NewsAndAnalysis.org

State-tolerated terrorism brews another storm

15 July 2006

 

Israel acknowledges that the government of Lebanon has little control over Hizballah, which operates from its territory.  Yet, Israel demands that the Lebanese government take greater steps toward disarming Hizballah and holds the Lebanese government responsible for Hizballah's actions.  Tolerance by Lebanon for Hizballah, Israel claims, is unacceptable.  Now, India claims that the terrorists who killed more than 200 people on July 11 in Mumbai were given support from within Pakistan.  As with Israel, India is holding Pakistan accountable for terrorists operating from its soil, and the tenuous peace between two nuclear rivals is at stake.

 

On September 11, 2001, within hours of the attacks, President Bush declared of the perpetrators: "We [the U.S.] will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."  Bush's principle is being adopted by other nations.  Israel's military actions in Gaza and Lebanon go beyond its traditional policy of proportional retaliation (i.e., a Palestinian bombing results in a targeted killing or a house demolition) and seeks to establish a framework of deterrence with the nations that harbor the terrorist groups.  By holding Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority responsible for Hamas and Hizballah, Israel is attempting to create a more stable framework for dealing with these nations.

 

India, which is working to establish its nuclear deterrence framework with Pakistan, is aiming for the same goal.  By holding Pakistan accountable for terrorist acts committed against India that were planned inside Pakistan, India is attempting to establish the norms of behavior among nations necessary for deterrence to work and that will allow stability to emerge.

 

Deterrence requires that symmetry be established among the nations involved, such as a nuclear threat being matched by a nuclear threat without other threats disturbing the balance.  Terrorism, which is an asymmetric form of warfare, prevents that symmetry from taking effect, leaves violent acts on the menu of policy options, and threatens escalation of conflict, which is particularly disconcerting for nuclear nations, such as India and Pakistan.

 

President Bush's principle, that no nation should be allowed to harbor terrorists, is gaining new support as the mechanism that will permit nations to engage each other directly in dialogue, rather than indirectly through violence.  International stability could be improved as a result.