The document discusses the history of terrorism in three stages. It begins by summarizing a New Yorker article describing the shock experienced by Muslims after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the abolition of the Islamic caliphate in the early 20th century. This created a sense of humiliation that continues to influence the Muslim world. It then discusses how the author plans to study the history of terrorism to better understand the present and move toward peace in the future. The summary provides context on some early groups considered terrorist, including Jewish Zealots resisting Rome, the Hashashin assassins of the 11th century, and European pirates of the 16th-18th centuries.

1. TERRORISM, A HISTORY: STAGE ONE
*
S HARON H ARZENSKI
Table of Con tents
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
II. BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
A. Definitional Difficulties: Political
Action or Crim inal Condu ct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
III. REVOLUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
A. A Terrorist Tree: Evolution in Action . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
IV. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
A. Fruits of the Poisonous Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
“Our cultures, our histories, grasp us with a thousand
invisib le fingers. . . . [E]ach country is inhabited not
only by its citizens but also by gh osts from the p ast
and by phantasm s from im aginary futures or sain ts
1
from lands outside time.”
* In order to write I am obliged to dedicate. Because this piece so often concerns
revolutionaries and because revolutionaries are, for many of us, romantic “outlaw” figures,
and be cau se w e su ffer for o ur i llus ion s, I ded icate the work to culture heroes. And, because
m y husba nd is one o f the culture heroes of our generation , especially to h i m a n d to our
communal redemption, I dedicate this work.
Whisky Ja ck sh oo k h is h ea d. ‘I ’m a cu ltu re h ero ,’ he s aid . ‘We do
t h e sam e shit gods do, we just screw up more and nobody worships u s.
They tell stories about us, but they tell the ones that ma ke us look bad
al on g w ith th e o ne s w he re we ca m e o ut fa irly o ka y.’
N EIL G AIMAN , A MERICAN G ODS 400 (2001 ). In additio n , I w o u ld lik e to ex pre ss m y
appreciation to the Jam es E. Beasley School of Law for their continuing financial support and
encourag em ent.
1. R OBERT C ONQUEST , R EFLECTIONS ON A R AVAGED C ENTURY 29 (2000). My youth cut
across the 1 960 -197 0 era of Civil Rights, hippies, anti-war protests, with all the accompanying
violence asso ciated with these m ovem ents. F rom Rev erend Ma rtin Luthe r King to the Bla ck
Panthers; from the death of Freedom Riders to the bombing of churches; from People’s Pa rk
to Altamont; from the Peace Movement to Four Dead in Ohio; from anti-wa r ma rches to trial
of the Chicago 8; from W e Shall Overcome t o the W e at he rm e n; th is wa s m y cu lt ure , m y
history. Its ghos ts w ill alwa ys w hispe r their h opes to m e; its gho uls w ill always wa rn me of
the danger of wanting without wisdom . The particular memory that connects those days with
this stu dy of te rrorism hap pen ed on e da y in 19 71 w hile sittin g throu gh an interm ina b le
s t ra tegy sess ion. It occu rred to m e tha t “Co m e the R evolut ion” m y friend s an d I, em broiled
revolutionaries, would be no m ore able tha n our current go vernm ent to love th e p e o p le,
generate jus tice o r w alk ha nd -in -h an d in to a b et te r w orld . W e ha d b eco m e the enemy. That
ended the revolution for me. But, I never forgot the intense dedication to a cause that burned
so brightly. I never forgot what it was like to look into the light. And, because I never forgot,
those who str ug gle ag ain st o pp res sio n a re a lw ay s m y b rot he rs a nd sis ter s. The w ay I see it,
but fo r a m om ent of h um ility in an otherwise arrogant life, I could have died at Ruby R idge,
joi ne d T im ot hy M cV eig h’s Oklah om a horror story or fou nd m yself lending sup port to Os am a
137

2. 138 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
“Epochal mom ents belong rightly to history, and it is
history that h olds th e only hope of providing an
understanding of the twisted road that has brought
2
us to th is frighten ing pass.”
“So long as the past and the present are outside one
anoth er, know ledge of the past is not of mu ch use in
the present. But suppose the past lives on in the
present . . . and [is] at first sight hidden beneath the
present’s contra dictory a nd m ore p rom inent
3
features.”
I. I NTRODUCTION
4
In a recent New Yorker article, I was exposed to a view of
history previously un kno wn to me. The first glance revealed a
period of “hum iliation and disgrace” w hich began for many Muslims
in 1918 with the defeat of the O ttoman sultan ate by W estern
5
European forces. Shortly thereafter, when Turkish nationalists
were able to regain territorial control from the French and British,
the sultanate, the Ottoman sovereign, the caliph, head of all Sunni
Islam, the last personality to inherit authority through a lineage
6
directly connected the Prophet Muha mm ad, was abolished.
Finally, the caliphate itself, a rocky but essentially unbroken
tradition, a symbol of Muslim unity and identity for thirteen
7
centuries, was eradicated.
Lew is, the author of the New Yorker article, points to resulting
shock waves that co ntinu e to be experienced in the Muslim
commu nity. I can well understand th e fact of this type of historic
shock. I was raised in a tradition where the destruction of a Tem ple
not long after the beginning of the Christian era was taught as a
bin La de n. I never want to call these people names, dehum anize them, dem onize them,
degrade or belittle the m . Th ey a re n ot s o d iffer en t fro m m e. O n th e ot he r ha nd , I do not want
to be mu rdered or to have my friends, family, and fellow citizens slaughtered or tormented
by those who find themselves trapped in violence. So, it is here, acknow ledging tha t we are
capa ble of endangering ourselves and others to ach ieve our projected ends, that I w ant to sta rt
my exploration of history.
2. C ALEB C ARR, T HE L ESSONS OF T ERROR: A H ISTORY OF W ARFARE A GAINST
C IVILIANS— W HY I T H AS A LWAYS F AILED AND W HY I T W ILL F AIL A GAIN 5 (20 02).
3. J ONATHAN G LOVER , H UMANITY : A M ORAL H ISTORY OF THE T WENTIETH C ENTURY 411
(199 9) (citing R . G. C OLLINGWOOD, A UTOBIOGRAPHY (197 8)).
4. Be rna rd L ew is, The Revolt of Islam , T HE N EW Y ORKER , Nov. 19, 2001, at 50.
5. Id.
6. Id. at 50-51.
7. Id. at 51.

3. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 139
trauma from which there was no complete recovery. Having been
raised among Rom an Ca tholics, I can im agine the deep disturbance
the loss of the Pope, as Father of the Church, would cause. When
the Dalai Lama w as forced into exile by the Chin ese, th e shock to
that Buddhist com mu nity wa s eviden t. Imagine the ramifications
8
had “foreign imp erialists and dom estic modernists” — the forces
Lew is identifies as being held responsible for the loss of the
caliphate— been capable of eradicating completely the person and
position of this religiou s leader.
The secon d glance re vealed a world un ified by religion, not
9
nationality. Wh ile I know this world well from my childhood and
from my studies of pre-Reformation Europe, my ignorance of Middle
Eastern history had veiled its vitality in the Muslim comm unity.
Nation-states and the form of nationalism associated with the m a re
10
relatively new inhabitants of the world commu nity. Tribal and
religious collectives, loyalties, and identities are far olde r. The ir
strength draws from the deepest possible affiliations known to
11
hum ankind. It would be foolh ardy to look upon a co mmunity
united throu gh religion and anticipate an eq uivalent regard for
political affiliations.
The third revelation exposed a previously unfamiliar view of the
United States as a threatening monolithic empire. From the
vantage point of a once powerful Islam brought low by “foreign
imp erialists and domestic modernity,” a degree of safety was
achieved as the tensions between imperialist superpowers kept
them off balan ce. The failure of the Soviet system left the United
12
States singular and unrivaled. No compensating patron existed
for Islam ic interests. As L ewis puts it, “Middle Easterners found
themselves obliged to mobilize their own forces of resistance. Al
13
Qaeda—its leaders, its spo nsors, its fin anciers— is one such force.”
There is more to this particular history: the international and
unwelcomed imposition of Israel; the support by the United States
of tyrannical governm ents; the poverty of many in the M iddle East
along with the extravagant wealth of others in the same comm unity;
the role of jihad in Islamic tradition; the unbridgeable distinctions
8. Id.
9. Id.
10. Id.
11. Matthew 8:21 (The Oxford Annotated Bible) (“Another of the disciples said to him ,
‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father,’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and leave the
dead to bu ry their o wn dea d.’”); D AVID S. N OSS & J OHN B . N OSS , M AN ’S R ELIGIONS 106-07 (7th
ed. 198 4) (repo rting th e often repea ted s tory of P rinc e G a u tam a, the B udd ha, w ho left h is
royal fa m ily, wife an d child , renoun cing ho useh old life, to se ek sp iritual re new al).
12. Le wi s, supra note 4, at 51.
13. Id. at 54.

4. 140 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
between strict Islamic and hedonistic Western lifestyles; and the
14
modern history of terrorism.
These aspects are not unimportant details, listed to be
overlooked in favor of the deep, underlying influences of history.
They are , as Collingwood instructed us, the som etimes contradictory
15
and always prominent features familiar to us in the presen t. But
they, by them selves, ma y no t be enough to prepare us to make
informed decisions in the present ab out how to move tow ard a m ore
16
peaceful, resolved future.
Wanting to know how to move tow ard that futu re, I decided to
learn from the past by immersing my self in history. Specifically, I
17
wanted to know more about the history of terrorism. I decided to
14. Id.
15. See G LOVER, supra note 3.
16. I think, not until I mourn with the S unni Is lam ic com m unity o ver the loss of th eir
caliph, can I begin to comprehend the perspectives that influence belief and underlie action.
I think, not until I perceive the overwhelming nature of Un ited Sta tes pow er, can I hope to
c o m p rehend the seemingly futile but horribly painful acts of resistance represented by the
events of September 11th.
17. The constructed history of terrorism begins with the sicari, an extremist group of
Jewish resiste rs activ e during the R o m a n oc cu p a ti on o f P a le s ti ne . I t i s f ro m t hi s g ro u p w e
inherited the word “zealot;” a zealous lot they were. They f ou ght as guerrillas against the
Romans in the countrys ide, attack ing priests and moneylenders, and torched archives and
palaces within Jerusalem. These are the suicidal patriots of Masada and, according to
Josephus Flavius, may have contributed to the destruction of the second Temple, circa 70
C.E ., and thus, to the s e e m i n gly e nd les s D ias po ra o f th e J ew ish pe op le. W ALTER L AQUEUR,
T HE N EW T ERRORISM 11 (199 9). Next, we a re brought into th e eleventh century with the
Order of the A ssas sins (H ash has hin ) , a M uslim sect th at be gan by se izing m ount ain
fortresses, graduated to urban activity and specializing in the assassination of p owerful
individuals. Yo na h A lex an de r, Terrorism i n th e Twenty-First Century: Threats and
Responses , 12 D E P AUL B US. L.J. 59, 65 (1 999 /2000 ). Their goal was the purification of Islam
in preparation for the coming of the M adh i or M essia h. Pa tricia A. L on g, In the Name of God:
Religious Terro rism in the M illenniu m — An An alysis of Ho ly Terror, Government Resources,
and the Co operative E fforts of a Na tion to Res train Its Global Im pact, 24 SUFFOLK
T RANSNAT’L L. R EV . 51 , 56 (20 00 ). The Assassins must be con sidere d in con junctio n w ith the ir
enemies, the Crusaders, who came from Europe to the Holy Land during the same era. They
too sought, throug h violence, to purify the lan d of Jesus ’ birth in what they called a “righteous
war against th e infidel.” Id. Europ ean pirates and privateering during sixteenth and
eighteenth centu ry are m ention ed a s ad ditional episodes o f ter ror ism . Al exa nd er, supra , at
65 ; see also M arc us Re dik er, Th e S ea m an as Pir at e: Plunder and Socia l Ba nditry at S ea, in
B ANDITS AT S EA : A P IRATE’S R EADER 13 9, 1 52 (C . Ri cha rd P en ne ll ed ., 2001) (“The Jolly Roger
. . . a ‘black Ensign, in the Middl e of w h ic h is a large w hite Ske leton’ . . . was intend ed to
terrify the pirates’ prey.”). Research for my Am erican Legal History class revealed a rich and
stimulating supply of sou rces, such as the imp ortation of slaves from A frica to the Am ericas.
H ANNAH A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION 65-66 (1 963) [hereina fter A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION ].
Additional research yields s upportive inform ation. Slavery in the United States is mentioned
as a product, rather tha n a m eth od , of te rro r. C ARR, supra note 2, at 136-37. See A LLEN W .
T RELEASE , W HITE T ERROR: T HE K U K LUX K LAN C ONSPIRACY AND S OUTHERN R ECONSTRUCTION
(197 1), for an intensive investigation into the terrorist activities of the KKK during
Recon struction. Other sources speak about R wanda and South A frica, but these are not
always focu sed on ter ror ism . H UMAN R IGHTS W ATCH , S LAUGHTER A MONG N EIGHBORS: T HE
P OLITICAL O RIGINS OF C OMMUNAL V IOLENCE (1995 ) (covering Rw anda at 13-32 and S outh

5. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 141
investigate the history of terrorism in a formal sense, in the sense
that from a date forward there existed an identifiable class of
political conduct that was called terrorism. According to the
We stern canon, the terrorism I was interested in is first associated
18
with the R eign of Terror in the French Revolution. So, it was to the
French Revolution that I turned. Also, the idea of terrorism, its
justification, is linked to the violence of an oppressed people seeking
19
liberation from the clutches of subjugation. As a resu lt, it was to
Africa at 5 7-7 2). See also P HILIP G OUREVITCH, W E W ISH TO I NFORM Y OU THAT T OMORROW W E
W ILL B E K ILLED WITH O UR F AMILIES : S TORIES F ROM R WANDA (1998). The Maa sai-Kikuyu
conflict in Ke nya , which brou ght th e term “m au m au” in to as sociat ion w ith terro rism , is
mentioned in o ne of m y so urc es. H UMAN R IGHTS W ATCH , supra , at 102-05. S r i L a nka is
mentioned in several sou rces but the emphasis is mostly modern and not solely on the
terrorist ic nature of the problem . H UMAN R IGHTS W ATCH , supra , at 85-10 0; Bruce K apferer,
Remythologizing Discourses: S ta te and Insurrectionary Violence in Sri Lanka, in T HE
L EGITIMIZATION OF V IOLENCE 15 9, 1 59 -88 (D av id E . Ap ter ed ., 19 97 ); L AQUEUR, supra , at 100-
01, 191-96. Chinese and Indian secret societies are mentioned briefly as having long histories
tha t qu ali fy fo r fu rth er in ves tiga tio n. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in China is alluded to as
providing som e re lev an t m at eria l. Id. at 12. Finally, from India, the thuggee, f ro m w h ic h w e
have derived the term “thug,” who strangled their victims as a service to Kali, are noted as
pa rt o f ter ror ist his tor y. Id.
18. Bradley Larschan, L eg al As p ec ts to th e C o nt ro l o f T ra n sn a ti on a l T e rr or is m : A n
Overview, 13 O HIO N .U . L. R EV . 117, 1 23 n .32 (19 86) (citing P AUL. W ILKENSON , P OLITICAL
T ERRORISM 9 (1974) for the p roposition tha t the first usage of “terrorism ” was in reaction to
t h e “system atic po licy of violen ce, intim idatio n an d the use o f the gu illotine b y the J acob in
and Thermidorian movements in revolutionary France.”). 17 O XFORD E NGLISH D ICTIONARY
820-21 (2d ed. 1989) (listing as its first definition of “terrorism”: “Governmen t by intimidation
as directe d an d carrie d out by th e pa rty in power in France during the Revolution of 1789-94;
the system of the ‘terror’ (1793 -4)”; and, as its first definition of “terrorist” it provides: “As a
political term: a. Applied to the Jacobins and their agents a nd pa rtisans in the F rench
Revolution, espe cially to th ose co nnec ted w ith the Rev olution ary trib una ls during the ‘Reign
of Terror.’”). This method ology of looking for and attending to the first use of a particular
t erm , a cco rd s w it h F ou ca ult ’s sy st em of s ea r c hing ou t th e ea rlie st u ses of te rm ino log y. See
M ICHEL F OUCAULT, E THICS: S UBJECTIVITY AND T RUTH (Paul Rabinow ed., Robert Hurley et
al. trans., 1997) (referring especially to chapters covering: The Abnormals, at 51-57 ; Society
Must Be Defended, at 59-65; Technologies of Self, at 223-251; and What is Enlightenment, at
303 -319 ); see also C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 4 (“[I]n Fra nce . . . we first fin d R evolut ion in
the sense of the comp lete destruction of the existing orde r, and its replacem ent by ab stract
concepts—these latter formu lated by, and dictatorially enforced by, theorists with no
expe rience o f real po litics.”).
19. Actually, this issue is pa rt of a definitional debate between those who conclude that
politica lly m otivat ed vio lence s hould n o t a utomatically be labeled terrorism and those who
believe that th e u nl aw ful use of violence to furthe r political or social objectives and /or to
intimida te or coerce governm ents int o ch an gin g p olic ies is e xa ctly wh at ter ror ism is. Com pare
a n d contrast de fini tio ns qu ote d b y L ou is R en é B ere s, The Me anin g O f
Terrorism— Jurisprudential And Definitional Clarifications, 28 V AND. J. T RANSNAT’L L. 239,
240-41 (199 5) (citing R . Ki dd er, Unm asking Terrorism: The Fear of Fear Itself, in V IOLENCE
AND T ERRORISM 14 (Berna rd Schech terma n and Ma rtin W . Slann ed s., 3d ed. 1993 )) which
prom ote the idea th at terrorism is “the u nlaw ful use of violen ce to int im idate or coerce in
fur t h erance of political agenda s,” with the Third W orld Propo sal definition, which s helters
from the label of terrorism the use of violence for self-de term inatio n an d ind epen den ce wh ile
a ttaching the label to the use of violence by colonial racist regimes w ho seek to repress a
pe op le’s strugg le for freed om ; and S tate a ssista nce off ered to fascist or mercenary groups
whose terrorist activities are directed against other sovereign nations. Liam G. B. M urphy,

