Can Terrorism Be Defined?

Lisa Stampnitzky

I've titled this chapter with the question "Can terrorism be defined?" But of course terrorism can be defined; the true problem is not a surfeit, but rather a surplus, of definitions. Yet neither experts, nor politicians, nor the lay public has been able to come to an agreement as to which of the many definitions circulating is correct, and the so-called problem of definition has been a central and enduring aspect of both public and expert debate on terrorism. In practice, this discussion most often takes the form of debate over how to differentiate "terrorism" from "not terrorism" and whether or not a particular act qualifies as such.

This chapter does not presume to resolve this dilemma. Rather, I suggest that the single-minded focus on defining terrorism has obscured a perhaps more interesting question: What does terrorism define? I argue in this chapter that if the problem of definition has not been resolved, it may be because struggles over its definition contain within them three questions even more central to contemporary politics:

1. Who is the enemy?

2. When is violence legitimate?

3. What is political?

Rather than presuming that we can resolve the problem of definition, I suggest that attempts to define terrorism, whether by the state or in the realm of public discourse, be understood as struggles over the answers to these questions. I begin this chapter with a brief overview of the emergence of the contemporary concept of terrorism, establishing that the problem of definition was a central feature of the discourse from the start. I then discuss each of the three questions above. I explicate what each of them means, why it is significant, and how its meaning can be read from the way terrorism is defined. I suggest that the answer to the question "What is terrorism?" then tells us (and depends on) the answer to these questions.

The concept of terrorism first began to take shape in its contemporary form in the early 1970s. Before that time, acts of political violence, including hijackings, assassinations, and other acts that we now consider terrorism, were instead most often understood through a discourse of insurgency. Within the framework of insurgency, violence was generally understood to be rational, purposeful, sometimes even justifiable. With the emergence of a discourse dominated by the concept of terrorism, however, in which acts labeled as such came to be understood as fundamentally immoral, "terrorism" came to be understood as rooted in a terrorist identity, rather than as a tactic that any group might adopt. With these changes, the search for explanations of both "terrorism" as an act, and the "terrorist" as a type of person, took off, leading to the emergence of the new field of terrorism studies. Since the discourse of terrorism has taken hold, with each new and subsequent incident, the key question has become "Is this an act of terrorism?" — with the answer guiding both the further questions to be asked and the answers needed to respond.

The problem of definition was thus present almost from the very start. Even terrorism experts have been unable to agree on how terrorism should be defined, and when I interviewed terrorism experts, they themselves often lamented this problem of definition. As Brian Jenkins, former head of terrorism research at the think tank RAND, told me in an interview, "Definitional debates are the great Bermuda Triangle of terrorism research. I've seen entire conferences go off into definitional debates, never to be heard from again." Indicating that this is not a recent phenomenon, we may observe that a 1988 survey of the literature found more than one hundred different definitions in use among terrorism researchers; an observer at a mid-1980s Department of Defense symposium reported that there were "almost as many definitions as there were speakers"; and a 2001 article described a "perverse situation where a great number of scholars are studying a phenomenon, the essence of which they have (by now) simply agreed to disagree upon." At the international level, attempts to develop an international counterterrorism response at the UN faltered throughout the 1970s, in large part because states were unable to agree on what constitutes terrorism (with countries from the Global South, in particular, arguing that the use of violence in national liberation struggles should be excluded).

I began by referencing the "problem of definition" in terrorism studies, characterized by a surplus of definitions and the lack of agreement on any one definition. In fact, the definitions circulating are often not just different but mutually contradictory. Competing definitions commonly suggest that states can or cannot commit terrorism, or that terrorism consists only, or not only, of violence against civilians. Examples of these contradictions are easy to find, not just in abstract debates over definition but also in applications of the label in practice. For example, many will criticize the United States for following a "double standard" — pointing to US support for "terrorists" (violent insurgents who target civilians) such as the Contras in Nicaragua, Renamo in southern Africa, and even Osama bin Laden and his "mujahedeen" fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, while condemning the violence of those it deems enemies. As the saying goes, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

Given this essential contestation...