The Foreign Service Journal, December 2006

inclination to seek solutions through the threat or actual use of force abroad. As a corollary, we need a major shift in tone and style in our practice of diplomacy, away from criticizing, cajoling, denouncing and threatening toward greater reliance on consulting, listening and negotiating —both with allies and with potential or actual adversaries. For example, in many situations unilateral action has been of limited effectiveness at best. I would hope we have now learned that some of our armed interventions abroad, while demonstrating our overwhelming military power, have also made matters worse rather than better. Instead, let us rely more on alliances and multilateral organizations to police threats to international stability and order. A second overall change would be to abandon the so- called “war on terror” or the “war on terrorism.” We should cancel this so-called war — the term, the concept, the project. Terrorism is not an ideology, program, move- ment or organization, so by definition it cannot be an enemy — and, therefore, it cannot be a target. It is a tac- tic , a violent one to be sure, used mostly by the weak against the strong in an effort to alter the odds in a strug- gle: for example, in a struggle by the occupied against the occupier (e.g., Vietnam, Palestine, and now Iraq), or by the colonized or oppressed seeking liberation (e.g., Algeria, South Africa). So long as the underlying griev- ances persist, such a “war” will never end. It should also be abundantly clear, as the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (slated to be partially declassified and released as I write in late October) acknowledges, that the tactics used to fight such a “war” have only suc- ceeded in creating more terrorism and more terrorists in more places. A “war on terror” makes as little sense as a “war on bombing,” or on artillery, or on invasion, or on occupa- tion, or a “war on assassination.” Intelligent people have been asking when the “war on terror” will end. The answer usually offered is that it will end only when all the terrorists are killed or captured or convicted and sent to prisons. When will that be? Never, of course. We might as well ask when will all the new enemies we have creat- ed give up the fight against us and surrender to be incar- cerated in our prisons. Who would like to predict the date of that outcome? Moreover, terrorism in the Middle East is not the cause of the violence we face. It is primarily the response to occupation by those too weak to use any other tactic. We simplistically label groups fighting against occupation (e.g., Hamas and Hezbollah) “terrorist organizations” because they resort to the only tactic available to them. Once those occupations end, we will see a great reduc- tion in violence, as Louise Richardson explains in her new book-length study, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat. Richardson cites the case of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. That he became a statesman in the 1970s does not alter the fact that he was a terrorist in the 1940s. But Richardson uses that term to describe, not demonize. As she points out, it is simply a fact that Begin, like his counterparts in the Red Brigades, the Tamil Tigers, Hamas, al-Qaida and countless other groups, was a terrorist. This does not mean that he was an evil monster forever beyond understanding, or that he was insane or a criminal, or that he had no legitimate motive for the violence he committed. It simply means that he used violence against civilian targets for political ends; i.e., he was a terrorist. Used in this fashion, of course, the word “terrorist” has quite a different value than it does in the way it is cus- tomarily used in the American press, where it is a virtual synonym for “evildoer.” Richardson rejects the wide- spread notion that “to understand or to explain terrorism is to sympathize with it.” She makes it clear that she regards the intentional targeting of civilians as profound- ly immoral. But she, in effect, brackets or suspends issues of morality, focusing first on other characteristics of terrorism. This astringent, detached perspective allows her to situate terrorism in a larger historical and social context without falling into facile judgments or general- izations. True Support for Democracy A third general change would be to deep-six the cur- rent administration’s democracy promotion program, in F O C U S 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 6 Robert V. Keeley retired from the Foreign Service in 1989 with the rank of career minister after 34 years. He served three times as ambassador: to Greece (1985- 1989), Zimbabwe (1980-1984) and Mauritius (1976- 1978). In 1995, he founded Five and Ten Press, a small, independent publishing company dedicated to bringing out original articles, essays and other short works of fiction and non-fiction that have been rejected or ignored by mainstream outlets.