds of terror, can have a chilling effect on their targets, sapping the will to resist; when the simplest dealings with these people are potentially so unpleasant, why fight? Why not just give in? A violent temper or outlandish act, volcanic and startling, can also create the illusion of power, disguising actual weaknesses and insecurities. And an emotional or out-of-control response to it just plays into the other person's hands, creating the kind of chaos and attention he or she thrives on. If you have to deal with a terroristic spouse or boss, it is best to fight back in a determined but dispassionate manner--the response such types least expect.

Although organized terrorism has evolved and technology has increased its capacity for violence, its essential makeup does not seem to have changed--the elements developed by Narodnaya Volia are still in effect. Yet the question many ask today is whether a new, more virulent kind of terrorism may be developing, one far surpassing the classical version. If terrorists could get hold of more potent armaments, for example--nuclear or biological weapons, say--and had the stomach to use them, their kind of war and the power it may bring them would make a qualitative leap into a new, apocalyptic form. But perhaps a new form of terrorism has already emerged that does not need the threat of dirty weapons to create a more devastating result.

On September 11, 2001, a handful of terrorists linked to the Islamic Al Qaeda movement produced the single deadliest terrorist action to date, in their attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. The attack had many of the earmarks of classical terrorism: a small group, with extremely limited means, using the technology of the United States at their disposal, was able to strike with maximum effect. Here was the familiar asymmetry of forces in which smallness becomes an asset, being inconspicuous within the larger population and accordingly quite difficult to detect. The terror of the event itself set in motion a paniclike reaction from which the United States has still not fully recovered. The drama and symbolism of the Twin Towers themselves, not to mention the Pentagon, created a grotesquely compelling spectacle that gave the terrorists maximum exposure while incisively demonstrating the vulnerability of the United States, often described in recent years as the world's only remaining superpower. There were those around the world who had never imagined that America could be so quickly and seriously harmed but were delighted to find they were wrong.

Many deny that 9/11 was a new form of terrorism. It simply distinguished itself, they say, by the number of its victims; the change was quantitative, not qualitative. And, as in classical terrorism, these analysts continue, Al Qaeda is ultimately doomed to failure: the U.S. counterattack on Afghanistan destroyed their operational base, and they are now the targets of the unbending will of the American government, whose invasion of Iraq was a stage in a grand strategy to rid the region of terrorism in general. But there is another way to look at the attack, keeping in mind the chain reaction that is always the terrorist's goal.

Tests

(1) How can tearing up a picture with a Katzu! destroy a living monster?

(2) That devil-cat is right now rampaging among the people, bewitching and killing them. Kill it quickly with a Katzu! Show the proof!

S
AMURAI
Z
EN
: T
HE
W
ARRIOR
K
OANS
, T
REVOR
L
EGGETT
, 1985

When a man has learned within his heart what fear and trembling mean, he is safeguarded against any terror produced by outside influences. Let the thunder roll and spread terror a hundred miles around: he remains so composed and reverent in spirit that the sacrificial rite is not interrupted. This is the spirit that must animate leaders and rulers of men--a profound inner seriousness from which all outer terrors glance off harmlessly.

T
HE
I C
HING
, C
HINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

The full economic impact of 9/11 is hard to measure, but the ripple effect of the attack is by any standard immense and undeniable: substantial increases in security costs, including the funding of new government programs for that purpose; enormous military expenditures on the invasions of two separate nations; a depressive effect on the stock market (always particularly susceptible to the psychology of panic) and a consequent injury to consumer confidence; hits on specific industries, such as travel and tourism; and the reverberating effect of all these on the global economy. The attack also had tremendous political effects--in fact, the American elections of 2002 and 2004 were arguably determined by it. And as the chain reaction has continued to play out, a growing rift has emerged between the United States and its European allies. (Terrorism often implicitly aims to create such splits in alliances and in public opinion as well, where hawks and doves line up.) September 11 has also had a definite and obvious impact on the American way of life, leading directly to a curtailment of the civil liberties that are the distinguishing mark of our country. Finally--though this is impossible to measure--it has had a depressive and chilling effect on the culture at large.

"It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution--I mean for the
outre
character of its features. The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive--not for the murder itself--but for the atrocity of the murder.... They have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its search for the true. In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before.' In fact, the facility with which I shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of this mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the eyes of the police."

A
UGUSTE
D
UPIN IN
"T
HE
M
URDERS IN THE
R
UE
M
ORGUE
," E
DGAR
A
LLAN
P
OE
, 1809-1849

Perhaps the strategists of Al Qaeda neither intended all this nor even imagined it; we will never know. But terrorism is by its nature a throw of the dice, and the terrorist always hopes for the maximum effect. Creating as much chaos, uncertainty, and panic as possible is the whole idea. In this sense the 9/11 attack must be considered a success to such an extent that it does indeed represent a qualitative leap in terrorism's virulence. It may not have been as physically destructive as the explosion of a nuclear or biological weapon could be, but over time its reverberating power has far surpassed that of any terror attack before it. And this power comes from the altered nature of the world. Given the deep interconnections of the new global scene, whether commercial, political, or cultural, a powerful attack at a single point can have a chain-reactive effect that terrorists of earlier years could never have imagined. A system of interconnected markets that thrives on open borders and networks is intensely vulnerable to this intense ripple effect. The kind of panic that once might stir in a crowd or through a city can now spread over the world, fed spectacularly by the media.

To consider the 9/11 attack a failure because it did not achieve Al Qaeda's ultimate goal of pushing the United States out of the Middle East or spurring a pan-Islamic revolution is to misread their strategy and to judge them by the standards of conventional warfare. Terrorists quite often have a large goal, but they know that the chances of reaching it in one blow are fairly negligible. They just do what they can to start off their chain reaction. Their enemy is the status quo, and their success can be measured by the impact of their actions as it plays out over the years.

To combat terrorism--classical or the new version on the horizon--it is always tempting to resort to a military solution, fighting violence with violence, showing the enemy that your will is not broken and that any future attacks on their part will come with a heavy price. The problem here is that terrorists by nature have much less to lose than you do. A counterstrike may hurt them but will not deter them; in fact, it may even embolden them and help them gain recruits. Terrorists are often willing to spend years bringing you down. To hit them with a dramatic counterstrike is only to show your impatience, your need for immediate results, your vulnerability to emotional responses--all signs not of strength but of weakness.

Because of the extreme asymmetry of forces at play in the terrorist strategy, the military solution is often the least effective. Terrorists are vaporous, spread out, linked not physically but by some radical and fanatic idea. As a frustrated Napoleon Bonaparte said when he was struggling to deal with German nationalist groups resorting to acts of terror against the French, "A sect cannot be destroyed by cannonballs."