6. 142 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
A P roposal on Internationa l Legal R espons es to Terrorism , 2 TOURO J. T RANSNAT’L L. 67, 81
n.47 (199 1) (citing Third W orld Proposal, Report of the Ad H oc C om m ittee on International
T erro ris m , 2 8 U .N . G A O R supp. (No. 28) at 21, U.N. Doc. A/9028 (1973)). When, in the 1970s,
the United Nations undertook to draft “An International Convention Against the Taking of
H ost ag es,” the inability of nat ion-sta tes to re ach a n agr eeab le definition of terrorism m oved
the com m unity t o ad opt a piecem eal ins tead of a comprehensive approa ch towa rd restraints
against t er ro ri sm . El iz a be th R .P . Bo we n, N ote , Jurisdiction over Terrorists Who Take
Hostages: Efforts to Stop Terro r-Vio lence Against United States Citizens, 2 A M . U . J. I NT’L
L. & P OL’Y 153 , 191 n .202 (1 987 ) (citing Ve d P . N an da , Progress Report on the U n ited
Nations’ At tem pt T o D raf t A n “I nte rna tio na l C on ven tio n A ga ins t th e T ak ing of H ost ag es," 6
O HIO N .U . L. R EV . 89, 89 (1979)). More than a decade later, “defining terrorism remained a
stumbling block to international agreements. Despite years of effort it was im possible to
definit i on a lly dis tin gu ish be tw een ter ror ist act ivit y a nd na tio na l lib era tio n m ove m en ts.”
Caleb M . Pil grim , Terrorism in National and International L a w , 8 D ICK. J. I NT’L L. 147, 157-
58 (1990). The condit ion ling ers in t his un set tle d s ta te. See Ro be rta Sm ith , N ote , Am erica
Tries To C om e To T erm s W ith Terrorism: The U nited States Anti-Terrorism and E ffective
Death Penalty Act of 1996 v. British Anti-Terrorism Law and International Response, 5
C ARDOZO J. I NT’L & C OMP. L. 249, 25 4-5 5 (1 99 7); see also M ich ae l J. G len no n, The Fog o f L a w :
Self-Defense, Inherence, and Incoherence in Article 51 of the United Nations C harter, 25
H ARV. J.L. & P UB. P OL’Y 53 9, 5 58 (20 02 ); E m an ue l G ros s, Thwarting Terrorist Acts by
Attacking the Perpetrators or Their Commanders as an A ct of Self-Defense: H um an R ights
Vers u s the State’s Duty to Protect its Citizens, 15 TEMP. I NT’L & C OMP. L.J. 195, 200-03
(200 1).
In its modern manifestations, terror is the totalitarian form of war
and politics. It shatters the war conve n t io n and the po litic al c od e. . . .
Desp ite this, terrorism has been defen de d. . . . I t is said, for example,
that there is no alternative to terrorist activity if oppr e s se d peoples are
to be liberated. Those who m ake these argu m ents, I th ink, ha ve lost t heir
grip on the his tor ica l pa st.
Id. at 233. The issue of definition is so controversial that scholars have questioned the
possibility of s olu tio n. N ote , International Terrorism and Islamic Law , 29 C OLUM .J.
T RANSNAT’L L. 62 9, 631 n.7 (19 91) (citing J OHN F. M URPHY, P UNISHING I NTERNATIONAL
T ERRORISTS 3-5 (1985) and A LEX P. S CHMID & A LBERT J. J ONGMAN , P OLITICAL T ERRORISM 1-10
(198 8)); R.R . Ba xte r, A Skeptical Look at the Concept of Terrorism , 7 A KRON L. R EV . 380, 380
(1974) (“We have cause to regret that a legal concept of ‘terrorism’ was ever inflicted upon us.
The term is im precise ; it is ambiguous; and above all, it serves no operative legal purp ose.”).
Compiling m ultiple d efinitio ns is a tec hn iqu e of fere d b y so m e. See Be res , supra , at 240-41;
Murph y, supra ,at 8 1 -8 3 nn.47-50. Still others define terrorism based on the intent of the
perpetrato r.
See Je ffre y A lla n M cC red ie, N ote , The R espons ibility of States for P rivate Acts of
International Terrorism , 1 TEMP. I NT’L & C OMP. L.J. 69 , 69 n.2 (198 5) (citing T ra n T am ,
Crimes of Terrorism a n d I n te rn a ti on a l C r im i n al L aw , in A T REATISE ON I NTERNATIONAL L AW
491 (M. B assio uni ed ., 1973 ); see also N ote , International Terrorism and Islamic Law , 29
C OLUM. J. T RANSNAT’L L. 62 9, 631 n.7 (19 91) (citing B UREAU OF D IPLOMATIC S ECURITY, U.S.
D EP’T OF S TATE, P UB. N O . 9718, S IGNIFICANT I NCIDENTS OF P OLITICAL V IOLENCE AGAINST
A MERICANS: 1988 (198 9), at 2).
Traditional terrorism, whether of the separatist or the ideological
(left or right) variety, had political and social aims, such as gaining
independence, getting rid of foreigners, or establishing a new social order.
Such terrorist group s aim ed a t forcing co ncess ions . . . from their
antagonists. The new terrorism is different in character, aiming not at
clearly defined political demands but at the destruction of society and the
elimination of large sections of the population.
L AQUEUR, supra note 17, at 81. While subjected to critical a ppra isal, cata loguin g offens es is
sometim es posited as our only alternative. L AQUEUR, supra note 17, at 79 (“There has been
no ‘terrorism’ per se, o nly diff ere nt t err oris m s.”); but see Intern ation al Te rrorism and Islam ic

7. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 143
a trail of Revolu tions em erging from the French experience th at I
turned.
This article is the resulting documen tation of my research. After
a brief introduction by way of background material, it moves to an
examination of the events, and delves into the processes, of four
Revolutions—French, Russian, Chinese, and Cam bodian—from
their inception through their devolution into terror. Each
revolution ary section is weighted tow ard historic reporting; each
attem pts to capture the movement from a liberating to a terroristic
regime. The conclu sion is appropriately brief, proffering a series of
hypotheses requiring further investigation.
II. B ACKGROUND
A. Definitional Difficulties: Political Action or Crim inal Condu ct
“It becomes difficult to ignore the heroic side of
political violence. Reallocations of w ealth . . . human
betterm ent . . . are . . . inseparable from political
violence. . . . It takes confrontation outside the law to
make the law itself. Few basic changes in the content
and scope, logic and practices of liberty and equ ality
20
occur peacefully.
Com pare:
“[W]e distinguish political violence from violen ce in
general. Most violence is random if not crimin al.
Political violence disorders explicitly for a designated
and reordering purpose: to overthrow a tyrannical
regime, to rede fine and realize ju stice an d equity, to
achieve independence or territorial auton om y, to
21
impose on e’s religious or doctrinal beliefs.”
with:
“En gels said th at the first form of revolt of the
modern proletariat. . . was criminality. . . [A]t the end
Law , supra, at 63 1 n.7 (d efining t errorism bas ed on inten t).
20. D a vi d E . A pter , Political Violence in Analytical Perspective, in T HE L EGITIMIZATION
OF V IOLENCE 1, 3 (Da vid E . Apte r ed., 199 7).
21. Id. at 5 (citing Jo hn Lo cke , A Letter Concerning Toleration, in T HE S ECOND T REATISE
ON C IVIL G OVERNMENT AND A L ETTER C ONCERNING T OLERATION (John W iedho fft Go ug h e d.,
19 48 )).

8. 144 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the
nineteenth century criminality was perceived, by the
proletarians them selves, to be a form of social
22
strugg le.”
and:
“[E]veryone kno ws th at Napoleon III wa s able to
seize pow er on ly with the help of a group consisting,
at least on its lower levels, of common-law
23
crim ina ls.”
Terrorists com mit crimes. No one doubts that. Timothy
McVeigh was executed as a murderer for the Oklahoma federal
24
building bombing. In 1995, Shoko Asahara and his Au m Shinri
Kyo followers released sarin, a poison gas, in a Tokyo subway
station killing a dozen people and injuring more than 5,000. Sheikh
Omar Abdul Rahman was charged with the 1994 bombing of the
Wo rld Trade C enter. On Septem ber 11, 2001 m any of us w atched
in horror the actual destruction of the World Trade Center towers.
In addition to their specified terroristic crimes, terrorists often
com mit instrumental crimes. Bank robbery was a preferred method
for attainin g finan cial support among some modern right wing
25
terrorists in the United States. Irish terrorists in the n ineteenth
century were known to forge ban kno tes to keep them selves in
26
funds. “The ‘social banditry’ of Pancho Villas com bined h orse theft
27
with a political agenda.” Ideologists of terrorism like Bakunin,
perhaps following Engels’ philosophy, identified crim inals as the
28
true revolutionary class. Stalin, operating under the name Koba
22. M ICHEL F OUCAULT, P OWER /K NOWLEDGE 18-2 0 (C olin G ordon ed., Co lin Go rdon et al.
trans ., 1980 ).
23. Id. at 40. See also L AQUEUR, supra note 17, 210-25, where the author provides a
mo dern day overview of the links between terrorist groups and organized crime. A n
investigation of the connections between terrorism and criminal organization s, particu larly
between terrorism and illegal dr ugs, is covere d in part in M ARK B OWDEN , K ILLING P ABLO: T HE
H UNT FOR THE W ORLD 'S G REATEST O UTLAW 63-7 0, 188 -200 (200 1) [herein after “B OWDEN ,
K ILLING P ABLO”].
24. L OU M ICHEL & D AN H ERBECK, A MERICAN T ERRORIST : T IMOTHY M C V EIGH & T HE
O KLAHOMA C ITY B OMBING 46 8-7 1 (2 00 1).
25. K EVIN F LYNN & G ARY G ERHARDT, T HE S ILENT B ROTHERHOOD 39, 152, 153-56, 158, 159,
162, 454, 465 (1989). See also id. at 275 -76, 282, for references to the Brinks Company
rob be ries .
26. L AQUEUR, supra note 17 , at 2 10 ; see also F LYNN & G ERHARDT, supra note 25, at 136-41,
266-69 (describing how counterfeiting was one m ethod relied upon as a source of funding for
po litic al a ctio n g rou ps ).
27. L AQUEUR, supra note 17, at 210.
28. Id. at 2 11 .

9. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 145
in 1907, successfully attacked two Cossack guarded carriages
29
carrying large sums of money. The “outlaw” issues its own
30
sedu ctive appeal.
Whether to treat terrorism as a crime or as an act of w ar is one
31
of the debates pervading the literature of definition. The
proponents of criminal treatment hold th at war is a condition
32
between States; with the exception of qualified guerillas, it is not
33
available to private parties or non-State collectives. Those who
favor criminalization often desire to “de-legitimize terrorists,
34
revealing them to society as the crim ina ls th ey rea lly a re.” Others
favor this approach because it could e mpowe r Internation al Court
35
action. Those who view terrorism as a species of war speak of
29. E DVARD R ADZINSKY , S TALIN 56 (H .T. W illetts tra ns., 199 6).
30. B OWDEN , K ILLING P ABLO, supra no te 2 3, a t 14 -15 .
Anyone can be a criminal, but to be an outlaw demands a following.
The outlaw stands for something. . . . No matter how base the actual
m otives of criminals like those in the Columbian hills, or like the
American ones imm ortalized by Hollywood— Al Cap one, Bonnie and
Clyde, Jesse J am es— large num bers of average people rooted for them and
followed t h eir bloody exploits with some measure of delight. Their acts,
h o w ever selfish o r sens eless, w ere inv ested with social m ean ing. Th eir
crimes and violence w e re b lo w s struck aga inst distant, opp ressive pow er.
The ir stealth and cunning . . . were celebrated, these being the time-
ho no red tac tics of th e p ow erle ss .
Id.
31. C om pare Pil grim , supra note 19, at 147 and La rsc ha n, supra note 18 , at 117
(sugge sting a wa r-bas ed orie ntat ion), with Be res , supra note 19 , at 2 39 ; M urp hy , supra note
19, at 6 7; L . Pa ul B rem er I II, Counterterrorism: Strategies and Tactics, D EP’T S T. B ULL., Jan.
1988, at 47, 47; Jacqueline Ann Ca rberry, N ote , Terrorism: A Global Phenomena Mandating
A Unified International Response, 6 IND . J. G LOBAL L EGAL S TUD. 685 (1999) (favoring criminal
treatm ent). See also generally C ARR, supra note 2, for an insightful recharacterization of war
and terrorism. Noah Feldman, in a recent article, has expanded the range of considerations
brought to t his top ic. N oa h F eld m an , C h o ic es o f L a w , C h o i ce s o f W a r , 25 H ARV. J.L. & P UB.
P OL’Y 457 (200 2). His willingness to end the binary nature of the discussion is joined by Sean
D . M urp hy , Terrorism and the Concept of “Ar m ed A ttack ” in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter,
43 H ARV. I NT ’ L L.J . 41 , 49 -50 (20 02 ); see also United N ations Office on Drugs and Crime,
Terrorism , at ww w.undcp .org/odccp/terrorism.htm l (last visited Feb. 13, 2003) (“Terro rism is
a u n iq u e f or m o f c ri m e . T e rr or is t a c ts o ft en co n ta in e le m e n ts o f w arfare, politics and
propaganda. . . . Their form of psyc hologica l wa rfare is ‘pro pag and a by deed .’”); Beverly Allen,
Talking “Terro rism ”: Ideolog ies A nd P arad igm s In A Pos tm odern W orld, 22 S YRACUSE J. I NT’L
L. & C OM . 7, 7 (19 96) (“‘Terrorism’ is the m ost linguistic of violent political acts beca use its
success dep end s entire ly on whether or not it gets its message across. Such violence does not
claim t errit ory or e st ab lis h n ew so ve re ig nt ie s; it w ork s in a la rg ely co m m un ica tiv e m od e,
wh ere the langu age is dest ruction , injury, an d m urde r.”).
32. L AQUEUR, supra note 17 , at 8 (“The stra tegy of guerrilla wa rfare is to liberate territory,
to e s t a b li s h counter institution and eventually a regular army. . . . The classic case of
guerrilla wa rfare is C hin a i n th e 1 930 s a nd 19 40 s. . . .”); see also Er ic J . H OBSBAWM,
R EVOLUTIONARIES 195 -211 (197 3).
33. Murph y, supra note 19, at 75 ; see also Maryann Cu sim an o L ove , Globalization, Ethics,
and the War on Terrorism , 16 N OTRE D AME J.L. E THICS & P UB P OL’Y 65, 66 (200 2).
34. Br em er, supra note 31, at 47.
35. Ca rbe rry , supra note 31.

10. 146 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
36 37
“campaigns of violence,” “glo bal ba ttlegroun ds,” “low-level armed
38 39
conflict” and “noth ing less than warfare .” Their objective is often
prem ised on a “strategic deterrence ” theory— neu tralize terrorists
40
by forcing them to concentra te on defen se an d survival.
Alternatively, Caleb C arr promotes “terrorism as war” to emphasize
41
its roots, and the disutility of its unduly extreme m easures.
42
These persistent categorical difficulties were not obstacles I
foresaw when initiating the research. Operating without a clear
referen t, doing historical research without a defined object of
investigation, is daunting. How to search out the history of
43
“something” when there was no “objective correlative” for the
36. La rsc ha n, supra note 18, at 134.
37. Id.
38. Id. at 139.
39. Id.
40. Pil grim , supra note 19, at 155.
41. C ARR, supra note 2, at 12.
42. Consider L AQUEUR, supra note 17, at 43: “Classic terrorism is propaganda by de ed .”
“If, according to the nineteenth-century cre ed , terrorism was propaganda by deed, a suicide
terrorist mission was a fortiori such pro pagan da.” Id. at 14 0. “F or t he aim of te rro rism . . .
was propaganda by deed, and if their actions w ere not pu blicized— or if their actions were
ascribed to their political foes— it mus t have see me d pointless o r even coun terproductive to
engage in terrorist operations .” Id. at 107.
The word [terrorism] works very well, in fact, as a cipher indicating
pract ically nothing about the events we think it describes, but a great
de al a bo ut t he ide olo gy o f th e p ers on . . . wh o u ses it.
T he word “terrorism”. . . like the word “terrorist,” is m o r e t h an
an yth ing els e a sh iftin g in dic at or o f th e u ser ’s po int of v iew .
Allen, supra note 31 , at 8 (19 96 ); Ile an a M . Po rra s, On Te rro rism : Reflections on Violence and
The Ou tlaw , 1 9 94 U TAH L. R EV . 119, 124-125 (“Everyone uses the word ‘terrorism’ to mean
a kind o f vi o le n ce of which h e or she do es not ap prove, and a bout w hich he or sh e wan ts
som e t h ing to be done. . . . [T]he word ‘terrorism’ came to be understood universally as
pejora tive.”). Interestingly, the his tor y of pir acy rev ea ls s im ila r co m ple xiti es. “[T]here is no
authoritative definition of international piracy .” A n n e Pé rot in-D um on , The Pirate and the
Em peror : Pow er an d the Law on th e Se as, 14 50-1 850 , in B ANDITS AT S EA 25, 31 (C . Richard
Pen nell ed. 2001). Pérotin-Dum on goes on to draw this tight analogy between p iracy and
ter ror ism :
In the 1930s the Nicarauguan patriot Augusto Sandino was a ban dit in
the eyes o f th e North Americans, and in the 1940s the German
authorities of occupied France viewed as terrorists the resistants loyal to
France libre .
O n the Malabar coast of India in the sixteenth century, the
Ku njalis were the m ain adversaries of the Portuguese, who treated them
as cossarios; for the Za m orin pr inces o f Calicu t, the K unja lis we re their
naval force and were patriots avant la lettre.
Id.; see also J ohn L. A nd ers on , Piracy and W orld History, An Econom ic Perspective on
Maritime Predation, in B ANDITS AT S EA 82, 8 2 -8 3 (C . Richard Pennell ed. 2001) (“Piracy is a
subset of violent maritime predation in that it is not part of a d eclared or widely recognized
war. W ithin the gene ral category of m aritime p redation, a pre cise definition of piracy
unive rsally a ccepta ble ov er tim e an d be twe en pla ces ha s elud ed jur ists.”).
43. F RANCIS O TTO M ATTHIESSEN, T HE A CHIEVEMENT OF T.S. E LIOT: A N E SSAY ON THE
N ATURE OF P OETRY 58 (2 d ed . 1947 ).

11. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 147
44
“something” searched for? I found myself, through my research,
in a conu ndrum I had not anticipated. In my attempt to seek
understanding, my choice of focus led me into a debate I was not
prepared to enter: whether terrorism can emanate from state
action. My conclusion is that it can and it does. We cannot
understand terrorism without paying careful attention to the
45
terroristic capacity of establishing and established governm ents.
III. R EVOLUTIONS
A. A Terrorist Tree: Evolution In Action
1. The French Re volution Clears the La nd: Slash & B urn
“It was the war upon hypocrisy that transformed
46
Robespierre’s dictatorship in to the Reign of Terror.”
“Looked at from w ithout, from the viewpoint of
misery and w retchedn ess, it [eighteenth century
French society] was characterized by heartlessness;
but seen from w ithin, and judged upon its own terms,
it was the scene of corruption and hypocrisy. That the
wretched life of the poor was confronted by the rotten
life of the rich is crucial for an un derstanding of . . .
47
Rou sseau and R obespierre.”
“[O]nly naked need and interest [are] without
hypocrisy, the ‘malheureux’ changed into the
‘enrages’, for rage is indeed the only form in wh ich
48
misfortune can becom e active.”
“[T]he rage of impotence eventually sent the
Revolution to its doo m, it is true that su ffering, once
44. Allen, supra note 31, at 7 (“Therefore, the ‘terrorism’ we speak of . . . in some very real
sym bolic se nse d oes n ot exist . In linguis tic term s, the sig nifier ha s no s ignified.”).
45. But see Lo ve, supra note 33, at 66 (“[T]errorism . . . the use of violence by nonsta te
actors against non comb atants for the purpose of causing fear in order to achieve political
goals.”) (em pha sis ad ded ). This definition complies with the general understanding of Saint
A ug us tin e’s “Just War Tradition” which operates “to de-legitimize private armies and bands
of arm ed crim inals and to centralize the us e of force in the han ds of the sove reign.” Id. at 72.
The intended purpose of the “Ju st W ar T rad itio n” w as to p rog res s to wa rd p ea ce. Its theorists
hope to attain this end by “legitimizing a m onopoly on the use of organ ized v iolence for pub lic
authorities” and by “r e q u ir i ng strict limitations . . . on the circumstances under which war
could be u sed an d how it could be w aged.” Id.
46. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 95.
47. Id. at 101.
48. Id. at 106.

12. 148 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
it is transformed into rage, can release overwhelming
49
forces.”
Hannah Arendt’s thesis is that the French Revolution twisted on
its axis, moving away from its original orientation, political freedom,
50
toward an unbounded desire to liberate “man from suffering.”
This unleashing of unbounded desire led to terror, not to political
liberation. Three elem ents o f Aren dt’s reasonin g are requ ired to
understand her point and to consider this point in relationship to
terrorism .
First are Arendt’s ideas about liberation, freedom, and the
political identity of free people. Arendt, like the Greeks she so
adm ires, believes in the elevating value of responsible community
decision-making: participation in the governing of affairs as civic
51
virtue. Revolution, she believes, is best undertaken to change the
52
structure of the political realm. On e intelligently undertakes to
establish a political realm of civil equality. Arendt, who does not
believe in e ssential or ‘by nature’ equality, posits that through
institutions an a rtificial equ ality, a commu nity of peers
participating togeth er, discussing and decidin g the affairs of their
53
commu nity, is desirable and achievable. “[N]o one can be free
except am ong . . . peers” is a principle she adopts from the ancient
54
Greeks. A liberated person , a free person, is one who, out from
under the oppression of tyran nical, despotic or household
obligations, is able to meet w ith her pee rs and participate in pub lic
49. Id. at 107.
50. Id. But see H OBSBAWM, supra note 32, at 201-08, for a critical view of Arendt’s methods
an d co ncl us ion s.
51. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 1 7, a t 2 5 (“ [T ]h e a ct ua l co nt en t o f fre ed om . . . is
participation in public affairs, or adm ission to the pub lic realm .”). See also G ORDON S. W OOD,
T HE R ADICALISM OF THE A MERICAN R EVOLUTION 104 (199 1):
Pub lic virtue was the sacrifice of private desires and interests for the
pu bli c in ter est . It w as de vot ion to t he com m on we al.
Republicanism thus put an enorm ous burden on individuals. They
[are] expected to suppress their private wants and interests and develop
disinterestedness- the term eighteenth century most often used as a
syn on ym for c ivic virt ue .
Id.
52. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 17.
53. Id. at 23.
[T]his equality w i t h in t h e range of the law . . . was not equality of
condition . . . bu t th e eq ua lity of th ose wh o fo rm a b od y of pe ers . . . .
Neither equ ality no r freedo m wa s und erstoo d as a qu ality inh erent in
human nature, they were . . . conventional and artificial, the products of
human effort and qualities of the man-made world.
Id.
54. Id. at 23.

13. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 149
55
affairs. Creating and maintaining opportunities for shared
participation in com munity decisions is a positive and a ttainable
goal.
Second, Arendt presents a wondrous exploration of the way in
which the term ‘revolution ’ was transplanted from its scientific,
planetary, cosm ic applications to its political constructions. Where,
originally, the term referred to planetary patterns of cycles and
56
return, restoration, through association with the French
Revolution the irresistibility element of these same patterns
57
emerged as dominan t. The strength and power of natural forces
that keep th e co sm os in pla ce, their la wfulness, when a pplied to
human events, became the irrepressible, unstoppable, violence of
58
renew al, a law unto itself. Restoration transmuted into creation,
55. Id. at 23-24.
[N]o one can be free except among his peers. . . . [N]either the tyrant nor
the despot nor the ma ster of a household—even though . . . fully liberated
and . . . not forced by oth ers — wa s fre e. . . . The life of a free man n eeded
the presence of oth ers. Freedom itself needed . . . a place where peop le
could com e together . . . the political space prop er.
Id.
56. Id. at 3 5-3 6.
Wh en the w ord [rev olution ] first descended from the skies and was
introduced to describe what happened on earth am ong m ortal[s], it
appeared clearly as a metaphor, carrying over th e notio n of an eterna l,
irresistible, ever-recurring m otion to the ha phaza rd movements, the ups
and downs of human destiny. . . . [T]h e or igin al m ea nin g of the wo rd . . .
was used for a movement of revolving back to som e pre-established point.
[T]he wo rd “ rev olu tio n” m ea nt o rigi na lly r est ora tio n. . . . The revolutions
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which to us appear to show
all evidence of a new spirit . . . were intended to be restorations.
Id.
57. Id. at 4 0-4 1.
The date was the night o f the fourteenth of July 1789, in Paris,
when Louis XVI heard from the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Lia ncourt of
the fall of the Ba sti lle. . . . The fam ous dialogue that took place between
the kin g a nd his m ess en ger is . . . ver y re vea ling . Th e k ing . . . exclaimed,
“C’est une revolte ,” an d L ian cou rt co rre cte d h im : “Non, Sire, c’est une
revolution.” Here we hear the word still, and politically for the last time,
in the se nse o f the old metap hor which carries its meaning from the skies
d o w n to the earth; but here, for the first time . . . the emp h a sis has
entirely shifted from the lawfulness of a rotating, cyclical movement to its
irre sis tib ility . The m otion is still seen in the image of the movem ents of
the stars , b u t w hat is stressed now is th at it is beyond hum an pow er to
arres t it, and henc e it is a la w u nto its elf.
Id.
58. Id. See, e.g., id. at 42 -43. “In the d ecad es follow ing the Fren ch revo lution, th is
association of a mighty undercurrent sweeping men with it . . . was to becom e dom inant.” Id.
“Whether these men [referring to the Founding Fathers of US R evolution] were ‘conservative’
or ‘revolutionary’ is . . . impossible to decide . . . [C]onservatism as a political creed and an
ideology owes its existence to a reaction to the French revolution and is meaningful only for
the history of the n ineteenth a nd tw entieth centu ries.” Id. at 37-38.

14. 150 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
origination, unlea shing violence. W hile Arendt does not refer to
nuclear energy as an analogue, it comes to mind as not dissimilar
to th e process she describes.
Perhaps, even after this transformation, Aren dt would prefer to
conceive of revolution as a political event, as the violent
establishment of a new body politic, during which or through which
liberation from oppression is attained and a new beginning fostering
59
participation in the public realm is initiated. However, she
acknowledges that through the French Revolution, so radical was
the shift in paradigm, that one of its most far-reaching consequences
60
was the birth of the modern Heg elian concept of history.
According to A ren dt, th rou gh Hegel, and later M arx , nece ssity
replaced freedom as the chief focus of political and revolutionary
61
thou ght. As A rendt view s it, this replacem ent is m ore than ju st a
loss of an ideal; it exemplifies supplanting a sound aspiration with
62
an essentially dangerous idea.
Third, according to Arendt, this substitution—the ideological
exchange of freedom for necessity—along with the French (rather
63
than the Am erican ) Revolu tion “set the w orld on fire.”
Consequently, it is with reference to the events of the Fren ch
Revolution and not with reference to the events of the American
Revolution that our current use of the term ‘revolution’ receives its
59. Id. at 28.
[O]nly where change occurs in the sense of a new beginning , w here
violence is used to constitute an altogether different form of governm ent,
to bring about the formation of a n ew body politic, where the liberation
from oppression aims at least at the constitution of freedom can we speak
of revolution.
Id; see also Ja cqu es D err ida , Fo rce of L aw : Th e “M yst ica l Fo un da tio n O f A uth orit y,” in
D ECONSTRUCTION AND THE P OSSIBILITY OF J USTICE 3, 31-57 (Drucilla Cornell et al. eds., 1992)
(discussing founding violence, conserving violence and divine violence in the context of law
and justice).
60. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 45.
61. Id. at 4 6-4 7.
[O]ut of the revolution and coun ter-revo lution, from the fou rteen th of J uly
to the eighteenth of Brumaire and the resto ration of the monarchy, was
born the dialectical movem ent and counter-move men t of history wh ich
bears m en on its irresistible flow, like a powe rful undercurren t, to which
they mu st surrend er the very mom ent they attempt to establish freedom
on ea rth .
Id. at 47-48.
62. Id. at 47 -48 . See also C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 4 (quoting Alexander Yakovlev,
former Politburo member: “The morbid faith in the possibility of forcing through social and
historical development, and the idealization of violence, traces b ack to the very sources of the
European revolutionary tradition.”). “What remains today of Marxism, once a large and
ambitious structure, is little more than this basic dogm a tha t our so ciety (an d all oth ers) is
driven by unappeasable strife, in which one contestant must inevitably des troy the other.” Id.
at 49.
63. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 49.

15. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 151
connotations. We conceive of revolution in inversion, not reversion
terms; we conceptualize it as representing irresistible forces of
change. Despite the fact that it ended in obvious disaster, the
64
French Revolution became the model we follow.
Following Are ndt’s theories of revolution, revolution aries w ould
forecast, could forecast and should forecast, that revolutions “devour
65
their children.” The maw of the monster, like a shark, contains
two rows of teeth. The first row , historic ne cessity, casts a m agic
spell, what Arendt calls the “self-imposed compulsion of ideological
66
thinking .” Individua ls find themselves carried along by, but do not
direct, and in that sense believe themselves insulated from
responsibility for, revolutionary forces. When this tidalic factor of
historic necessity combines with the second element, physical
nece ssity, the overwhelming biological impulse to survive
67
engendered by acute poverty, terror is unle ashed.
The mo deling events, w hich took place withou t preconception
68
during the French Revolution, served as an inspiration, and not as
69
a warning, to future thinkers, planners, actors. Necessity was
64. Id.
[T]h e Octobe r revolution, was enacted a ccording to the rules and eve nts
that le d fro m t h e fo u rteenth of July to the ninth of Thermidor and the
eighteenth of Bruma ire—dates w hich so impressed themselves on the
me mo ry of the F rench peop le tha t even toda y they are im m edia tely
identified by everybody with the fall of the Bastille, the death of
Ro be sp ierr e, a nd the rise of N ap ole on Bo na pa rte .
Id. at 4 4; see also G WYNNE D YER, W AR 161 (1985) (“The principle technique which insurgent
groups ha ve u sed to a tta ck t he sta te in the pa st h alf cen tur y . . . drew . . . inspiration from the
Fren ch revo lution in 178 9.”).
65. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17 , at 51. “[T]his association of a m ighty
underc u r re n t sweep ing m en with it, first to the surface o f glorious deeds and th en dow n to
peril and infam y.” Id. at 42 . Rev olu tion “devouring its own children” is a phase coined by
Ve rgn iau d a nd us ed by Ar en dt. Id.
66. Id. at 50-51.
67. Id. at 5 4.
Poverty is more than deprivation, it is a state of constant w ant an d acute
mise ry whose ignominy consists in its dehumanizing force ; poverty is
abject beca use it puts men under the absolute dictate of their bodies, that
is, under the absolute dictate of necessity as all . . . know . . . from their
m ost int im at e ex pe rien ce a nd ou tsi de all s pe cul at ion s.
Id.
68. Id. at 9 6.
[E]nt irely absent from the French Revolution . . . was the concept of
historical necessity, which . . . did not so much spring from the
experiences and thoughts of those who made the Revolution as it arose
from th e e ffo rt s o f th os e w ho de sire d to un de rs ta nd an d to co m e to te rm s
wi th a cha in o f ev en ts t he y h ad wa tch ed .
Id.
69. Id. at 5 4-5 5.
It is well known that the French revolution had given rise to an entirely
new figure on the politica l scene , the pro fession al revo lutionis t, and his
life was spent not in revolutionary a gitation, for which there existed but

16. 152 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
expressed in man-made violence until, eventually, violence became
the necessa ry function o r surface phenomenon of an all powerful
70
underlying and overruling necessity. To this formula was added
the fact that selflessness, the ability to deny the value of self when
confronted with the needs of the m any o r the necessity for action,
emerged as a prerequisite both for the revolutionary and for the
71
people she purports to serve.
Finally, Arendt says both Rousseau and Rob espierre w ere
governed by sentiment and an emotiona lly laden in sensitivity to
reality instead of principle or com passio n. Under these influences,
driven to solve, more quickly than feasibly, the vast problem of
wretchedness and misery experienced and expressed by the
malheureux, Rob espierre allow ed force to replace communal pub lic
72 73
action; in this way, the chance for freedom w as sacrificed.
The experience of the French became an unfortunate theme.
Again and aga in we w ould, we will, observe revolutionary
leadership, out of touch with the real experiences of deliberative
com munity action, ov erreaching and controlling, acting under a self-
imposed compu lsion to ride the wa ve of necessity toward almost
instantaneous, and, therefore, impractical solu tions to nea rly
intracta ble problems. As a result, over and over again, in the name
of freedom, independence, human dignity, we will observe the
74 75
torrent revolu tionnaire, terreur.
Not every historian sees the French Revolution a la Arendt.
Howev er, its terror is equally, although distinctively, commu nicated
few opportunities, but in study and thought, in theory and debate, whose
sol e ob ject wa s re vol uti on .
Id. a t 2 62 . It is so m ew h a t surprising to m e that A rendt, who I usually coun t on to be m ore
sens itive than I am to such issues, does not notice the substitution here of privatized
discourse- the dialogues between these newly generated professional revolutionaries- for the
participation in pu blic a ffa irs sh e s o re sp ect s. P erh ap s I a m m i s s i ng the point. Perhaps
imm ediate comm unity need s and co ncerns m ust be a t the hea rt of thes e “pa rticipat ing in
governance” events for them to take on the fellowship of responsib ility that ma kes for equ ality
and freed om for Arend t.
70. Id. at 59. “Their need [the poor in France, the malheureux] w as vio len t, an d . . .
prep olitical; it seem ed that on ly violence could be s trong and swift enou gh to he lp t he m .” Id.
at 86.
71. Id. at 74-76.
72. Id. at 2 47 -50 , 25 9-6 1. See also C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 64 (“[I]dentification with
the masse s was in all these cases more than a mental generalization. It also . . . involved a
psych ologic al mechanism—of the sort Kierkegaard refers to when he writes that . . . ‘[T]he
plea sure co nsists in losin g one self in ord er to b e vola tilised in to a h igher p otenc y.’”).
73. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 55 (“Robespierre, finally, knew w ell enough
what had happ ened tho ugh he form ulated it (in his last sp eech) in the form of p roph ecy: ‘W e
s h al l p e ri sh b ec a us e , i n t h e h is to ry of m a nk in d , w e miss ed the m om ent to found freedo m .’”).
74. Id. at 42.
75. Id. at 95.

17. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 153
76
in alternative accounts. For instance, as another historian,
Schama, understands it, “[b]loodshed was not the unfortunate by-
77
product of re volution , it was the sou rce of its en ergy.” The terror,
in its particu lar form ulation, followed the fall of the mon archy on
Augu st 10, 1792, and the erection of the guillotine “on the place du
78
Carrousel, in fron t of th e Tuileries.” It was not the introduction of
a new w ave of experience; it was the continuation of a process begun
79
mu ch earlier. Those wh o held o fficial positions in the French
government repeatedly tried to recover for th e state its monopoly on
punitive violence; always, they found themselves outmaneuvered by
other politicians who organized and endorsed further episodes of
80
public violence.
Schama reports the story to u s this w ay: in the period beginning
with the fall of the monarch y a series of events took place
culminating in the institution we call “The Terror.” The nation was
81
at war, threatened by war. The people were afraid. By late
82
Augu st arrests became “ab surdly in discrim ina te.” Paris was
83
frantic with activity. Danton wa s orchestrating attacks on
84
traitors. The massacres of September began with an attack on the
76. S IMON S CHAMA, C ITIZENS: A C HRONICLE OF THE F RENCH R EVOLUTION (198 9).
77. Id. at 615.
78. Id. at 619.
79. Id. at 615.
80. Id. at 6 23 . See also Lo ve, supra note 33, and its brief coverage of the Just War
Tradition through the lens of Ms. Love’s law review article. It may be that t error is likely to
result wh en na tion-sta te or em pire b uilding strate gies inclin ed to m on op oliz e v io le nce co m e
in c on ta ct w ith int rac ta ble res ist an ce.
81. S CHAMA, supra no te 7 6, a t 61 2.
Earlier in the summ er the Prussians had entered the war as allies
of the Emperor and during July had advanced with ominous steadiness.
The ir decla ration of intent w as issued in the nam e of their com ma nder,
the Du ke of B run sw ick . . . .
The Bru nsw ick M anifes to in effect told the Parisians . . . that they
had already committed acts for which they would be unsparingly
punished. . . . All that counted was to keep those who threate n e d th em
at home from acts of b etraya l. All calcu lation s ha d com e dow n to th is
fina l pr im itiv e d ete rm ina tio n: k ill or be kill ed .
Id.
82. Id. at 625.
83. Id. at 627.
84. I d . at 627-628. Schama quotes Danton: “Our enemies prepare to carry out the l a st
b lo w s of their fury. . . . Citizens, no nation on earth h as ever ob tained liberty w ithout a
struggle. You have traitors in your bosom; well, without them the figh t wo uld have been soon
ove r.” Id. at 62 8. For t hose wh ose in d o c tr i nation in revolutionary history does not include
these de ta ils, D a n t o n , a long w ith Rob espierre, were J acobin lead ers during th e French
revolution, tha t is , both emerged from the m ost radical, ultra democratic party of the time.
Danton was eventually executed in 1794. Robespierre followed him several months later. The
Girondins were m em bers of a mo re mo derate rep ublican pa rty in the revolutiona ry French
As sem bly during the 1791 -1793 period. They w ere excluded from p ower a nd sub jected to
exe cut ion du rin g th e T err or.

18. 154 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
85
Abbaye, a prison holding m ostly priests. The slaughter continued
86
at a Carmelite convent used to imprison other priests. At Bicetre,
another prison, common criminals and adolescent boys were killed.
87
At LaSalpetriere, the victims were prostitutes. When September
88
ended, half the prisoners in Paris were dead.
The “mo ral squalo r” of the re volutionary predicam ent, the
depen dence of the Revolution on organized killing to attain political
89
ends, was fully exposed, and still wh at we call “The Reign of
Terror” awaited its future. The king was beheaded in January of
90 91
1793. Insurrections began in earnest that spring. In March, the
92
Revolutiona ry Tribunal was established. By April, the Comm ittee
93
of Pub lic Safety, the key organ of the Terror, was initiated.
94 95
Inflation, grocery riots, the collapse of the war effort, disorder in
96 97
the countryside, more insurrections, factionalism, growing
98
distrust and law lessness, all this followed one after another in a
mad rush fueled by the enrages, by the sa ns-culotte, by what
99
Schama calls a desire for paternalism. The Repub lic could not
85. I d . at 633 (“A party of twenty-four priests. . . . In an hour and a half, nineteen of the
group were hack ed to p ieces.”).
86. Id. at 633-34. Of the one hundred and fifty clerics held in this convent, “by the end of
the day one hundred a nd fifteen . . . had been sub ject to the bacbe vengeresse (the axe of
vengean ce).” Id. at 634.
87. Id. at 634-35.
88. Id. at 636.
89. Id. at 637-38.
90. Id. at 668-71.
91. Id. at 696-70 5. In this case the insurrections w ere seconda ry rebellions; rebellions on
the part of territorial subcomm unities ou tsi de of P ari s lik e V en de e a nd Ly on . Id. at 690-706,
727-29. These insurrections were treated as counter-revolutionary activities by the
Re vol uti on ary gov ern m en t an d v icio us ly re pre ss ed . Id. at 7 86 -92 , 77 9-8 7.
92. Id. at 706. The Tribunal was authorized to try suspects accused of counter-
rev olu tio na ry a ctiv itie s. Id.
93. Id. at 706. Scham a quotes Dan ton defending the establishment of t he R evolutionary
Tribunal and the Comm ittee of Public Safety: “Let us be terrible so that the people will not
have to b e.” Id.
94. Id. at 707-08.
95. Id. at 708.
96. Id. at 709-11.
97. Id. at 716-20. “In mid-Ma y, the battle for survival between the Mountain [the Jacobins]
and th e Girond e was joined in dea dly earnes t.” Id. at 720.
98. Id. at 7 14 . Sc ha m a q uo tes Pie rre Ve rgn iau d s pe ak ing be fore the trib un e:
W hen the law s w ere set as ide ou t of f ea r of i nti m ida tio n, ‘it is a
great accom plishm ent for the enem ies of the republic t hus to have
perverted reason and set at naught all ideas of morality. . . So, citizens,
it must be feared that the revolution, like Saturn, succes sively devouring
its children, will engender, finally, only despotism with the calam ities
tha t ac com pa ny it.
Id.
99. Id. at 713. Schama spoke of “the comm on people”: “They wanted paternalism rather
than economic liberalism, the regulation of prices rather than a free ma rket, and abo ve all
they wa nted the p ublic punish me nt of exploiters.” Id. See, e.g., id. at 7 13 -14 , 72 0-2 4.

19. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 155
survive losses in the field, insurrection in the countryside, and mob
violence in the streets. Scham a says of the Jacobins, who rode to
power during the late spring of 1793 on the back of this violence,
that with them, “Revolution ary dem ocracy would be guillotined in
100
the name of rev olu tion ary government.”
101
Terror became the order of the day. Schama catalogues the
102
process: a revolt in Lyon; the purging of the Girondins in Paris;
103
the assassination of Ma rat; the ceremonies of Champ de
104 105
Reunion; terroristic economic policies; Jacobian manipulation
106
of the “language and the tactics of popular mobilization ;” the
107
institution of national conscription; a massive mobilization of
108
resources to further the war effort; the passage and
109
implementation of the Law of Suspects; a revised ca lendar, along
with the estab lishment of public standards of conduct and
110
morality; the fostering of dechristianization policies and
111
practices; the profoundly destructive eradication of centers of
rebellion, i.e., “the wholesale destruction of an entire region in
112
France;” the ra pid deployment of prisons to house the increasing
100. Id. at 725.
101. Id. at 7 26 -92 ; id. at 807 (attributing the original phrase “Terror is the order of the day”
to a S eptem ber 5 th sp eech b y Da nton ).
102. Id. at 728.
103. Id. at 729-46. Marat, like Danton and Robespierre, was a Jacobin activist. Unlike the
others he was not officially executed. Instead, he was assassinated by a young woman. She
believed the ousted Girondins and not the victorious Jacobins, were that last best hope for the
Re vol uti on . Id. at 729-37.
104. Id. at 746-50.
105. Id. at 753 (“[P]roposals for the economic Terror-extensive price controls, poor relief
funded by draconian forced loans and taxes on the rich . . . were em anating from the enrages
an d th e C om m un e.”).
[A ] great netw ork of inform ation ab out crops a nd ha rvests that . . .
implied an u npre ceden ted in trusion int o th e rural economy. . . Even the
Terror had inadequate resources for this enormous exercise in snooping,
a nd very often it degenerated into the sans-culotte armee s
revolutionnaires, sent to enforce the econom ic Terror, ransacking villages.
Id. at 7 57 .
106. Id. at 759.
107. Id. at 760-63.
108. Id. at 764 -65 (“[T]he revolution ary state had com mitted itself to an all-out mobilization
of resou rces th at w ould n ot be s een a gain in Eu rope u ntil the twe ntieth centu ry.”).
109. Id. a t 76 6-6 7. “[ E] na cte d o n S ep tem be r 17 [17 93 it] . . . ga ve t he Co m m itte e . . .
sweeping powers of arrest and p u n i sh m e n t over ex traord inary b road categ ories of p eople
defined as harboring co unter-revolutiona ry designs.” Id. at 766.
110. Id. at 7 70 -74 ; Id. at 80 5 (“Pu rity beca m e a p olitical fetis h.”).
111. Id. at 776-79.
112. Id. at 7 87 . See also id. at 791 -92, where S ch am a discusses the death toll of these events,
placing the nu m be rs a t a l ow of 4 0,0 00 to a high of 250,000. It may be that in the year
spanning spring 1793 to spring 17 94, one third o f the entire population of the Vendee region
of France was killed.

20. 156 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
113
num ber of counter-revolutionary suspects awaiting execution; the
114 115
beheading of Marie Antoinette; the death of fam ilies; the
116
“epidemic of suicides among th e fallen revolu tion aries;” the
117
denunciation, trial and execution of Danton; Robespierre’s sch ools
118 119
of virtue; the Festival of the Supreme Being; the bloody violen ce
120
of Floreal, Prarial, Messidor; and, finally, Thermidor, the mo nth
121
in which Robespierre himself was sacrificed to the guillotine.
122
Schama tells us that the violen ce did not end w ith the Terror,
and reiterates his theme that the violence of the terror was not an
unfortunate side effect of the revolution. Instead, he reminds us,
123
“violence was the motor of the Re volution .” According to Schama,
it is the “m orbid preoccupa tion w ith th e just massacre and the
hero ic death” that designates the political culture of the F rench
124
Revolution and to which should be attributed mu ch of its horror.
125
This “neoclassical fixation with the patriotic death” dehuma nizes
126 127
victims, brutalizes participants, obsesses revolutionaries and
128
distorts observation.
This, then, is the heritage that informs the concept of terrorism.
Following Fabre d’Eglantine, the creator of the French
Revolutiona ry calen dar, “w e con ceive nothing except by ima ges:
even the most abstract analysis or the most metaphysical
129
formulations can only ta ke effect throu gh images.” Our ideas
about revolution are rooted in this French experience. And, the
images, the imaginative a ssociations, we bring o ut of the French
Revolution, especially out of the years after 1792 in sinuate
themselves into the attitu des, we could even call them prejudices,
that attach themselves to our here and now ability to think about
113. Id. at 793.
114. Id. at 796-98.
115. Id. at 822-27.
116. Id. at 804.
117. Id. at 8 08 -11 , 81 6-2 0.
118. Id. at 827-30.
119. Id. at 831-36.
120. Id. at 837 . Scha m a acco unts for 35 4 exe cution s in F loreal (a m onth in the revolutiona ry
calendar)—up from on ly 155 the mo nth before— that nu mb er increases to 509 in Prarial and
to 796 in Messidor. In just the first nine days of Thermidor the number of executions was 342.
Id.
121. Id. at 839-46.
122. Id. at 852 (“Th e violence did no t stop . . . with the T error.”). Scham a refers to, “waves
of the Cou nter-Terror . . . anarchic mu rder gangs .” Id.
123. Id. at 859.
124. Id.
125. Id. at 861.
126. Id. at 860.
127. Id. at 875.
128. Id. at 859, 861.
129. Id. at 770.

21. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 157
terrorism. For Westerners, the violent, bloody ima ges w e carry from
the last months, from Forea l, Prairial, Messidor, Therm idor, are the
130
ground, the soil, in which the seeds of terrorism are planted.
131
Wha t grows draws its nourishment from this source.
2. The R ussia n Revolution : Seeds, On ce Plan ted, Ripen In
Fertile Soil
Terror as an institutional device , consciously
employed to accelerate the momentum of the
revolution, was unknown prior to the Russian
132
Revolution.
The eighteenth-century terror was still enacted in
good faith. . . . The purges in the Bolshevik party . .
. were m otivated chiefly by ideological differences; in
this respect the interconnection between terror and
133
ideology was manifest from the very beginning.
Ma ss atomization in Soviet society was achieved by
134
the skillful use of repeated purges.
[N]ot only political propaganda but the whole of
modern mass publicity contains an element of threa t;
that terror, on the other hand, can be fully effective
without propaganda , so long as it is only a question
of conventional political terror of tyranny. Only when
terror is intended to coerce not me rely from without
130. C ONQUEST , supra n ot e 1 , a t x iv (c la im i ng th a t w e ha ve ca rr ie d i nt o t he pr es en t: “ [A ]
still living past, where we can trace the primitive but still powerful notion that any political
or othe r object ive can be a chieve d by m ere force .”).
131. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra no te 1 7, a t 10 8, w rot e in 19 63 :
[A]ll revolutions, with the exception of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956,
have followed the examp le of the French Revolution and used and
m isused the mighty forces of misery and destitution in their struggle
against tyranny or oppression. And although the whole record of past
revolutions demonstrates bey o n d doubt that every attempt to solve the
social question with political means leads into terror, and that it is terror
which sends revolutions to their doom , it can hardly be d enied tha t to
av oid thi s fa ta l m ist ak e is alm ost im po ss ibl e.
T h ere is no doubt of the emphasis Arendt accords the ethnocentricity of the Western canon.
W riting in 1 963 , she w as a ble to ig nore th e very d ifferent re volutio nary history of Ga ndh i in
Ind ia o r N uk rum ah ’s su cce ss in G ha na .
132. Id. at 95.
133. Id.
134. H ANNAH A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM : P ART T HREE OF THE O RIGINS OF T OTALITARIANISM
21 (1968 ) [hereinafter A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM ].

22. 158 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
but . . . from within, when the political regime wants
135
more than power, is terror in need of propaganda.
What was requ ired for the success of the Russian Revolution was
“the manufacturing of Communist man out of the human material
136
of the capitalist a ge.” Revolutiona ry leaders in Russia confronted
the task of transforming a structureless mass governed by a
137
despotic and centralized bureaucracy into a paradise of shared
abundance. The end of suffering, the procurement of human
happiness, goals inherited from the French Revolution, called for
138
drama tic measures.
139
These dramatic measures began early with Lenin’s purges and
escalated to th e horrors, the terrors, of Stalin’s regime. The
estimates of the carn age stu n the m ind. Acco rding to G lover’s
sources, over sixty m illion people m ay h ave been killed between
1917 and 1987. He reports another estimate, for ju st the S talin
years, that puts the death toll at twenty million. Yet another
estim ate approximates almost ten million killed in the decade
between 1930 and 1940. As Glover states it, regardless of our
ability to determine exact figures “a very rough idea is enough.
140
Stalinist deliberate killing was on a scale surpassed only by war.”
The me thods u sed varied. Many w ere execu ted, sing ly or in
141
masses. Com pulsory displacem ents of populations, w hich
142
effectively translated into mass murder, account for many de aths.
Many collective farm efforts amounted to little more than
143
compulsory starvation, deliberately constructed famines. Slave
labor took its toll; up to 250,000 died building the Baltic-White Sea
144
Canal. Officials were given quotas of “enemies of the people” and
145
directed to accomplish their extermination. Religiou s practice
135. Id. at 39 n.1.
136. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 25 4, tells us that L enin u nde rlined t his pa rticular p hras e in
his copy of Nikolai Bukharin's Econom ics of the Transition Period.
137. A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM , supra note 134, at 16.
138. See G LOVER, supra note 3, at 255. Walter Duranty’s supporti ve p oem , Red Squa re,
published in the New York Tim es in 1932, is quoted by Glover: “Russians may be hungry and
short of clothes an d com fort/ But you can ’t make an om elet withou t breaking eggs.” Id.
139. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 95-96.
140. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 237.
141. Id.
142. Id. at 238. For example, Glover reports, through Solzhenitsyn as a source, that in 1930,
10 ,00 0 fa m ilie s w ere sen t on a w int er r elo cat ion m ove tha t, in the en d, k ille d th em all. Id.
143. Id. ( r ep orting that four to six million people died in the Ukraine as the result of
collectivization policies that im p osed impossible grain quotas, removed hom e-grown food
products and block ade d the pop ulatio n so n o sup plies co uld b e brou ght from the ou tside).
Radzinsky estimates a five to eight m illion death toll figu re. R ADZINSKY , supra note 29, at 258.
144. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 238-39.
145. Id. at 239.

23. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 159
was a criminal offense. Arrest led to torture. Torture led to
confessions. Confessions led to la bor ca mps. Labor ca mps led to
146
more torture and, most often, death.
As Glover describes the Stalin period: “Resistance was
147
paralyzed [sic].” Informers were everywhere. The terror became
148
its own fuel. Fear governed. Party leaders as w ell as ordina ry
people had good reason to trem ble. They too w ere freq uen tly
149
arrested, tortured, tried, convicted and executed; for example,
Bukharin, one of the ideolo gical leaders of the Revolution w as,
150
during Stalin’s re gim e, charged, tried, convicted, and executed.
According to Glover, “[t]he leaders were trapped by fear of Stalin
and even he was trapped by his fear of their desire to be rid of
151
him .”
Picking up on a th em e fro m Arendt, G lover says: “What
distinguishes the Soviet terror from its predecessors is the role of an
152
ideology, or system of beliefs.” In Glover’s terms ideology
153
supplanted mo ral restra int. According to this ideology, for the
Russian Revolution to succeed, the people needed to be led by the
154
Party and the Party needed to be led by an incorruptible source.
All this lea dersh ip was necessary, according to Marxist theory,
because, for the most part, prior regimes had already corrupted the
minds, ideas, and beliefs of those who experienced them. Prevailing
morality, for M arxists, is n ot an honorable result of deep human
155
reason but a m ask for obscuring class interests. That m ask mu st
be removed for the people to see clearly their real interests and
146. Id. at 238-39.
147. Id. at 242.
148. Id. See also R ADZINSKY , supra note 2 9, at 2 61 (re portin g tha t “[f]ear is stronger than
sha m e”).
149. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 243-45.
150. Id. at 245-46. “My ow n fate,” Bukharin said at his trial, “is of no importance. All that
ma tters is the So viet Un ion.” Id. at 246.
151. Id. at 250.
152. Id. at 252. Glover quotes Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's The Gu lag Archipelago:
“M ac be th ’s self-justifica tions w ere feeb le— and his con scie nce de vou red him . Yes, even Iago
was a little lamb too. The imagination and the sp iritu al st reng th of S ha ke sp ea re’s evildoers
stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.” Id.
153. Id.
154. Id. at 2 53 .
T otalitarian movem ents are mas s organizations of atomized,
isolated ind ivid ua ls. . . . [T]heir m ost con spicu ous e xterna l chara cteristic
is their demand for total, unrestricted, un cond itiona l, and u nalte rable
loyalty of the individua l mem ber. . . . Such loya lty can be e xpect ed on ly
from the completely isolated human being who, without any other social
ties to family, friends . . . derives his sense of ha ving a place in the w orld
only from his belonging to a m ovem ent.
A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM , supra note 134, at 21-22.
155. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 254.

