Terrorism by Any Other Name

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Justified and Unjustified Terrorism

Of the two examples mentioned above, the German anti-partisan operations were clearly unjustified. Most of the people killed in such actions had little, if any, connection to the partisans who were being targeted and, even then, the partisans were fighting against occupiers waging a war of aggression. The air war against Japan is less clear for several reasons. The first is that the raids were, at the time, the only way to effectively target Japanese industry and were also one of the few apparent alternatives to an invasion of the Japanese home islands. However, they were not the only alternative. Prior to the Japanese surrender, the Allies had insisted that Japan surrender unconditionally, while Japan had insisted on keeping its emperor. There is significant evidence that the Allies were aware that Japan likely would have surrendered if the emperor had been allowed to remain in power, a condition which was ultimately accepted. Additionally, even if Japan had not surrendered, Japan has few natural resources and had almost no industrial capacity left by 1945. Further, its air force and navy were almost entirely destroyed by this point in time, meaning that only meager supplies were delivered by submarine. Since this was the case, a blockade of the Japan which allowed through only food and other basic necessities of life would have been effective in preventing further loss of life and in preventing the Japanese from continuing to attack (Pape, 1996). Because two viable alternatives existed which accomplished the same goals with significantly less loss of life and because the actions which were taken almost exclusively affected civilians while leaving military forces untouched, the actions which were undertaken were unjustified acts of terrorism.

However, the fact that these two representative examples were unjustified does not necessarily imply that all terrorism is unjustified. The “Forest Brothers” were group in the 1940s and 1950s who could arguably be called terrorists. They were descended from the partisans on the Eastern front in WW2. After the Soviet forces recaptured Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic Republics, these groups switched from fighting the Axis forces to fighting the USSR. During this fight, they used guerrilla warfare, bombed Soviet government buildings, and took other measures in common with terror groups. While their chances for ultimate victory were obviously limited, had they been able to win, it would have been by using violence to dissuade the USSR from continuing to occupy the Ukraine and the Baltic Republics. Because of the hostile environment in which they operated, they were reliant upon civilian support and thus strictly avoided targeting non-combatants (Daumantas & Luksa, 2009).

In this, they were extremely dissimilar from a number of other terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida or the ISIS pseudo-state in that those groups depend upon “maximalist” violence, upon finding new and ever more horrifying ways of killing civilians, perceived enemies, and nearly everyone else who has not either submitted to the group or joined it. The crucial point for understanding whether a particular group's terrorism is potentially justified or not is understanding how much it targets, respectively, civilians, government/military forces, civilian property, and government/military property. A group which targets civilians can never be justified while one which mainly targets property and occasionally targets government/military targets is somewhat less likely to be unjustified. Terrorism, then, is a malum prohibitorum when it is directed against and only against the person or property of people or groups which are actively involved in oppression to the greatest extent that can reasonably be expected and a malum in se when it is directed against the innocent, when it is used to further an obviously unjust or immoral cause, or when the violence used is grossly disproportionate to the violence needed to accomplish the goal (Davis, 2006).

Large States and Small States

As was shown above, conventional states, groups that aspire to be states, and terrorist groups are capable of terrorism and this terrorism can be seen as being just or unjust based on the reason for which it was used, the groups against which it is used, and how much violence it involves. However, while the moral dimension of warfare does not change because on the size and type of group involved, the particular style of warfare often changes based on the type of group involved (Patterson, 2008). For instance, a state which wishes to wage war can opt to draw upon its industrial and human resources to broaden the conflict (as the USSR did in World War 2 by fielding as many soldiers as possible) or it can opt to increase the number of targeted groups (as Germany did on the Eastern front during World War 2) in an effort to more rapidly destroy the opposing forces (Fritz, 2015).

By contrast, an individual, a small group, or a large but poorly trained/equipped group only has the option of increasing the number of targeted groups. Because of this, groups of the second type are much more likely to increase the intensity of a conflict by broadening their list of targets. However, even if this does occur, small groups are able to deploy only a fraction of the violence used by large, developed states. There is, additionally, a further difference – violence by small, poorly armed groups and by terrorist groups is much more likely to “make the news” and draw condemnation than is similar violence carried out by developed states, even when the only difference between the two is that the smaller group must use lower-tech means of inflicting violence and the resulting casualty toll is smaller than that created by a similar high-tech attack carried out by a developed state (Johnson, 2007)

References

Daumantas, J., & Luksa, J. (2009). Forest brothers: The account of an anti-Soviet Lithuanian freedom fighter, 1944-1948. Budapest: Central European University Press.

Davis, M. (2006). Crimes Mala in Se: An Equity-Based Definition. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 17(270), 270-289.

Diamond, J. (1998). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York, NY: W.W. Norton &.

Fritz, S. (2015). Ostkrieg: Hitler's war of extermination in the East (Reprint ed.). Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

Hastings, M. (2012). Inferno: The world at war, 1939-1945 (Reprint ed.). New York, NY.

Johnson,