ABSTRACT
The practitioner and analyst of Russian unconventional warfare in 1812, Denis Davydov, distinguished three levels of violence: (big) war, small war, and “burning one or two granaries” (Laqueur 1976, p. 46), for which he had no name and which I shall call small violence, or microviolence; even if passenger terminals of metropolitan airports or 747s were, in the near future, to be substituted for granaries. What differentiates microviolence—a mere quantity—is that with “small war” you may expect to impose substantial attrition on the enemy at least over the long run, and with “microviolence” not even that.
The numerous writings concerned with “urban guerrillas” and modern “terrorists” have focused on what they do, and—to some extent—on what makes them do it: which environments and personalities dispose to microviolence. Even the most sophisticated treatments, such as the recent analyses by J. Bowyer Bell and Walter Laqueur, do not systematically consider what they thought they were doing, precisely what good it would do.
To be sure, in some cases where microviolence occurs on behalf of a widely shared cause—usually an ethnic one, whether it be Basque, Palestinian, Irish—a large part of the answer is evident. But what about the Weathermen, the Japanese United Red Army, the Italian Brigate Rosse, the West German Rote Armee Fraktion and June 2 Movement? It is with these that I shall largely deal.
Data on their calculations are meager, and those extant are not easily available. Hence the following pages are a very first approximation, much in need of correction, amplification, further illustration. But as no piece of similar structure has, to my knowledge, been written, the present one might yet be useful. I am aware of the disproportion between the importance of the subjects addressed in many of the following sections on the one hand, and their brevity on 4the other hand. But, apart from the faults in what I am saying, this should incite rather than repel.
Not all of the microviolent ones with whom I deal show all of the characteristics I shall describe. It might be a subsequent task to establish major constellations.
Of the factual assertions that enter into the microviolents’ calculations, many are, to put it mildly, dubious; often so clearly that I have left it to the reader to note the contrast with reality.
The microviolent ones inhabit a universe of estimates and preferences strikingly different from that of those who devise and execute countermeasures against acts of terror. If some of the latter gained from the following pages a more vivid understanding of their strange adversaries, this study might be of some use.
Sometimes I shall present reactions attributed to microviolent ones as if they had written this essay; the context will, I trust, convey this. Emphases, unless otherwise stated, are mine.
In analyses of “terrorists” in developed countries acting on behalf of a radicalism which is little shared, one question has often been slighted: how do they make it plausible to themselves that their acts serve the attainment of their goal? The pages to follow aim at drawing a first map of answers.
The essay was written in early 1977. No attempt has been made to incorporate the evidence which has become available since then.