24. 160 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
options. Stripped of obscuration, they will see what is in their own
best interest. The problem is how to make the transition from the
defective reasoning of the deluded population to the cleansed
reasoning of those who have finally achieved freedom from their
chain s.
The problem appears solvable at the level of ideas. One need
only treat the population to an educational cleansing. Reveal the
error of the old. Reveal the strength of the new. People, how ever,
are not as plia ble as ideas. Or, m aybe, people are exactly as pliable
as ideas. It may be that we are deluded about the ea se with which
ideas can be changed. Glover, whose theme is morality, talks about
the web of interconnected idea s and concepts that hold a belief
156
system in place. He tells u s any belief, “no m atter h ow absurd,”
can be preserved if a person is willing to make enough changes to its
157
supportive web. It seems, as a logical in version , that beliefs can
be changed as long a s there is sufficien t willingn ess to make the
req uisite changes to th eir supportive network s.
The process of bringing change to the network of beliefs that
holds one’s moral universe in place is described by Glover
throughout his book. For me, it is the process of bringing change,
or more accurately of attempting to bring change through terror to
populations in revolutionary contexts that drew me to his work.
What I am observing a re revolutionary leaders w ho a ttempt to
change social results by requiring people to conduct them selves in
accordance w ith ordain ed ideas.
In Russia, the inspiration for change began at an intellectual
level. For many the word “intelligentsia” accurately characterizes
the early leaders of the Russian Revolution. The term, Pipes tells
us, refers to “intellectuals who want power in order to change the
158
world.” As Pipes describes it, intelligentsia feed on ma terialistic
beliefs that facilitate social engineering by conceiving of human
beings almost entirely as creatures of changeable environments. As
environm ents change, the human s who ex perience them a lso
159 160
change. Perfect environmen ts create perfect huma n beings.
Imperfect, defective environments inevitably create imp erfect,
161
defective people. These ideas, conceived during th e
156. Id. at 265-66.
157. Id. at 2 66 ; see a lso C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 146 (“Even in the true sciences, deep
intellectu al inve stm ent in wh at tur ns ou t to be a fallac y is not easily g iven u p.”).
158. R ICHARD P IPES, A C ONCISE H ISTORY OF THE R USSIAN R EVOLUTION 21 (1995). “They
were revolutionaries not for the sake of improving the condition of the people but for the sake
of gaining dom ination over the people an d rem aking the m in th eir own im age.” Id. at 388.
159. Id. at 21.
160. Id. at 23.
161. Id. at 24.

25. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 161
162
En lightenm ent, incuba ted in the p atriotic clubs of France in the
163 164
mid-1700s, quickened by Marx, infiltrated, influenced and,
indeed, generated generations of “intelligentsia” as professional
revolutionaries. It is to these professional revolutionaries, a class
identified by Arendt, and not to the g eneral conditions of early
twentieth century Russia, that Pipes attributes the Russian
165
Revolution.
Preceding this revolution, a closed caste of professional
revolutionaries created the first organiza tion in history dedica ted to
political terror. They were capable of ignoring the beliefs of others,
capable of calling themselves the “People’s Will” despite their
miniscule representation, and capable of assassinating Tsar
166
Alexander II. Their efforts did not succeed in bringing the masses
to their side. They did, how ever, give rise to other terrorist
167
organizations. A T sarist governm ent inca pable of responding
successfully to its own challenges played into th e ha nds of this
168
developing revolution ary class. Its capitu lations did not stop their
169
violence. Terrorism increased after 1905. Eventually, in 1917,
162. C ONQUEST , supra note 1, a t 4 (“The origin of the modern era’s ideologies lay in John
Lo ck e’s derivation of scholastic generalities from traditional English understa n d ings of
liberty, thus e xce ss iv ely ra tio na liz in g a nd at t he sa m e tim e limiting, or in a sense desiccating,
the m ore com plex re ality.”).
163. P IPES, supra note 158, at 24.
164. Id. at 23-24 . Pipes quo tes Marx: “The whole developm ent of man . . . depends on
education and environment. ” I t w o u ld fo ll ow t ha t , “ [I ]f m a n d ra w s all his knowledge . . . from
the wo rld of th e se ns es . . . the empirical world must be a rranged so that in it man experiences
and gets used to w hat is rea lly hum an. . . . If ma n is sh ape d by his su rroun dings , his
surround ings m ust be m ade hu ma n.” Id. at 24-25.
165. Id. at 24 (“Nothing in early twentieth century Russia inexorably pushed the country
toward revolution, except the presence of an unusually large and fanatical body of professional
revolu tiona ries.”). Pipes defines professional rev olu tio na rie s a s “ a n ov el b reed who se life ’s
goal wa s overthrow ing by violence a ll existing institutions.” Id. at 29.
166. Id. at 26. Pipes tells us that the group involved thirty individuals in a nation of one
hundred million, and “the ‘ma sses’ neither needed nor desired a revolution; the only group
interested in it w as the intelligentsia .” Id. at 390.
167. Id. at 27. Pipes identifies the Socialist-Revolutionary Party as a direct descendent of
the People’s W ill. In fact, Pipes tells us , one ma in distinguishing point betw een the S ocialist-
Revolutionaries an d th e S ocia l-D em ocr at s, a rival orga nizat ion, wa s their beliefs abou t terror.
The SR (as he calls them) favored terror as a means of coming to power. The SDs also
believed in the political utility of terror. They, howev er, believed it was best used as a
str at egy aft er a ss um ing con tro l of a gov ern m en t. Id. at 29.
168. Id. at 3 6-4 4.
Len in vie we d s ke pti cal ly th e w ho le n oti on of ‘p role ta ria n cu ltu re.’ He had
a very low opinio n of the cultura l level of th e Ru ssian m asse s an d little
faith in their creative poten tial. The task fa cing his govern m e n t , a s he
perceived it, was to inculcate in the masses modern scientific and
technical habits . . . . The Com mun ist regime under Lenin controlled
cultural activities through tw o devices: censorship and strict m onop oly
on cul tur al o rga niz at ion s a nd act ivit ies .
Id. at 315.
169. Pipes estima tes four thousa nd, five hundre d officials and nine thousa nd peo ple were

26. 162 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
“Ru ssia’s fragile political structure” collapsed under the stress of
170
this “w ar o f attrition.”
171
The February Revolution began as a mutiny of soldiers. With
172
surprising speed, the Russian state deteriorated. The Bolshevik
Party that took over in October 1917 was Lenin ’s party, Lenin’s
173
creation. The political idea that guided this Party was Lenin’s
radicalism, the radicalism that Pipes says became the heartbeat of
Russia. It was not idealistic; instead, its ideation w as roo ted in
174
personal resen tment. On a more intellectual level, Lenin sought
175
to graft M arxism to the ana rchism -terrorism of the Peo ple’s W ill.
176
He thought of politics as warfare. He could not tolerate dissent
177
or criticism; he trusted only physical force; Len in w as absolu tely
kill ed in S R a tta cks in 1 90 6 a nd 19 07 . Id. at 49.
170. Id. at 56 . Of cours e, W orld W ar I played a role in this dyn am ic. Pipes does n ot ignore
the wa r. See id. at 58-70. But, for the purposes of studying the Revolution, emphasis on the
W ar w ould d istract fro m the d evelop m ent of m ateria l.
171. Id. at 81.
172. Id. at 96-97 (“It was as if the greatest empire in the world had been an artificia l
construction, w i th o ut or ga n ic un it y. T h e i ns ta n t t h e m o n a rc h w i th d re w , the entire structure
coll ap sed in a he ap .”). P ipe s q uo tes V. R oza no v a s s ta tin g,
Ru ssia w ilted in two days. . . . Even The N ew Tim es [the newspaper]
could not have been shut dow n as quick ly as R ussia shut dow n. It is
amazing how s he sud denly fell apart, all of her, dow n to particles, to
pieces. . . . There was no Empire, no Church, no army, no working class.
And, what remained? Strange to say, literally nothing. The base m asses
rem ain ed .
Id. at 97. “Lenin ro de to pow er on that a narchy, wh ich he did m uch to prom ote.” Id. at 390.
173. Id. at 1 01 . Th e B ols he vik s,
on seizing power in October 1917, prom ptly elimina ted all rival parties to
b eco m e R us sia ’s e x c lu sive source of political authority. Comm unist
Russia, therefore, was throughout its seventy-four years to an unusual
extent the embodiment of the mind and psyche of one man: his biography
an d it s h ist ory are un iqu ely fus ed .
Id.
174. Id. at 1 03 .
[T]errorism had become a kind of philosophy through which to express
frustration, resentment, and blind hatred, a kind of political
expressionism which used bombs to express oneself, which watched
deligh tedly the publicity given to resou ndin g dee ds a nd w as a bsolu tely
willing to pay the price of life for having succeeded in forcing the
recognition of one’s existence on the normal strata of society.
A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM , supra no te 1 34 , at 3 0.
175. P IPES, supra note 158, at 103.
176. Id. at 1 04 . Pip es c all s L en in:
o n e of history ’s great co nqu erors— a dis tinction not vitia ted b y the fa ct
that the country he conquered was his own . His innovation, the reason
for his success, was militarizing polit ic s. H e was th e first head of sta te
to treat p o l it i cs , domestic as well as foreign, as warfare in the literal
sense of the word , the objective of which was n ot to com pel the ene my to
su bm it b ut t o a nn ihil at e h im .
Id. at 392.
177. Id. at 144.

27. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 163
convinced of the rightness of his position and totally co mmitted to
178
the revolution. Pipes tells us that Lenin was cruel, a person ab le
179
to condemn thousands of people to death without remorse. The
political system he constructed out of these be liefs and personality
180
traits, he m ade up a s he went along. The Party was
181
conceptualized as a spiritual force, leading by example. A facade
of dem ocratic in stitution s wa s put in place, while the institutions of
182
the old regim e we re uprooted, smashed, eradicated. Opposition
183
was dealt with ruthlessly. Machine guns became instruments of
184
political persuasion. The Cheka, a new security organ, was
185
licensed to kill. Bolshevik terror began.
Events began to take sh ape. Foreign affairs were determined
according to a M arxist th eory delineatin g the eventua l dom inance
186
of Communism. Lenin’s regulation of domestic affairs was
178. Id. at 104. Lenin, like the other intelligentsia, “saw ‘revolution’ not as the replacement
of one government by a nother but as som ething incomparably m ore ambitious: a total
transformation of the human condition for the purpose of creating a new breed of human
bein gs.” Id. at 387 . Indeed: “Althou gh couched in scientific terms, [these] . . . views were
imm une to contra ry evidence a nd hen ce mo re akin to religious faith.” Id.
179. Id. at 105.
180. Id. at 151.
181. Id. at 15 2. W hate ver else this m ean t, it did not mean an improvem ent in the education
s ys te m . Despite the importation of modern ideas into model schools, the fact is that by the
mid-1920s Soviet per ca pita allocations for ed ucation w ere lower than they had been in 1913
and on ly 4 5% of e ligib le ch ild ren act ua lly a tte nd ed sch ool . Id. at 3 25 . N or d id it mean that
the children of Ru ssia we re otherw ise well cared for. By the mid-1920s seven to nine million
besprizornye, orphans or abandoned children, lived without parents, in gangs, and survived
by begging, scroung ing , ste ali ng , an d p ros titu tio n. Id. at 326. Moreover, whatever else the
idea of spir itual leadership implied, it certainly did not imply support of the Church.
“[O]rganized religion . . . had n o place in a C om mu nist society.” Id. at 334.
182. Id. at 151.
183. Id. at 154-165. Pipes quotes a Russian p r o ve r b “H e w ho gra bs the sti ck i s co rpo ral ,”
to sup port th e prop osition th at the bolde st, m ost ru thless claim ant w as th e one m ost like ly
to succeed to p ow er. Id. at 164. “[M]erciless violence, violence that strove for the destruction
of every actual and potential opponent, was for Len in not only th e m ost effect ive bu t the o nly
way o f dealing with problem s.” Id. at 394.
184. Id. at 165 (“The un restrained b rutality with w hich they [the B olsheviks] hen ceforth
ruled Russia stemmed in large m easure from the know ledge . . . that they could do so with
impunity.”). See als o id. at 203 (“[T]he Communists would . . . govern not by consent but by
coe rcio n.”) .
185. Id. at 17 3. In 19 22 , the Ch ek a w ou ld b eco m e th e G PU . Id. at 332. In 1934, the GPU
wou ld be com e th e N KV D— Pe op le’s C om m iss ari at of In ter na l A ffai rs. R ADZINSKY , supra note
29, at 316.
186. P IPES, supra no te 1 58 , at 1 78 . In L en in’s wo rds :
The existence of the Soviet Republic alongside the imperialist states over
the long run is unthinkable. In the end, either th e one or the o ther w ill
t r iu m p h . A nd until that en d . . . a series of the most te rrible conflicts
between the Sov iet R epu blic an d bo urgeo is governments is unavoidab le.
This means that t he ru ling clas s, the p roleta riat, if it only w ishes to rule
and is to rule, mus t dem onstrate th is [intent] also with its m ilitary
org an iza tio n.
Id. In Pipes ' words: “[T]he B olsheviks se ized pow er in Rus sia not to change Russia but to use

28. 164 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
governed by h is belief that socialism would be, or could be,
187
instantan eously successful. To assure that success, radical
econo mic policies, policies at least the equivalent of the eco no m ic
188
terror of the French Revolution , were put in to effect. These
policies introduced the Red Terror of the Russian Revolution. The
proletariat declined by one half, industrial output declined by three-
quarters, and industrial productivity declined by more than two-
189
thirds. To co mpensate, the worker’s state initiated com pulsory
190 191
labor and collectivized agriculture. Lenin asserted state control
over the food supply; he ordered the monopoliza tion of the grain
192
trade, the forced extraction of produce; he instituted intra-group
her as a sp ringboard from which to change the world. . . . [T]he Bolsheviks came to regard
the interests of Ru ssia as ide ntical with tho se o f w orld com m un ism .” Id. at 28 6-87 . Aga in, in
Le nin’s words: “We assert that the interests of socia lism, the interests of world revolution,
are sup erior to nationa l interests.” Id. at 286.
187. Id. at 192. Trotsky is reporte d qu oting L enin: “T he triu m ph of s ocialism in R ussia
[required] a ce rta in in ter va l of t im e, no less than a few months. . . . I recall very distinctly
that in the first period . . . Lenin invariably rep eated t ha t w e sha ll have socialis m in ha lf a
y e a r and b ecom e the m ightiest state.” Id. “Th e Bo lshev ik lead ers view ed cu lture in purely
instrumental terms: it was the branch of government concerned with molding minds and
promoting attitu des fa vorable to the constru ction of a socialist society. Ess entially, its
function wa s propa ganda in the broa dest sen se of the w ord.” Id. at 313.
188. See id. at 193-94. These policies, instituted by amateur e conomists, included:
expropriation of real estate; nationalization of industry; repudiation of state debts; abolition
of in he rita nce ; an d th e ra dic al d eva lua tio n o f m on ey. L en in s aid :
T h e socialist org aniza tion of th e econ om y beg ins w ith the liquida tion of
the ma rket, a n d t h at means the liquidation of its regulator—the ‘free’
play of the laws of supply and demand. The inevitable result- namely the
subordination of production to the needs of society—must be achieved by
the unity of the economic plan, which, in principle, covers all the branches
of p rod uct ion .
Id. at 197.
189. Id. at 199 (“[T]he utopian programs w hich Lenin had approved h ad all but destroyed
Russian industry and red uce d b y on e h alf Ru ss ia’s ind us tria l lab or fo rce .”). According to one
spokesperson, during this period the Russian econom y suffere d a ca lam ity “un para lleled in
the history of m ankind .” Id. at 203. However, the fact that the state ’s policy had reduced
productivity to levels that threatened Russia’s survival did not sound an alarm to dedicated
revolutionaries. “Bukharin, a leading left communist, boasted that [it] performed a p ositive
role in that it thoroughly demolished the legacy of capitalism, clearing the way for
com mu nism .” Id.
190. See id. at 201-02. Trotsky comm ented: “One ma y say th a n man is rather a lazy
creature. As a general rule, he strives to avoid work. . . . The only way to attract the labor
force required for economic tasks is to introduce com pulsory lab or service.” Id. at 2 01 . S ee
also Pipes’ com me nt th a t w h e n the Pa rty found tha t workers were less a ttracted to its
ideology than intellectuals, Lenin instructed: “[I]n case of necessity . . . resort to every kind
of trick, cunning, illegal expedient, concealment, suppression of truth, so as to penetrate the
trade unions, to s ta y in the m , to c on du ct in the m , at w ha tev er c ost , Co m m un ist wo rk.” Id. at
297.
191. Id. at 2 03 .
192. Id. at 204. See also C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 93 (claiming about Lenin’s strategies:
“Ideology dema nded that the independent peasan try be destroyed as an econom ic class; power
dem and ed th at the prod ucts o f the cou ntrys ide be take n into the h and s of the state .”).

29. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 165
193
hostility. These policies were no more successful than the
Bolshev ik’s indu strial program ; they led to a 12.5% decline in
cultivated acreage and generated a 30% decline in agricultural
194 195
yields. People went hungry. Peasan ts open ly revolted. No
amount of military presen ce and no am ount of bloody repression
196
could improve those figures or change these facts.
197
Mean while, the Tsar and his fam ily were murdered; the P arty
that was proving itself unable to rule by consent was
198
simultaneously proving itself willing to rule by terror. At a
minimum, terror in this con text m ean t su m mary execu tion s, a
pervasive atmosphere of lawlessness, and the enforced wrenching
199
powerlessness of ordinary citizens. Later, after an attempt on
200
Lenin ’s life, concentration camps were established and “a kind of
201
mu rderous psychosis seized the B olsheviks.” The death toll
193. P IPES, supra no te 1 58 , at 2 05 .
On ly if we su cceed in splitt ing the village in tw o irrecon cilably h ostile
c a m p s, i f w e a re ab le to in fla m e th ere th e s am e civil war that had tak en
place . . . in the citie s . . . o n ly th e n w i ll w e b e in a po s it io n to s ay th a t w e
wi ll do tha t to the villa ge t ha t w e a re a ble to d o fo r th e cit y.
Id. at 207 (quoting I. Sverd lov).
194. Id. at 209.
195. Id.
196. Id. at 208- 09. See also C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 39 (quoting Lenin as stating: “The
victory of the w orkers is im poss ible w ithou t sacrifices , witho ut a te m pora ry wo rsenin g of the ir
cond ition.”). Further, as Conquest reasons: “Only when envisaged in the abstract, as verbal
icons, did the proleta riat or the m asses figure p ositively.” Id. at 41.
197. P IPES, supra note 1 58, at 216 . Trotsk y is quoted: “The execu tion of th e Ts ar’s fam ily
was need ed no t only to frighten , horrify, and instill a s ense of hop elessn ess in th e e ne m y but
also to shake up our own ranks, to demonstrate that there was no retreating, that ahead lay
either total victory or total doo m.” Id.
198. Id. at 217. According to one government official quoted by P ipes, terror became a
“heavy, suffocating cloak thrown from above over the country’s entire population, a cloak
woven of mistrus t, lurking vigilance, and lust for revenge.” Id. “Lenin attached to propaganda
the highest priority, attributing to it (along with the disunity of his op po ne nt s) h is r eg im e’s
ability to survive. . . . Its prerequisite w as com plete control of all sources o f information .” Id.
at 305.
199. Id. at 217. Law was replaced by “revolutionary con science.” Id. at 219. Political crimes
were handled by revolutionary tribu nals m odeled a fter those m ade fam ous du ring the Fren ch
Revolution. Id. I n L e ni n’s o w n words, the task of the Com mun ist judiciary was to provide a
“justification of terror. . . . The court is not to eliminate terror . . . but to sub stantiate it and
legitimize it.” Id. at 2 20 . Ac cor din g to Pip es:
The wh ole thru st of lega l theory and pract ice u nder Len in was to
elimina te all obstacles that stood in the way of punishing those whom the
government for any reaso n f ou nd undesirable. Comm unist legal
historians, referring to the practices of th e 1 9 20s , de fin ed la w as ‘a
discip lining p rinciple that helps strengthen the Soviet state and develop
th e s ocia lis t e cono m y.’
Id. at 355.
200. Id. at 22 3 . “The decree on Red T error of September 5, 1918, explicitly provided for
‘safeguarding of the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration
cam ps.’” Id. at 227.
201. Id. at 2 24 . “W it ho ut m ercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies by the scores of

30. 166 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
202
moun ted. Mo re would soon perish from associated events; the
203
carnage was exacerb ated by civil war. The civil war was
204
accompanied by pogroms in the Ukraine, the liquidation of the
205
Cossacks in the Don region, and severe casualty losses on both
206 207
sides. Its toll on the civilian population is staggering. The civil
208
war was followed by famine. The famine excused attacks on the
209
Church.
h u nd r ed s , l et th e m b e t h ou s an d s, l et th e m d ro w n in t he ir ow n blo od . For th e bloo d of L enin
and U rits kii . . . let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie—m ore blood, as much as
possible .” Id. (quoting the Re d Arm y New spap er). Also, “[w]e mu st execute no t only the
guilty. Execution of the innocent w ill impress th e m asses ev en m ore.” Id.
202. Id. at 2 27 . The death toll for this stage of the Red Terror is estimated at betwe en fifty
tho us an d a nd on e h un dre d fo rty tho us an d. Id.
203. Id. at 233 -36. “Lenin n ot only expected civil war to break out in his own country and
around the globe after he had taken powe r, but he took p ower in ord er to un lea sh su ch a wa r.”
Id. at 233. As Trotsky stated: “Soviet authority is orga nized civil war.” Id. An d, “[t]he C ivil
War was prim arily a political conflict, a struggle for power and not a conventional w ar.” Id.
at 236.
204. Id. at 259. The death toll for this endeavor reached an estimated fifty thousand to one
hu nd red tho us an d. Id. at 264.
205. Id. at 25 4 (“A secret d irective from Mo scow dem and ed ‘the co m plete, ra pid , decisive
a n n ihilation of Cossa ckdom as a sep arate econ om ic group, the destru ction of its econ om ic
foundations, the physical extermination of its officials and officers, and altogether the Co ssack
elite.’”).
206. Id. at 27 4 (estim ating 1,125 ,000 c asu alties).
207. Id. Bet wee n one and a ha lf and two m illion citizens fled the country. Infectious
diseases are believed to have killed two million people during this period. Malnutrition,
exp osu re, s uic ide , acc ou nt f or a no the r siz ab le s ta tis tic. Id.
208. Id. at 33 7. Th e famine an d a ss ocia ted dis ea ses kill ed ove r fiv e m illio n p eop le. Id. at
360. It was n ot a natu ral disaste r in an y ordin ary se nse. It w as th e resu lt of Bo lshev ik
agrarian policies. In 1920,
The government persevered w ith forcible confiscation of peasant food
‘sur plu s,’ which in many cases was not surplus at all but grain needed for
sustena nce and the p lantin g of nex t year ’s crop. Sin ce the w eath er in
1920 wa s unfa vorab le to agriculture, the meager bread reserves dwindled
still further and the countryside began [experiencing] . . . famine.
Id. at 3 44 . By the sp rin g of 19 21 , con dit ion s h ad rea che d m as s s ta rva tio n p rop ort ion s.
[M]illions of wretched human beings abandoned their villages . . . Moscow
persisted in denying th at a cata strophe had occurred . . . Visitors to the
stricken areas p assed village after village with no sig n o f life . . . . In the
cities, corps es littere d the streets . . . . The fam ine was accompanied by
epidemics. . . . The Soviet government watched the sp read of the famine
in a state of p ara lys is. . . . [It] “confronted a problem which, for the first
tim e, it c ou ld n ot s olv e w ith res ort to fo rce .”
Id. at 357 (quoting historian Michel Heller). In the summer of 1921, an appeal for help was
finally issued. Th e Un ited State s, guided by Herbert Hoover under the auspices of the
American Relief Adm inistration ( “A R A ”) , e st ab li sh ed a sy st em o f a ss is ta n ce . B y the summ er
of 1922, the AR A wa s feeding eleven million people a day. Deaths from starvation had ceased.
Id. at 359-60.
209. Id. at 3 38 -40 . In L en in’s wo rds :
It is n ow an d o nly no w, w hen in re gions afflicted b y fam ine th ere is
cannibalism and the roads are littered with hundreds if not thousands of
corpses, that we can (and there fore must) pursue the acquisition of
[church] valuab les with the most ferocious and merciless energy, stopping

31. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 167
This was the R ed T error; it was followed by another. Lenin aged
210 211
and died. Stalin assumed pow er. It was Stalin’s theory that
“the closer Com mun ism approached final victory, the more intense
grew social conflicts—a notion that justified a bloodbath of
212
unprecedented fero city.” Trotsky and others were hounded from
213
the party and executed or assassinated. Un der Stalin’s leadership
forcible confiscation of grain resum ed, peasant class antagonisms
214
were reawakened. Inform ing on others became a virtue; the
215
secret police were transformed into heroes. Show trials and the
216
escalation of class warfare were followed by renewed attacks
against wha t was left of the Ch urch as Stalin led the cou ntry in to
217 218
renewed revolution. Famine re-emerged. A campaign against
“ideolo gical distortions” was undertaken to tame t he
219
intelligentsia. Despite its total subservience to him, between
at no thi ng in s up pre ss ing all r esi sta nce . . . . The greater the num ber of
the representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and reactionary clergy
we wi ll m an ag e to exe cut e in thi s a ffai r, th e b ett er.
Id. at 338.
210. Id. at 372-81.
211. Id. at 372-73.
212. Id. at 392.
213. Id. at 3 78 -79 ; see also R ADZINSKY , supra note 29 , at 228 (“Le nin had intended to ta m e
the rebellious old gua rd: Stalin m ade this im perative. Lenin had adopted a menacing
resolu tion on Par ty un ity: Sta lin m ade it an iron law .”).
214. C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 96 (“We now have full docum enta tion th at the Sta lin
lead ership knew exact ly w h a t w a s happening and used famine as a mean s of terror, and of
revenge, against the pe as an try .”); see also R ADZINSKY , supra note 29, at 233. Stalin called for
“the liquidation of the k ulak as a class.” Id. at 246. Depo rtation, execution, cam p assign me nts
for Kulak individuals and Kulak families was mercilessly undertaken. In the end about four
hundred thousand peop le w ere up roo ted . Id. at 246-247. Kulaks were characterized as
counter-revolutionaries. Id. However, it seems as if they were the most successful of the
pe as an t cla ss . Id. at 2 48 . Su rviv ing pe as an ts w ere un ite d in coll ect ive far m s. Id.
215. Id. at 240.
216. Id. at 242 -43. “Those under a rrest c o n fe s se d to e ve ry th in g . . . . O n e th in g un k no w n
until the pre sen t w as the ext en t of S ta lin’s inv olv em en t. O nly no w, a f t er r ea ding the new
documents, can I say for su re that he p ersonally sta ged the trials.” Id. at 2 49 . “He . . . saw to
it that blood w as spilled ab unda ntly. How can you h ave Te rror without b lood?” Id. at 251.
217. Id. at 2 44 -45 .
T h e underlying idea of the plan was to squeeze a century of
progress into ten years, by revolutionary means. This required
industrialization, the collectivization of agriculture, and the creation of
a m an i p ulable Pa rty, which wo uld carry out th e leader’s injunctions to
the letter instead of wa sting tim e on d iscuss ion an d op positio n. On ly
such a Pa rt y co uld fin ally ta m e a country stirred up by revolution and
cre at e a un ite d s ocie ty.
Id. at 254. “The revolutionary path, through blood and famine, was the one by which the
people cou ld be led into th e bright future.” Id. at 298.
218. Id. at 25 6-5 9. T his fam ine con su m ed be tw een five an d e igh t m illio n p eop le. Id. at 258.
Sta lin fou gh t it w ith Te rro r. Id. He b ound th e peasa nts to the land, like serfs, while exporting
grain. Id. at 259. “Never m ind the hunger, never mind the corp s es : S t al in w ould d rag h is
helpless cou ntry along th e road he had a lways e nvisioned for it.” Id. at 272.
219. Id. at 2 6 1 . “S ta lin w as gra du all y el im ina tin g sh am e. F ea r is s tro ng er t ha n s ha m e.”

32. 168 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
220
1935 and 193 8, Stalin destroyed the Leninist Party. More show
221 222
trials ensued. Torture was developed into an art form. Fear
223
became insanity. The daily life of most citizens was lived
224 225
collectively. They, too, were victimized by terror.
226
Industrialization was, however, achieved to some degree. World
227
War II occurred. During the war Stalin’s deliberate terrorizing of
Id. “[A]rt’s only duty was to set the age nda for techn ology.” Id. at 265.
220. Id. at 319.
221. Id. at 343-51. In A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM , supra note 134, at 31, the author points
to the “demoralizing fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods
can eve ntu all y b e es ta bli sh ed as un qu est ion ed fac ts . . . that the difference between truth and
falsehood may cease to be objective and becom e a mere m atter of power and cleverness, of
pre ss ure an d in fini te r ep eti tio n.”
222. R ADZINSKY , supra note 29, at 354-55. Cell torture led to torture by int err oga tor . Id. at
354. Those who survived w ere subjected to “the notorious conveyor belt”—a system of
continuou s interroga tio n. Id. at 35 5. C on sol ida tio n, a form of “g ood cop ” fol low ed . Id.
Te sti m on y, w he n it wa s a llow ed , wa s re he ars ed . Id.
223. Id. at 368. Radzinsky tells us that “1937 was to be th e m os t te rri bl e y ea r in R us sia ’s
his tor y.” Id. at 364. Wreckers, another term for internal counter-revolutionaries, w ere
denounced eve ryw he re. Id. at 368. Even B ukharin, the Party’s greatest theoreticia n, was
arrested, imprisoned, con vict ed , an d e xec ute d. Id. at 358-61, 374-84. Radzinsky describes the
entire process as “[t]he deadly con veyor belt.” Id. at 391. “Sta lin inaugura ted a self-serv ice
system of elim inatio n: each victim killed his pre de ces sor , an d w as kill ed by his su cce ss or. .
. . Stalin wanted to invo lve as m any peop le as poss ible in the wo rk of destruction.” Id. at 392.
Acc ording to Rad zinsky, this series of pu blic trials provided a “ma gnificent ritual o f
retribution.” Id. at 386.
224. Id. at 3 87 .
Everything was collective. You worked collectively , lived collectiv ely in
a comm unal apartm ent, enjoyed your leisure collectively, perhaps on a
collective excursion into the countryside. Holidays wer e co llec tive . . . .
Every profession had its own holiday, so tha t on that on e day its
collectives could d rink a nd frolic to their hearts’ content, and—m ost
imp ortant— all together.
Id. An d, “[ p]e rso na l res po ns ibi lity die d; th ere wa s on ly co llec tive res po ns ibi lity . . . . This
collective conscience ena bled peo ple to enjoy life uncon cernedly w hen the T error was at its
mo st cruel. Woe to anyon e troubled b y a conscience o f his own.” Id. at 388.
225. Id. at 4 13 .
The families of enemies of the people, their acquaintances, acquaintances
of their acquainta nces— endless ch ains of peop le were turn ed into
convicts. In the hands of the army, mass terror consigned thousands of
phys ically s tro ng pe op le to th e ca m ps. [Stalin] now had at his disposal
the army of unpa id laborers of which Trotsky onc e d re a m e d . . . . Before
any ma jor project was begun, the NKVD received direct instructions
about the num ber of arrests it needed to m ake.
Id.
226. Id. at 424 (“In the economy, the private sector had been abolished, capitalism was
finis he d.” ). “The victory of the w orkers’ and p easan ts’ state was mo re imp ortant tha n m ere
human lives.” Id. at 437. Through terror, Stalin had managed to wrestle Russia into the
tw en tie th c en tur y.
227. Id. at 443-89. During WW II the Russian army lost over eight hundred fifty thousand
m en an d th e civ ilia n p op ula tio n s uffe red a lo ss of e igh tee n m illio n. Id. at 5 05 .

33. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 169
228
his own population abated; following the war, it resumed. On ly
229
Stalin’s death relieved the tension.
Arendt speaks about a fury of wretchedness as fueling the rage
of destruction that became the Reign of Terror in the French
Revolution; in the Russian situation a kind of ma nipulative coldness
seemed to ta ke over. T o so m e degree, Arendt draws a connection
between the passionate destruction of the French Revolution and
the hea rtless destruction wrough t by R ussian revolutionaries by
230
examining a transformation of suspicion. Because the overall
theme of my research is an investigation into the terrorism that
grows out of this revolutionary tradition, I hoped to draw
connections throu gh th e ferve nt w ish for liberation; if I insist on this
image, like a bulim ic, we w ould expe rience liberation though the
process of purge. And, during and after the Russian Revolution,
when we purge, we rid ourselves of more and more of the facts and
231
artifacts of human life.
When we finally move through the Chinese Revolution to Pol
Pot’s regime in Cambodia, we will find that purging a n en tire city
228. Id. at 500. Over one half million Chechen and Ingush peop le we re eva cuate d from their
homelands. Id. at 503. The Crim ea was "cleansed" of over two hun dred thou san d eth nic
minorities. Id. Po gro m s a ga ins t S ovi et J ew s re su m ed . Id. at 529 -35. New trials were
pla nn ed . Id. at 550-60.
229. Id. at 568-69. Radzinsky reports: “Shortly before he died the Boss [Stalin asked one
of his gu ards ]. . . . ‘W ha t d o y ou th ink- will A m erica at ta ck us or n ot ?’. . . . ‘[J]ust remem ber
this: they will attack us, [they are] imperialists, and they certainly will attack us. If we let
them .’” Id.
230. Co m pa re, A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra no te 1 7, a t 25 0,
Fo r R ob es pi erre’s rule of terror was indeed nothing else but the attempt
to o r g anize the wh ole French p eople into a s ingle gigantic party
ma chinery . . . through w hich th e Ja cobin club w ould spread a net of party
cells all over Fran ce; and their tasks were no longer discussion and
exchange of opinions . . . but to spy up on one a nother an d to den ounce
members and non-members alike
wi th, A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM , supra no te 1 34 , at 1 20 ,
The first sta ge [is] . . . ferret in g ou t se cr et en e m ie s an d hu n ti ng d ow n
former op po ne nts . . . . T h e e n d of the first stage comes with the
liquidation of open and secret re sista nce in any o rgan ized for m . . . . On ly
after the extermination of real enemies has been completed and the hunt
for ‘objective enemies’ begun does terror become the act ual content of
totalitarian regimes.
and, “ [ t] o ta litarianism defined its enemies ideologically before it seized power, so that
categories of the ‘susp ects’ were not esta blished thro ugh police inform ation.” Id. at 121.
231. P IPES, supra no te 1 58 , at 3 93 .
[ T ]h e Bols heviks . . . were guilty of ignoring the cultural realities of
Ru ssia and her un prep ared ness for the e conom ic and social order that
they trie d to im po se o n h er. The B olsheviks cea sed to be utopians when,
once it had become obvious the ideal was unattainable, they persis ted in
the att em pt b y re sor tin g to un res tra ine d v iole nce .
Id. “Terror . . . the execution of a law of movem ent whose ultimate goal is . . . the fabrication
of mankind, eliminates individuals for the sake of the species, sacrifices the ‘parts’ for the
sake of the whole.” A RENDT, T OTALITARIANISM , supra note 134, at 163.

