What Can Be Done About Terrorism?

How nations can prevent terrorism, a question raised anew by the kidnaping of Aldo Moro, has become an even more urgent matter for Western industrial democracies. Dictatorships of either left or right have police-state forces to control terrorists--and no qualms about brutally using that power. But democracies must walk a thin line between maintaining security and preserving civil rights, both for terrorists and for innocent citizens who would be affected by antiterrorist clampdowns. In an increasingly technological age, warns Washington Psychologist Frank Ochberg, "we are getting more vulnerable every year."

A basic goal of modem urban terrorists is to provoke a repressive response from governments, and thereby alienate the populace, or, if the government does nothing, to underscore its ineffectiveness. Repressive measures become tempting only as terrorism grows in frequency and scale through success. Thus experts argue that one way to control terrorism--eliminating it entirely would appear to be impossible--is for a government to declare a strong, stated policy of how it will respond to terrorism, and then, when it occurs, move swiftly, firmly and with the confidence of its people.

Experts on terrorism are generally agreed on the main points of an effective counterterror strategy. Among them:

International Cooperation. It is evident that Italy's Red Brigades have ties to West Germany's Red Army Faction, the Japanese Red Army and radical Palestinian groups. Hence, for the sake of survival, states threatened by terrorists need to develop new, transnational means of dealing with a common enemy. Some steps in this direction have been taken. Virtually every police force in Western Europe cooperated with the West Germans in trying to track down the killers of Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer last fall. Shortly after the Moro kidnaping, the Interior Ministers of West Germany, Italy and Switzerland met secretly in Bern to discuss ways of increasing cooperation among their antiterrorist forces.

Intelligence and Communication. Effective counterinsurgency is based on good intelligence. Unfortunately, police have found it difficult to infiltrate terrorist cells, partly because new recruits may be forced to commit criminal acts as proof of their zeal. "They are more conspiratorial than KGB agents," says an official in Hamburg. Nonetheless, terrorism can still be foiled by innovative measures. West Germany, for instance, has developed a new system, known as Zielfahndung (target search): teams of police officers select groups of suspects from computer rosters and follow them to learn habits, weaknesses, friends and hangouts, to the point that they can almost predict what the suspects can do or intend to do. As a result, since 1971, police have arrested more than 200 people suspected of being terrorists.

No Concessions. Perhaps terrorism's most powerful ally is universal fear: any innocent traveler or bank customer may suddenly become a hostage. Despite the powerful emotions evoked by the plight of civilian hostages, however, virtually all experts agree that it is better in the long run for a society to refuse to negotiate or to surrender to terrorist demands. Observes Heyward Isham, director of a U.S. Government interagency group set up against terrorism: "A posture of making no concessions to demands may seem coldblooded. But the minute they think they can blackmail you, it leads to an endless chain of demands."

Tough Laws, Tough Penalties. Despite the horrors terrorists have inflicted on Western Europe, the punishment imposed by courts has been surprisingly light. A Rand Corp. study covering the years 1968 to 1976 indicated that terrorists had an almost 80% chance of evading death or imprisonment for their crimes. Stanley Hoffmann, professor of government at Harvard, believes that terrorists have been let off easier because of the "they're all pampered children of the middle class" theory. He is struck by the fact that so many terrorist acts have taken place in West Germany, Italy and Japan, the three defeated Axis powers of World War II. Among the disaffected youth of these countries, he suggests, "there is a sense of shame and disgust with the older generation who rose to prosperity on the bones of a lot of people and won't admit it."

That may be, but it is also true that in all three nations totalitarianism left such a scar that postwar laws were purposely soft. Only recently, to meet a full-flood epidemic of terrorism, has any of the three enacted tougher legislation. West Germany tightened its criminal laws to give police broader search and seizure powers. In Italy, under an emergency decree, terrorist prisoners can be held for up to 24 hours without access to legal aid.

Some contend that the most effective way to control terrorism is to cure the social conditions that inspire today's nihilism--such as unemployment (especially among the young) and a distant, insensitive bureaucratic government. Italian Sociologist Giovanni Statera argues that the alternative of "trying to shore up state institutions by passing repressive antiterrorist laws is like trying to cure a cancerous tumor with hot-water packs." Still, it remains to be seen whether efforts to eradicate economic injustice in a democratic manner would solve the present problem; it is not, after all, the have-nots who are taking to terrorism now. The militant zealots of the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction are largely middle-class youths. Since they offer no program but destruction, it seems unlikely that even significant social and economic improvements would satisfy them. In their case, the democratic imperative is to isolate them from the rest of society without destroying them--and society--by counterterror created out of terror.

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