success and failure, but what do these commonplace concepts mean in irregular warfare
against terrorists? The ever-essential Mao advises that ‘There is in guerrilla warfare no
such thing as a decisive battle’ (Mao, 1961: 52). His maxim applies no less to terrorism.
As a general rule, CT is a protracted attritional struggle of political wills. It is waged pre-
eminently by the police and other security services, with the military typically in reserve.
And the most important weapon in the arsenal of the counter-terrorist is information.
All terrorist organizations eventually come to the end of their strategically unnatural
lives. They may persist for decades, but generally they do not remain a potent force for
very long. Usefully, Christopher Harmon has identified six reasons why terrorist
movements end (Harmon, 2006: 232–7):
- The regime strikes back with overwhelming force and crushes the movement.
- The regime suppresses the terrorists by means of comprehensive, hard measures.
- The regime arrests or kills ‘the individual who is its centre of gravity’, its charis-
matic, or at least its key, leader. The terrorist organization is thus decapitated. - The terrorist movement simply fades away through sheer fatigue. Once dedicated
and apparently selfless terrorists can suffer a terminal ‘failure of will’. - The terrorists may be absorbed into normal politics or civilized life. In other words,
they go legitimate and join the political mainstream. This has happened many times.
The contemporary political history of Northern Ireland has registered the
phenomenon of former terrorists, or at least organizers of terrorism, in government. - Finally, the terrorists might ‘win’. In the twentieth century, many irregular bellig-
erents who employed terrorism extensively seized or otherwise achieved state power.
Leading examples include the Bolsheviks, the Maoists, the Castroites, the Algerian
FLN and the Khmer Rouge.
The question ‘What is success?’ for a terrorist organization does not lend itself to a
simple answer. Some terrorists seek state power: they want to govern, even though their
way of life as terrorists should disqualify them from doing so. Terrorists aspiring for high
office have a way of continuing to behave like terrorists when in such office. Others are
content just to help the march of history proceed in what they perceive as the right
direction. Yet others may be satisfied with the conviction that they are instruments of
righteousness, however defined. Their atrocities are strictly cases of expressive violence.
As usual in strategic history, one size of theory does not fit all situations. For the
CT side, although total eradication is the nominal aim, and is even achieved occasionally,
in practice a more modest aim must define success. Pragmatically, a government will
tend to be satisfied if it is able to contain and reduce terrorist outrages to a level that is
politically and socially tolerable. That may sound callous, but it is realistic and practical.
And strategy is nothing if it is not practical. The prudent CT strategist will strive for
victory in traditional military understanding, with the last terrorists emerging from their
hiding-place with their hands in the air, or remaining in their hideout permanently,
suitably riddled with bullets. But, pragmatically, a CT campaign will have succeeded well
enough if it manages to scale down the atrocities to a very low rate of occurrence. They
will continue to be a nuisance, and certainly a tragedy in their human consequences, but
they will cease to be a political factor of much significance.
258 War, peace and international relations