Fernando Alcoforado*
Terrorism is used by organizations as a means to an end. Terrorism differs from guerrilla warfare in terms of the targets to be reached in its actions. While the guerrillas choose military targets, the opposing forces, their logistics, ammunition depots, terrorism seeks to indiscriminately target civilian and military targets. Terrorism seeks not only selective attack but also mass attack. A terrorist movement may, depending on the correlation of forces, use simultaneously or separately terrorism, guerrilla warfare and classic military operations provided it has sufficient capacity. This is the case with al Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State that emerged in the Middle East.
Terrorist action has always been seen in the past in a revolutionary context. The most common purpose of terrorism in the past was to cause a state of fear in government or loss of confidence by specific sectors of the population supporting it. Terrorism is often the last resort of the desperate, and can be used by large or small organizations. Terrorism depends heavily on surprise and often occurs when and where it is least expected. In the past, terrorism avoided killing and injuring women, children, and the elderly or other innocents. Nowadays, terrorism no longer delimits those who will be hit or not by their actions. The term terrorism came to be more widely used in history from 1793 in Robespierre’s France during the regime of the Terror of the French Revolution.
In an article published in Revista Espaço Acadêmico, no. 51, August 2005, under the title A questão do terrorismo e suas raízes históricas (The issue of terrorism and its historical roots), Lejeune Mato Grosso Xavier de Carvalho, Unesp Foundation sociologist, professor at Unimep, member of the Lisbon Academy of High Studies and member of International Sociological Association states that one can roughly classify the actions that one calls “terrorists” into four types: 1) religious and fundamentalist terror (in the case of extremist Muslims, Christians and Jews who often make their bodies a weapon of war); 2) those of the mercenary type (those whose interest is the money); 3) the nationalists (such as the Irish Republican Army – IRA in Ireland and ETA in the Basque country); and 4) the ideological ones, whether they are leftists who fight for social or right-wing changes aimed at maintaining the status quo.
Another form of terrorism not mentioned by Lejeune Mato Grosso Xavier de Carvalho is state terrorism. Modernly, the term state terrorism emerged during the Cold War to designate Operation Condor, which was a strategy of repression common to the dictatorial governments of South America in the 1970s, to confront the far left movements, notably in Brazil, in the Chile and Argentina. The term state terrorism has become common in the denunciation of repressive practices by the secret services that have resulted in murder, torture, censorship of the media, and utilization at last a series of state-based violence similar to those employed in terrorism. Despite having the same consequences but being quite different in methods, political repression in dictatorial states is often associated with terrorism, such as Terror during the Rosbepierre French Revolution, repression in Nazi Germany-occupied Europe and dictatorships in America. Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, among other exception regimes worldwide.
The world is currently experiencing two types of globalized terrorism: 1) the terrorism practiced by the great imperialist powers, especially by the ruling sectors of the United States and their allies aiming at the conquest of natural resources and the domination of the markets of the peripheral capitalist countries; and 2) the terrorism practiced by organizations that react to imperialist action around the world, especially Arabs, combating the military occupation of their countries by the great imperialist powers, as occurs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, among others countries.
The imperialism practiced by the great western powers against the peripheral capitalist countries has meant war and terrorism throughout history. Of all the violent forces that have emerged to date throughout history, it has been imperialism (German, British, French and American, among others) who has committed the greatest crimes against humanity – from inter-imperialist wars such as World War I and World War II to the so-called limited wars such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the sponsorship of terror regimes such as military dictatorships implemented through coups d’état in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, including Brazil. Through regimes subordinate to its interests, the United States government and its allies sponsored all possible acts of terrorism, including illegal arrests and detentions, torture, murder, among other actions. Thousands of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America have suffered from these acts of state terrorism.
Over the past 20 years, the US government and its allies have unleashed five wars of aggression on a large scale – those of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria – and in the process have profited from spoils such as oil resources, while the peoples of these countries have suffered terribly from imperialist terror in all these wars of aggression. The most recent targets of the United States and its allies are the attempted overthrow of the Assad regimes in Syria and the Ayatollahs in Iran with Israeli support. What makes such wars extremely abhorrent is the cowardice of using airpower with even the use of unmanned drones and other high-tech weapons to bomb and massacre the civilian population, destroy infrastructure including dams, power plants , hospitals, kindergartens, schools, factories, office buildings, churches and the media.
