Terrorism as Power over Death
Flag of jihad flying in Rotterdam, 2014, photo by Wouter Engler via Wikimedia Commons
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,053, January 1, 2019
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Opposing terrorism,
especially jihadist terror, has become a continuous security obligation
of the US, Europe, and of course Israel. Still, too little serious
analytic attention has been directed towards identifying remedies for
such perils. These remedies should build upon an understanding of
terrorism as a tool in the search for personal immortality.
While counterterrorism specialists correctly
devote considerable attention to the influences of martyrdom and jihad,
not much cogent analysis has explored jihad’s deep underlying promise of
power over death. Ultimately, it is the appeal of that promise
that can determine the success or failure of terrorist movements. How,
then, can this most exhilarating appeal be countered?
Any purposeful policy response must be theoretical
and knowledge-based, not merely anecdotal or narrowly deductive.
Whoever the jihadist enemy of the moment may be, the true struggle is
never just about territory, sovereignty, geography, or democracy.
Always, whether we are referencing fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,
Yemen, the West Bank, or Gaza, the jihadist enemy seeks something much
more compelling and personal.
That special “something” is life everlasting.
Certain obvious questions should now arise. How
can we combat such an incomparable and unchallengeable form of
adversarial power? Can any earthly promise compete successfully with
religion-based offers of immortality?
Our answers, however partial and tentative, must
be based upon well-reasoned analyses. They must be fully civilizational
and densely cultural. And they will have little or nothing to do with
the application of military force.
To deal successfully with jihadist foes, it must
be acknowledged that counter-terrorism is never primarily an operational
problem. If it were, the threat would be more readily susceptible to
narrowly tactical remedies.
Sometimes, scientific truth is counterintuitive.
For example, jihadist terror has little to do with land, politics, or
strategy. Ultimately, it reveals itself as an expression of “sacred
violence” – that is, of doctrinally based harms directed against
designated apostates, heretics, or outright unbelievers. At its heart,
this ever-expanding network of orchestrated homicide now represents an au courant
form of religious sacrifice. A longstanding historical practice,
religious sacrifice stems from pre-modern customs (not necessarily
Islamic), practices that link each planned suicide’s “martyrdom” to a
proper victim.
Are there any available diplomatic solutions for jihad? Such plainly sacrificial violence expresses Istishhad,
or “Death in the path of Allah.” Consequently, it would seem that there
can be little or no room for negotiations. For the US and the West in
general, most notably Israel, there might never be any advantage to
offering concessions or any other manifestations of compromise.
For Hamas, the Israeli enemy is more than just a
geostrategic opponent. It is, rather, a delegated “religious” target
slated for annihilation, one whose obligatory and violent elimination
will confer blessedly eternal life upon the Islamic sacrificer. “I
swear,” declares the Hamas Covenant,
“by the holder of Muhammad’s soul that I wish to invade and be killed
for the sake of Allah, then invade and be killed, and then invade again
and be killed.”
The deepest roots of jihadist terror originate, at
least in part, from those cultures that embrace certain views of
sacrifice. In all of these “sacred violence” contexts, the purpose of
sacrifice extends far beyond civic necessity. Here, sacrificial practice
becomes a passionate and fully ritualized expression of religious
fervor.
Such sacrifice stems from a desperately hoped-for conquest over death.
To us, in the West, such faith-based hopes may
sound unconvincing. Still, in this arena of world politics, there can be
no greater power than power over death. After all,
more-or-less persuasive promises of immortality underlie virtually all
major systems of religious belief. Yet, for one reason or another, this
fact remains neglected or misunderstood in Washington, Jerusalem, and
other major Western capitals.
Martyrdom operations have always been associated
with jihad. These missions are ostensibly based upon long-codified
Muslim scripture. Unequivocal and celebratory, jubilant invocations of
this particular species of warfare can be found in the Qur’an and in
certain canonical hadith.
For the US, Europe, and especially Israel, the
security implications of any adversarial fusions of religious doctrine
and violence warrant careful reexamination. A jihadist terrorist, firmly
convinced that violence against the US, Europe, or Israel will lead
directly to martyrdom, will likely never be deterred by ordinary threats
of military or armed reprisal. This “faithful” criminal will be
encouraged to commit further atrocities by territorial surrenders and/or
prisoner exchanges.
What is the policy bottom line of all this? Above
all, it is that our current and projected wars may be largely beside the
point. Whether we are willing to accept it or not, these corrosive wars
are usually just focused on the visible symptoms of enemy pathology and
not on the underlying disease.
Faced with determined adversaries who are not only
willing to die, but who actively seek their own deaths in order to
“live forever,” Jerusalem and Washington should finally understand the
limits of narrowly military remediation. These limits could become even
more unmanageable if unconventional war and unconventional terror are at
any time forged against us in synergy.
From their perspective, our jihadist enemies do no
evil. They commit themselves to the killing of Americans, Israelis, and
other despised “unbelievers” with absolute purity of heart. With their
sacred underpinnings, such killings are invariably heroic in the minds
of the perpetrators.
Our main task must be to undermine all such
doctrinal underpinnings. By using our civilizations’ considerable
brainpower, and in conscious conjunction with certain of the more usual
expressions of military firepower, this task can be accomplished. In the
end, our war against jihadist terror must be fought on the primary
battlefield of “mind.”
The war against jihadist terror must become a
preeminently intellectual struggle. In explaining their own orientations
to war, the ancient Greeks and Macedonians did not hesitate to express
their preference for struggles of “mind over mind” over those more
prosaic contests of “mind over matter.” By extension, the best case of
“mind over mind” would allow an enemy to be defeated without any costs
or risks to “matter” – that is, without any actual fighting.
As ancient Chinese military theoretician Sun-Tzu wrote in The Art of War: “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.”
Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue and the author of 12 books and several hundred articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war. The second edition of his Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield) was published in 2018.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
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