states use force against those who are deemed to break the law. This force can be
characterised as political violence. The political violence of the liberal state is usually
implicit since attempts are made to regulate and limit the use of force by state
functionaries. This political violence becomes explicit when states (like the current
Israeli state) espouse policies of assassination against their opponents. It is true that
there is a difference between the political violence of small groups and the political
violence of the state (Laqueur, 2003: 237), but the fact remains that while the use
of force can under certain circumstances be justified, it can never be legitimate. We
may have to use violence against those who will not respond to mere social and
moral pressures, in order to create a breathing space in which constructive policies
cementing common interests can be employed. In other words, we need to pay
careful attention to the context in which political violence is used. The leader of
the Palestinian group, Hamas, stated that he regretted the death of women and
children in suicide bombings, and declared that if the international community
supplied his organisation with F-16s and helicopter gunships, they would attack the
military forces of Israel with those instead.
States, in general, claim a monopoly of legitimate force so that the use of force
to tackle conflicts of interest has to be authorised, and in liberal states this means
(as noted earlier) that force is legally regulated and formally limited. Two further
points can be made about the violence of the state. The first is that it is often a
response to violence from within the community, and a stateless society is only
desirable if social order is secured through (what have been called elsewhere)
governmental sanctions. Where government is relatively weak, then a state is
important since it seeks, however partially, to secure a monopoly of force. Second,
where it is impossible to arbitrate and negotiate around conflicts of interest, the
violence of the state is justifiable, although, as argued elsewhere, this must be on
the grounds that the use of violence is the only way to provide a breathing space
to enable policies to be implemented which will cement common interests. Present
violence can only be vindicated if it diminishes future violence.
Nevertheless, the point is that states use violence against violence, and this is a
risky and undesirable business. It may be provisionally justified in the sense that
under the circumstances there is no other way to create a framework for policies
to create common interests, but the elimination of political violence must address
the question of the state: otherwise we normalise and naturalise violence. The belief
that the state is permanent may lead to the argument that political violence is here
to stay. If states use violence against individuals, why should this not be described
as political violence?
George Shultz, Secretary of State under Reagan (president of the USA, 1981–89),
argued that political violence had to be dealt by force – not by mediation and
negotiations which were seen as a sign of weakness (Chomsky, 2003: 48). We have
made the point in the first chapter on the state that violence is becoming easier and
easier to inflict. It is also worth noting that the nature of war itself is changing: as
Freedman points out, we have moved over the past century from a situation in
which ‘90 per cent of the casualties of war were combatants to one where 90 per
cent are civilians’ (2002: 48). The use of violence is becoming more and more costly
in character, while becoming easier and easier to inflict.458 Part 4 Contemporary ideas