The United States and its imperialist allies are responsible for the economic and social ruin of the world’s peripheral countries. It also instigates ethnic and religious conflicts, generating civil rivalries and massacres. The United States is humanity’s number one aggressor and terrorist. No matter how much be, occasionally shocking the activity of small private terrorist groups they are all tiny in the face of US super terrorism. Internally, the United States government is oppressing immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America and, above all, those who belong to the Islamic faith. They enacted the fascist Patriot Act during the Bush administration, under the guise of anti-terrorism, imposing on other countries the model of undemocratic legislation and draconian measures.
The US government is urging the repression of the countries under its tutelage to make arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, military courts against civilians, killings or kidnapping of anti-imperialist leaders to stand trial in their own controlled courts. In addition, the CIA is granted permissions to assassinate anti-imperialist leaders abroad, as practiced by the United States in drone killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, chief of Iran’s Quds intelligence force, last Thursday (2/1/2020). The escalation of globalized terror finds fertile ground for its proliferation with state terrorism practiced by the United States government.
The history of humanity has been characterized for centuries by the victory of barbarism over civilization. Civilization and Barbarism are antonyms, meaning words with opposite meanings. According to the dictionary, Civilization is a word imbued with qualities, that is, it includes the educated goods, those who live in society, in short, those that conform to pre-established standards. In contrast, Barbarism is the state in which barbarians live and these are those without culture, without civilization, violent, cruel, in short, those who do not fit pre-established standards. If the concept of civilized does not apply to people on the capitalist periphery because they are not well educated, the concept of barbarian applies more than that of civilized to those who consider themselves civilized (US and European governments) because they are violent, cruel and do not conform to established civilizational standards.
The current situation on the planet is dramatic. Humanity is overwhelmed by the great world powers at the service of the monopolistic groups that rule their economies and do everything in their own interests, disrespecting laws, cultures, traditions and religions. Invasions into peripheral countries, openly or surreptitiously, are carried out in violation of international laws and treaties. From its origins as a mode of social production in the sixteenth century, capitalism has been characterized by barbarism, which means savagery, cruelty, inhumanity, and incivility. Massacres, genocides and multiple forms of human degradation characterize capitalism in its historical development. It is in the capitalist periphery that capitalism exposes its most barbaric face. This is what capitalism has been doing all over the world, destroying it for money, killing it for wealth and power, making lives no longer worth anything, all for power and wealth! As long as this situation prevails in the world terrorism tends to proliferate in all quarters of the Earth.
The scenario we currently live on the planet features what Thomas Hobbes called the state of nature or the state of war of all against all. According to Hobbes, in the “state of nature”, the absence of law reigns, so there is no room for justice. In this context, everyone seeks to defend their rights by force. In the ‘state of nature’, therefore, as Hobbes had conceived, the war of everybody against everybody reigns. The state of nature is therefore the status of liberty without external law, that is, no one can be obliged to respect the rights of others nor can he be sure that others will respect their own, much less be protected against acts of violence of others [HOBBES, Thomas. Leviatã (Leviathan). Sao Paulo: Ícone Editora]. This is the prevailing situation in current international relations.
There is not at present what Hobbes calls common power on the world level, that is, the agreement of all to go out of the state of nature to establish a situation that allows each one to follow the dictates of reason, with the certainty of that others will do the same. The attempt to form the League of Nations after World War I and the UN after World War II was not able to establish a common interstate power at the world level to prevent the war of everybody against everybody. This is, according to Hobbes, the preliminary condition for peace. Hobbes states that the state of nature is a state of insecurity and that the purpose of the common power is to remove the causes of this insecurity. The main cause of insecurity is the lack of a common world power and the only way to do this is for all states to consent to surrender their own power by transferring it to a legal entity, such as the restructured UN.
Until humanity builds a common world power, the law of the jungles will prevail, that is the state of nature on the international plane. As long as the political, economic and military hegemony of the United States prevails that seeks to impose its will in the context of the interstate system, the war of everybody against everybody will prevail. Until the emergence of a common world power, that is, a world government, the law of the more strong will govern international relations. Moreover, this is the worst-case scenario because no country, however powerful, will be able to avoid the war of everybody against everybody.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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