34. 170 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
of its population an d purging, that is exterm inating, an entire
quarter of a nation’s people is both possible and not enough.
Mussolini seemed to capture the spirit motivating Russian
Revolutiona ry terror when h e sa id of Le nin : “Lenin is an artist who
worked on humans as other artists work on marble or metal. But
human beings are ha rder than granite and less malleable than
232
iron.” The qu ote continu es w ith M ussolini saying, “No
ma sterwork has emerged. The artist has failed. The task has
233
proven beyond his powers.” I have no doubt that the artist failed;
but, the fact that he failed does n ot go to the h eart of the m atter.
The problem lies in his, or our, willingness to accept the idea of
human beings as mediums of expression ; hum an p erfectibility does
234
not mix w ell with political power. This problem, though, was
certain ly not evident to Mao Zedong. It is to Zedong’s work in the
context of the People’s Republic of China that we now turn.
3. The People’s Republic of China: Let a Hundred Flowers
Bloom
The true heirs of Stalin were not the Soviet leaders…
For huge Stalinist projects of reshaping society, one
has to turn to Mao Zedong in China an d Po l Pot in
235
Cambodia.
236
Political power grows out of the barrel of the gun.
Disclosure is better than no disclosure; early
disclosure is better than late disclosure; thorough
disclosure is better than reserved disclosure. If one
sincerely discloses his whole criminal story and
232. P IPES, supra note 158, at 404-05.
233. Id. at 405.
234. C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 3 (“The huge catastrophes of our era have been inflicted by
human beings driven by certain thoughts. . . . The basic characteristic and attraction was and
is the archaic idea that utopia can be constructed on earth; the offer of a millenarian solution
to all human problems.”). My terrorism research moves me to a profound distrust for th e
undertaking. It does not seem tolerably possible for any one of us to imagine herself an
“artist” wh ose m edium is peo ple. N ot tha t I dou bt the accura cy of the ima gina tive
chara cteriza t i on ; rath er, it is the willingness of the mind to entertain the metaphor that
m ove s m e to ob ject . C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 126, warns against people who admired the
ability of the Soviets to enforce their id e a s. F urther on he reports being troubled by “the
persistence to this day of an adolescent revolutionary romanticism, as one of the unfortun ate
afflictions to which the hum an m ind wa s and is p rone.” Id. at 294-95.
235. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 283.
236. J ONATHAN D . S PENCE, T HE S EARCH FOR M ODERN C HINA 563 (1990). The full quote by
Zedong includes the following: “Our principle is that the party commands the gun and the
gun sha ll never be allow ed to com ma nd the p arty.” Id.

35. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 171
adm its his crimes to the people hum bly, he will be
treated leniently and given a way for safe conduct,
237
and his case will not affect his family.
Earlier in this article I sa id: “What revo lutiona ry leaders in
Ru ssia confronted was the task of transforming a structureless mass
governed by a despotic and centralized bureau cracy in to a paradise
238
of shared abun dance.” A not entirely dissimilar situation faced
China in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Howev er, where
the Russians confronted an essentially centralized system, the
Chinese faced extreme fra gm entation. Many years prior to the rise
of revolu tion ary com mun ism , China’s imperial order collapsed.
Internal disputes and foreign interventions resulted in a prolonged
239
period of political instability. Amon g intellectual, educated
Chinese, self-scrutiny, stim ulated by a serious concern that th eir
country mig ht perish, led to the exploration of different political
240
theories. Prior to the B olshevik Revolution in R ussia, Chinese
241
scholars had shown little interest in Marxism; following the
events of 1917 , man y turned to Ru ssia, rather than France, as a
242
source for revo lution ary in spiration. Adapting the indu strial-
237. Id. at 613 (qu o t in g H ONG-Y UNG L EE , T HE P OLITICS OF THE C HINESE C ULTURAL
R EVOLUTION : A C ASE S TUDY 292-93 (1978)). During the Cultural Revolution “’[c]onfession’
to s om e sort of failing was seen as essential to personal redemp tion; stubborn silence or
righteous insiste nce on innoce nce cou ld lead to viciou s pu nishm ent a nd s usta ine d group
pressure.” S PENCE, supra note 236, at 613.
238. Sup ra note 13 7 and accom panyin g text.
239. S PENCE, supra n o te 2 36 , a t 27 1 . S p e nc e t el ls u s t h at w hen the last Ma nchu em peror
abdicated in 1912:
[N]ationa l finances we re in disarray, w ith a de pleted treas ury in Peking
and little m oney coming in from the provinces. Groups of scholars and
burea ucrats had expressed a wide range of dissatisfactions with the
defunct [im p eria l] re gim e, a n d this discontent now had to be addressed.
The army troops occupying Peking were numerous but hard to control, of
doubtful loyalty, and liable to mutiny. . . . Natural disasters had
devastated the cou ntrys ide, cau sing ru ine d h a rves ts a nd sta rva tio n. . . .
Foreign pre ss ure wa s in ten se, t he po ss ibi lity of in va sio n im m ine nt. . . .
[T]here was a strong chance that independent separatist regim es w ould
emerge . . . weakening central authority.
Id. at 2 75 . Al so, “[t]he so cial, econo m ic, and p olitical dim ensio ns of C hines e life we re all in
flux, and th e fragmentation of the country under militarists’ rule made coherent planning
almost impossible. The persistent tension between central and local power in China was
especially keen .” Id. at 296.
240. Id. at 271. One study grou p, the M arxist Re search Socie ty, set up in 19 18, eve ntua lly
at tra cte d m an y in flue nti al s tud en ts, a m on g th em , M ao Ze do ng . Id. at 307.
241. Id. at 3 05. Sun Yat-sen’s socialist ideas were rooted in the British socialist
con str uct ion s a ss ocia ted wi th H en ry G eor ge. Id.
242. Id. Spen ce quoting L i Dazh ao: “[W]e h ave only to raise our heads t o w e lc om e t he d aw n
of the new civilization of the world, and turn our ears to welco m e the n ew R ussia that is
founded upon freedom and humanis m , a n d to a da pt o urs elv es t o th e n ew tid e of the wo rld .”
Id. at 3 06 . H o w e v e r , F r a nce w as im po rta nt t o th e C hin ese Co m m un ist Pa rty . Id. at 231.

36. 172 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
proletariat mo del of Marx to an agrarian-peasant based economy
proved no more obstructive to the Chinese than it had to the
243
Russians. Initiating a theme that was to continue through the
Mao and Pol P ot regime s, the intellectual class was “sent” to the
countryside to escape the corruption of urban life and to dignify
244
themselves through honest labor. Visits to the Soviet Union
245
cemen ted associations.
What followed were decades of stressful cooperation, strife, and
finally open warfare between the Chinese Socialists, those led by
Sun Yat-sen (later led by Chiang Kai-shek) and the Chine se
Com mu nists, of the Long March fame who would eventually be
246
represented by Mao Z edong. Simultaneously, these same decades
contained external strife represented by the grow th of Japanese
247
domination and W WII. When , on O ctober 1, 1949, M ao formally
Between 1919 and 1920, over one thousand Chinese students participated in programs that
allowed them to w ork and study in France, mostly in or near Pa ris. Id. There they w ere
introduced to French lab or o rga niz at ion s a nd soc ial ist do ctri ne s. Id. Deng Xiaoping, one of
the Chinese students in France, be cam e a po litic al a ctiv ist . Id. Wh ile in France, he and Zhou
En lai join ed the Co m m un ist Pa rty . Id. at 322.
243. C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 90, speaks generally about this transformation: “In the
Jaco bin tradition the task of revolution was now . . . entrusted not to a nebulous ‘class’ but to
a professiona l revolutionary elite party acting in tha t class’s nam e.” S PENCE, supra note 236,
at 30 7-0 8, s pe ak s m ore sp ecif ica lly t o th e C hin ese form ula tio n.
China . . . was at the mercy of foreign imperialist forces that had exploited
all the Chinese people in ways similar to those in which capitalists
exploited their workers—by owning the means of production and seizing
the workers’ surplus value for themselves. . . . “[T]he whole country has
grad ually b ee n tra ns fo rm ed into part of the world proletariat. . . . [T]he
comm on people [of China] still indirectly suffer from the direct capitalist
oppression in a wa y that is even mo re bitter than the d irect capitalist
oppression suffered by th e workin g classes of the va rious [capita list]
nations. . . . Our China is a rural nation and most of the laboring class is
made up of peasants. If they are not liberated, then our whole nation will
not be libera ted.”
Id. at 308 (paraphrasing and quoting Li D azh ou).
244. Id. at 308-09. “[A]mbivalence toward cities . . . was a fea tur e of Ch ine se c om m un ism .”
Id. at 519.
245. Id. at 309-10. Spence, speaking of Qu Qiubai’s experiences in the Soviet Union and the
m ea nin g of the se v isit s to the Ch ine se C om m un ist rev olu tio na ry m ove m en t, sa ys:
[T]hrough know ledge , the C hines e wo uld com e to se e socia lism as a valid
critique of the existing order; through feeling, they would understand
socialism as an emotion that made possible the replacement of the
current order with a new one; th r o u gh will, they would achieve that
transformation by exerting their efforts on the objective world.
Id. at 310.
246. Id. at 334-60, 403-74, 484-519. Interestingly, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang benefited from
associati o n s wi th w arl ord s. Id. at 334. For Sun Yat-sen the connection was actually with a
form idab le ba nd it le ad er, W hit e W olf. Id. at 296 . In Chian g Kai-she k’s case, one wa rlord was
a Shanghai ga ng ste r, D u Y ue -sh en g. Id. at 2 98 . Both were linked to the well-known criminal
group— Green Ga ng . Id. Thes e c on nections might have slipped by m y attention were it not
for t he con clu sio n o f th is re sea rch . See infra section 3.
247. Id. at 456-72, 474-83.

37. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 173
announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China, th e
human horrors and the terrors of revolutionary violence had already
248
begun. Th ough, for these p eople, in these tim es, it was m ore
likely that the struggle with external enemies, the toll of civil strife,
and the failure of econ om ic system s create d a fabric of generalized,
249
rather than revolutionary specific, violence.
The new ly constructed People’s Republic inherited disastrous
inflation. In addition to curbing this inflation, the government was
confronted with the need to restore war damaged industry, to
250
establish law a nd orde r, and to improve agricultural production.
They had only a small cadre of people and, regardless o f anti-
imp erialistic rhetoric, were, as a practical matter, dependent upon
251
foreign assistance. Land reform was initiated and coordinated by
252
“work teams;” violent confrontations between resistant landlords
and enth usiastic peasants were en coura ged by revolutionary
253
leaders. Prop aganda was used to build support in the cities;
citizens were ordered into study groups to learn the vocabulary and
policies of the commu nist governm ent; street-comm ittees were
established to produce localized services; anti-vice programs
254
targeting prostitution and opiu m addiction were facilitated.
248. The Ma o-led A utum n H arves t Up rising in Hu nan in 1927 was no great success. Id. at
3 5 9 . In the sa m e ye ar, t he So vie t di rec ted “C an ton com m un e” e ffor t co st m an y liv es. Id. at
359-60. Chiang Kai-shek conducted a reign of terror in the months following his 1927 coup.
Id. at 361. The “Red Army,” a renegade force that com bined the military m igh t u nd er M ao ’s
lead ership with the trained military of an ex-sold ier of fortu ne, bec am e a fas t-m oving g uerrilla
force. Id. at 374. The Long March itself consumed almost 90% of its participants. From the
approx ima te eighty thousand people who bega n th e travail, only eight to nine thousand
su rviv ed . Id. at 4 09 .
249. Id. at 444-50, 463-66, 468-69, 496 (describing the Ja pa ne se c on qu est ). Id. at 488-89,
492-93, 504-08, 512-13 (describing int ern ali zed str ife). Id. at 429-34, 498, 501-04 (describing
gene ral con dition s).
250. Inflation had reached drama tic proportions. Spence reports that a sack of rice that had
sold for 6.7 million yuan in June of 1948 sold for sixty three million yu a n i n A u gust of that
year. Id. at 5 02 . H e sa ys, “ the re w as litt le h op e of cop ing wi th o rdi na ry c as h tr an sa ctio ns .”
Id. And, by the autumn of that year, “[t]he Chinese republic had become, for all practical
purposes, a barter econ om y.” Id. at 504. For indu stria l development, see id. at 521-22. For
mention of only some of the law and order issues, see id. at 5 08 -09 . Fo r M ao ’s eight point
program, see id. at 510. For agricultural reform efforts, see id. at 516-17.
251. Id. at 514-15.
252. Id. at 516 (“ [ A ]b o u t 40 percent of the cultivated land was seized from landlords and
redistributed, and that a bout 60 percen t of the popu lation bene fited in som e way .”). W ork
t ea m s constituted from three to thirty people. Veteran cadres were joined by stud ents to form
these tea m s. Id. Many team m emb ers received only rudimenta ry training. Id. Their task was
to identify local landlords and break into the ancient patterns of deference that held these
lan dlo rds in a uth orit y. Id.
253. Id. at 517 (“[O]ne landlord family out of six had a member killed in these confrontations
. . . as ma ny as one m illion or m ore pe ople . . . died d uring t his ph ase o f the rev olution .”).
254. Id. at 517-18. Spence quot e d Liu Shaoqi to emphasize the early enthusiasm and
hopefulness of the revolutionaries. Selfless service, he said, was a goal and an ideal, and “any
class background could be transcended by p iercing self-examination and prolonged study of

38. 174 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
Progress toward organizing the country was underway when China
decided to invade Tibet and participate as com batants in the Korean
255
Wa r. During the latter, the Chinese suffered ma ssive
256
casu alties; afterward, western foreign influences were
increa singly rejected and spies and reactionaries were hunted. The
257
regime hardened.
In 1953, the People’s Republic adopted the Soviet “Five-Year
Plan” model of eco nomic developm ent. The adoption of an
integrated econ om ic policy came with basic shifts in political
o r ga n i za t io n . C oord in a t io n a n d p u r g in g t o o k pl a ce
258
simultaneously. China’s atte m pts at ra dica l e co no m ic
259
restructuring initially appeared successful. However, like the
Russians, the Chinese were fueling growth by consuming
260
agricultural wealth. By 195 7, these policies no longer achieved
Ma rxism-L eninism .” Id. at 520.
255. Id. at 52 5 (d iscu ss ing the inv as ion of T ibe t); Id. at 529-30 (discussing the Chine se entry
into th e Ko rean W ar).
256. Id. at 531. Spence says the C hinese suffered “staggering losses of close to one million
m en .” Id. H e a ls o s ay s: “T he Ch in es e C om m un i s ts p robably gained in the short run from
participating in the Korean W ar,” because a unified United States sponsored Korea w as not
in the Co mm unists’ best interest. Id. at 533. “The longer-range tragedy,” he adds, “was that
China had lost all hope of the ‘new dem ocracy’ that had seem ed implicit in the rhetoric . . . of
1949 .” Id.
257. Id. at 531-32. Spence says that as a result of the Korean War the Chinese drew closer
to t he So vie t U nio n w hile tur nin g a wa y fro m the pe rce ive d e vils of W est ern im pe ria lism . Id.
B y 19 50 , he rep ort s, a lm ost all f ore ign ers ha d le ft th e co un try . Id. at 534. In the early 1950s
dea dly campaigns were directe d ag ains t dom estic cou nte rre vol uti on ari es. Id. Spen ce reports
that durin g this p eriod a ppro xim ately th irt y th ousand people w ere executed, some of them
in public specta cles. I d . at 535. A broad based campaign was waged against internal
corruption within the party and, “an all-out assault on the bourgeoisie in China, a class w ar”
was init iat ed . Id. at 53 5-36 . “[B]us iness leade rs we re forced to undergo group criticism
sessions and to confess their past econom ic crimes.” Id. at 537. The fact of massive
denunciations (approximately two hundred thousand) followed by intense investigations and
“voluntary” confes sions involvin g up t o seve nty th ousa nd b usine ss m en jus t in Sh ang hai, he lp
pu t th e ef fort in p ers pe ctiv e. Id. at 5 38 .
During 1950 and 1951 tens of thousands of C hinese intellectu als
of all ages were given six-to eight-month-long ‘courses’ at ‘revolutionary
colleges. . . .’ [T]hey met w ith sm all grou ps . . . for discu ssion and self-
crit icis m , a n d p r ep a re d ‘a u to b io g ra p h ie s ’ i n w hich they a nalyz ed th eir
o w n pa st fa ilin gs a nd tho se o f th eir p are nts . . . . [I]n general the en tire
pro ces s s ub ject ed the int elle ctu als to s eve re m en ta l st res s.
Id. at 564. After a brief defrosting of the situat i on — t h e H u n dr ed Fl ow ers p eriod — M ao ’s
gov ern m en t re tur ne d to a h ard -lin e a pp roa ch t o in tel lect ua l fre ed om . Id. at 5 72 .
258. Id. at 541-42.
259. I d . at 5 44 (“[T]he First Five-Year Plan achieved a dramatic increase in industrial
prod uction .”).
260. Id. (“The C hinese . . . forced the peasantry to sell more than a quarter of their total
grain p ro du ct io n to th e s ta te at e xt re m ely low prices. This policy left the peasants at
subsisten ce level while it enabled the government to guaran tee food s upp lies in the cities and
keep wages down.”). Apparently, the permissibility of private plots allowed the Chinese
pe as an ts t o su rviv e th ese oth erw ise fam ine gen era tin g go ver nm en t po licie s. Id. at 5 50 .

39. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 175
satisfactory ends. The G reat Leap Fo rward was instigated in an
261
attempt to spontan eously en ergize the nation’s economy.
Com mun es were m erged; people were organized alon g military
lines; gigan tic irrigation projects were un dertaken with labor from
the cities; the allowance for private plots was ended; and farmers
were expected to both grow grain and produce h om e m ade steel in
262
makesh ift furnaces. The pooling of household, child-rearing, and
cooking arrangem ents had significant and long-term effects on
fam ily structure; despite the success of several irrigation projects,
the grain yield was profoundly disappointing; and the steel furnaces
263 264
did not work. The result wa s chaos rather than progress.
China continued to export grain in order to pay for heavy
machinery. Grain production continued to fall. In a replay of horror
265
familiar from Russian history, starvation and famine set in.
261. Id. at 575-77. According to Spence, several factors were at play here. Mao was inspired
by So vie t te chn olo gica l de vel op m en t. Id. at 5 75 . Mao was uninspired by China’s agricultural
production figu res for 1 95 7. Id. “The roots of Mao’s radical thinking had always lain in the
voluntaristic, heroic workings of the human w ill and the power of the m asses.” Id. a t 5 76 . H e
was troubled by what he saw as a loss of vitality in the Chinese Revolutionary situation. Id.
H e w a s w or ri ed a b ou t th e gr ow th of “individualism, departmentalism, absolute egalitarianism
or liberalism.” Id. As a result of these factors, Mao seized on Trotsky’s “permanent revolution”
idea:
Now we m ust start a technological revolution so that we may overtake
Brita in in fifteen or more years. . . . Our revolutions are like batt les.
After a victory, we m ust at once put forward a new task . In this way,
cadres a nd the m asses w ill forever be filled with revolutionary fervo ur.
Id. at 577.
262. Id. at 578-80.
263. Id. at 580.
264. Id. at 581.
265. Id. at 583. Spence says that this famine claimed twenty million lives between 1959 and
1962. Id. Glover says the death toll ought to be placed between twenty and thirty million.
G LOVER, supra note 3, at 28 4. According to S pence, it was the unw illingness of cadre w ith
accurate information to confront high ranking officials, who desired good news, with the bad
n e w s of failing production that facilitated the deepening of the fam ine pro ces s. S PENCE, supra
note 236, at 5 83. Accord ing to Glover, “Mao’s policies needed corrective feedback, but most
peop le were too frightened to give it.” G LOVER, supra note 3, at 287. Glover tells two stories
of importance in this regard. First, he describes how at the height of the fa m i n e M a o went
out to t o u r t h e h a rves t ar ea s. Id. at 285-86. So unused was he to being contradicted and so
unwilling were officials to upset this pattern that the followin g scene evolved (as related by
M ao ’s pe rso na l ph ysi cia n a nd po litic al a dv iso r, D r. L i, w ho acc om pa nie d h im on the trip ):
The scene along the railroad tracks was incredible. Harvest time was
approa ching, and the crops we re thriving. The fields were crow ded w ith
peasa nts at work. . . . “Good new s reporting sta tions” were . . . competing
with nearby brigades and com mun es to report—red flags waving, gongs
and drums sounding—the highest, most extravagant figures.
G LOVER, supra note 3, at 285 (quoting L I Z HISUI, T HE P RIVATE L IFE OF C HAIRMAN M AO : T HE
M EMOIRS OF M AO ’S P ERSONAL P HYSICIAN 272-73 (1994)). This scene, as Dr. Li later
dis cov ere d, tu rne d o ut t o b e a the at rica l pr od uct ion :
In Hu bei the pea sants w ere ordered to remove rice plants from far-away
fields and transplant them along M ao’s route to give th e im press ion of a
wildly abundan t crop. ‘The rice wa s p l a nted so closely together that

40. 176 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
As if the famine had resulted from the failure of the people to
accept com munist ideology, the govern ment redoubled its efforts to
266
introduce basic socialist values into Chinese society. Econom ic
267
recovery was accomplished; however, the political situation was
268 269
not as easily stabilized. The Cultural Revolution comm enced.
electric fans had to be set up around the fields to circulate the air in order
to p rev en t th e p lan ts fr om rot tin g.’
G LOVER, supra no te 3 , a t 2 8 5 -8 6 (citing and quoting L I Z HISUI, T HE P RIVATE L IFE OF
C HAIRMAN M AO : T HE M EMOIRS OF M AO ’S P ERSONAL P HYSICIAN 277 (199 4)). Second, Glover
reports that in 1959 the harvest was thirty million tons les s th an in 1 95 8. G LOVER, supra note
3, at 28 5. M ost officials, how ever, found it prud ent to report large increases in ord er to
placate M ao . Id. at 28 7. Pen g De hua i, the M inis ter of D efe ns e, w as no t am on g th em . Id. H e
spoke up de ta ilin g th e d an ger of s ta rva tio n. Id. He even wrote to Mao to explain the
situation. Id. M ao dis m iss ed Pe ng ’s cri ticis m s. Id. Pen g, still determined to break through
M ao ’s denial of the truth, accused him of becom ing like S t a l in in his willingness to sacrifice
the people to “impossible production targets.” Id. As if to dem onstrate the correctness of the
Sta lin analogy, Peng was condemned as an “anti-Party element” and as “a r igh t op po rtu nis t.”
Id. He w as put under house a rrest and assigned to write a s elf-crit icis m . During the Cultural
Re vol uti on he wa s to rtu red an d k ille d. Id.
266. S PENCE, supra note 236, at 592 (“The collective was to be p laced ahead of the
individ ual.”). And, quoting Mao, “Any departure fro m this correct analysis and logical
reasoning will inev itably caus e our w ork of s ocialist co nstru ction to lose its direction.” Id.
Solzhenitsyn speaks abou t similar reasoning in Soviet Russia: “The primitive r e fu s a l to
comprom ise is elevated into a theoretical principle and is regarded as the pinnacle of
ort ho do xy.” C ONQUEST , supra no te 1 , at 1 12 . Ac cor din g to Co nq ue st, t his wa y of thinking
implies that, “political leadership, and political considerations generally, were on a higher and
mo re comprehensive plane than all other elements in society and were empowered to make
final decisions in all fields.” Id. Conq uest recites O rwell’s proposition tha t
it is comm on for revolutionaries to hate the system m uch more than they
pity its victims. . . . [I]deology becomes a sort of mental trap. And when
its bearers co m e to power they are . . . stuck with a program that
produces far worse suffering . . . than . . . under the original oppressors.
Id. at 141-42.
267. S PENCE, supra note 236, at 595-96.
268. Id. at 603. Speaking abou t the forces that would eventually yi e ld u p the Cultural
Revolution, Spen ce points to M ao ’s vie w t ha t, ag ain , the Re vol uti on wa s “l osi ng im pe tus ,” this
t im e becaus e of party con ser va tis m an d b ure au cra tic le tha rgy . Id. at 603. Glover states that
“Ma o believed es pecially in the ene rgy of the youn g,” G LOVER, supra note 3, at 288, and that
“Mao encourage d the you ng to tear up the existing society a nd start a gain.” Id. Exp l a in ing
the destabilizing factors, Spence points to d isaffected urban youths, the political ambitions
of several peo ple in the govern me nt, S PENCE, supra note 236, at 604, Mao’s own loss of esteem
and influence, and beliefs among influential party leaders that “the Chinese cultural garden
was overgrown with ‘anti-socialist poisono us we eds.” Id. at 603. “[I]f the proletariat does not
occupy the p ositions in literature an d art, the bou rgeoisie certainly will.” Id.
269. S PENCE, supra note 236, at 604-06 (describing how events piled up: the 1966 purging
of the cu ltural b ureaucra cy was followed by la ter purges of high er echelons of pa rty
leadership; the issuing to students of arm bands announcing them as the “‘Red Guards’—the
vangua rd of the new revolutionary upheaval”; the mounting of gigantic chanting parades; the
closing of schools to facilitate the stagin g of a re volutio nary strugg le; the de m olishin g of old
build ings, temples, and art works in the name of revolutionary purification; the
comprehensive attack on “old customs, old h abits, old culture, and old thinking.”). The
country wa s gripp ed b y “eup horia , fear, excitem ent, an d ten sion . . . violence grew apace.
Thousands of i n tellectuals . . . were beaten to death. . . . Thousands more were imprisoned,
often in s olit ary con fine m en t, for yea rs. Million s we re reloca ted to purify themselves through

41. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 177
270
Hum iliation was its main tool. The Cultural Revolution was
ma rked by the creation of an intense climate of fanaticism and
271
fear. At som e point the regular arm y an d the radicals began to
272
clash. Violence escalated. Glover calls the Cultural Revolution
273
one of this century’s “great m an-made ca tastrophes.” He
attributes it, and other of Mao’s extravagant errors, to his belief in
the total reconstructab ility of hum an life, to “large-scale thinking
274
and lack o f mora l restraints.”
4. Pol Pot’s Cambodia: The Lotus Dies; No Moon C ushion
“The Khm er methods do not require a large
personnel, there are no heavy charges to bear
because everyone is simply thrown out of tow n . . .
[T]he Khm ers have adopted the m ethod w hich
consists in overturning the basket with all the fruit
inside; then , choosing o nly th e articles that satisfy
them completely, they put them back in the
275
basket.”
labor in the countrys ide.” Id. at 606. Spence informs us that the “combination of incessant
i n d o ct r in a tion wi th h ard lab or” be cam e th e n orm in C hin ese villa ges du rin g th is p erio d. Id.
at 614 . Accord ing to S pen ce, “[t]he ex tent o f this ou tpou ring of vio lence, and the rage of the
young Red Guards against their elders, suggest the real depths of frustration that now lay at
the hea rt of Chines e society.” Id. at 6 06 .
270. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 291. Cruelty, he says, was able to solicit unprecedented mass
participation. Id. at 292. So intimidating was the general atmosphere that, accord ing to
Glover: “Peop le feared stepp ing out of line even in th eir thoughts.” Id. Glover characterizes
the Cultural Revolution as an “unprecedentedly intrusive assault on any moral identity other
than th e perm itted one.” Id. at 296.
271. Id. at 284. Glover relates the story of a young Red G uard beating a kneeling,
bloodstained woman w hile reciting the words of Mao: “Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to the
peop le!” Id. at 2 91 ; see also D YER, supra note 64, at 141 (“Fear is not just a state of m ind; it
is a ph ysical th ing.”).
272. S PENCE, supra note 23 6, at 611 . Spence tells us th at the numbers killed in these
conflicts i s u n kn o w n, “ b ut th e re w er e e ye w it n es s re p or ts o f r iv e rs b lo ck e d w ith bod ies, and
many corpses w ashed up on th e shores of H ong K ong.” Id. Lynn Wh ite credits claims as high
as one million people, but doubts the accura cy of claims as high as twenty m illion people.
L YNN T . W HITE, P OLICIES OF C HAOS: T HE O RGANIZATIONAL C AUSES OF V IOLENCE IN C HINA’S
C ULTURAL R EVOLUTION 7 (1989). Jing Lin believes the death toll should be esta blished at
app roxim ately five m illio n. J ING L IN , T HE R ED G UARDS’ P ATH TO V IOLENCE: P OLITICAL,
E DUCATIONAL, AND P SYCHOLOGICAL F ACTORS 2 (1 99 1). Harry Harding says the events of 1967
took t he lives of half a million Chinese. H arr y H ard ing , The Ch inese Sta te in C risis, 1966-9,
in T HE P OLITICS OF C HINA: T HE E RAS OF M AO AND D ENG 148, 24 4 (Rod erick M acF arq uh ar e d.,
2d e d. 199 7).
273. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 284.
274. Id. at 297 -98; see also C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at xi (“[H]uma nity has been savaged
and tram pled b y rogu e ideo logies.”).
275. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 299 (quoting F RANCOIS P ONCHAUD, C AMBODIA , Y EAR Z ERO 22
(19 78 ) w ho , in t urn is q uo tin g a Kh m er o fficia l, Prachachat, June 10, 19 76).

42. 178 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
“We went to Phnom Pen h to search for enemies
hidden th ere, an d drive the people out. . . . We were
told to tell the people to leave for three days, and that
then they could return. We were told to shoot people
276
who refu sed . Our group shot 2 or 3 fam ilies.”
“Everyone, including children, worked very hard,
usually twelve-or th irteen-hou r days, plus abou t six
nigh ts every month on particular tasks and
occasional compulsory evenin g political meetings. . .
. [T]he workday in th e fields was sometimes
extended by two or three hours of nigh t labor. People
were raised or demoted in the h ierarch y according to
whether their work w as ‘vigorous, medium or w eak.’
The system’s demands on its subjects were so great
as to divide an d redivide th em . . . . Base people
suspected of crimes were regularly ‘sent up to higher
levels’—which meant death. . . . The b ase people lost
277
faith one hu ndred percent.”
Mao and the People’s Republic of China may not present a terror
on the same scale as Stalin. And, in shear numbers, the Cambodian
death toll pales in comparison to the results in these prior two
regimes. But, in its genocidal effects, and in the profundity of
human sadness, no one has surpassed the terror of Pol Pot’s
278
governm ent.
Without a doubt the United States played a role in the
international arena relevant to Chinese politics prior to the
279
inception of the People’s Republic of China. However, tha t role is
dram atically overshadow ed by the direct and u nfortunate
contributions made by the Un ited States to the situ ation in
Cambodia. The Dem ocratic Kam puchea enterprise, the Pol Pot
280
regime, the Khm er Rouge, had two major external enem ies: the
276. B EN K IERNAN , T HE P OL P OT REGIME: R ACE, P OWER AND G ENOCIDE IN C AMBODIA UNDER
THE K HMER R OUGE, 1975 -79, 43 (199 6) (quoting Ch hin P hoeu n).
277. Id. at 175-77.
278. Wh en I w rot e th is s en ten ce I ha d n ot y et r ea d th e b ook ab ou t R wa nd a: P HILIP
G OUREVITCH, W E W ISH TO I NFORM Y OU THAT T OMORROW W E WILL B E K ILLED WITH O UR
F AMILIES: S TORIES FROM R WANDA (1998). It may be that hyperboles about human sadness
ma y always be out of place.
279. S PENCE, supra note 236, at 478-80, 484-91.
280. K IERNAN , supra note 2 76, at xi, xiii. DK is an abbreviation for Democratic Kampuchea,
the form al na m e for the regim e tha t gover ned Ca m bod ia from 197 6-19 79. D em ocratic
Kam puchea is synonymous with Pol Pot’s regime at least insofar as during the existence of
Dem ocratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot and his party, the Com mun ist Party of Ka m puch ea (“C PK ”),
were in c on tro l of t he na tio n. T he Kh m er R ou ge, or Red Kh mer s, is a broader term. It was

43. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 179
281
imp erialistic United States and neighboring Vietnam. The
history of this Cambodian-Vietnamese enmity ma y lay rooted in
French colonialism. It was the French who introduced the
Vietna mese into C am bodian culture w here they, like the Thai and
Chinese, exercised an urbanizing influence on the more insular
282
Cambodian society. The history of Cam bodian-United States
enm ity is short and horrific. From the early 1960s until the m id
1970s, Un ited Sta tes policies resulted in the political and military
283
destabilization of Cambodia. In this study of terrorism-through-
once associated with the Khm er People’s Revolutionary Party—the first viable communist
party to emerge on the C am bodian scene— in contrast to other associations of Khmers; Khm er
being a general term for identifying Cambodian ethnicity. Later on th e te rm be ca m e
as soc iat ed wi th P ol P ot’s tak e-o ver . Id. at 13, 19, 25-26.
281. Id. at 3.
282. Id. at 4-6. Kiernan provides data that suggests Pol Pot’s personal experience might
have contributed to the animosity. When Pol Pot, then called Saloth Sar, was twenty, he was
given a scholarship t o st ud y in Pa ris. Id. at 10. He and a nother Cam bodian youth traveled
together, firs t to Sa igo n, t he la rge st cit y e ith er ha d e ve r see n w he re ac cord ing to S al ot h S ar ’s
compan ion they felt like “dark m onkeys from the mo untains .” Id. On the other hand, Kiernan
ma kes it clear th at am ong left le anin g Ca m bod ian s t u dents s tudy ing in P aris d uring t his
period, nationalistic sentiments ran high enough to experience as offensive Vietnamese
possessive claims to Angkor Wat, or suggestions that the visiting Ho Chi Minh was someone
w ho sha red the ir in ter est s. Id. at 10-11. Regardless of its relatedness to Cambodian-
Vietnamese relations, it is worth noting the influence the French connection played in the
education of revolu tiona ries. W hile Ma o him self did not study in Paris, some of his influential
colleagues did . See su pra n o t e 242. Pol Pot a nd m any of his cad re did receive a F rench
education during which radicalization occurred. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 26. So strong
was thi s in flue nce in C am bo dia tha t K iern an sa ys, “ [o]ver time the mem bership of the top
CP K circle becam e increasingly restricted to the Fren ch-educate d Pol P ot group.” Id.
283. Id. at 16-17. Early contributing policies i n cl u de: United S tates’— backing o f French
efforts to reestablish colonial dom ination of C am bodia a nd V ietnam ; United S tates’ attem pts
to encircle China; United Sta tes’ escalations of hostilities in Vietnam that underm ined
Sihanouk’s, Ca m bod ia’s hea d of sta te, attem pts a t neu trality. Id at 16 . In the e arly m id
1960s, the following policies were added: the massive military escalation of the United States
involvement in Vietna m; troop co mm itmen ts that ro se from twenty thousand to three
hundred thousand; a nd , th e U nite d S ta te s fa cilita tio n o f a dr am at ic in cre as e in Sa igo n’s
military force which recruited one hu n d r e d sixty thousa nd soldiers in 1 965 a s com pared to
forty five tho us an d th e p rev iou s ye ar. Id. at 17 . The enorm ous dem and for food, rice,
promoted by th ese policies dest abilize d the agricu ltural e conom y upo n w hich C am bod ia
depended, plunging Sih an ou k’s g ove rnm en t to wa rd b an kru ptc y. Id. The wa r itself had other
consequences: Vietnamese communists intruded into Cam bodian territory seeking refuge,
w hile U n it ed St at es fo rce s— m o st ly in th e fo rm o f b om b in g a nd st ra fin g— p urs ue d th em ;
almost twenty thousand ethnic Ca mb odians residing in Vietnam beg a n f lo o d ing into
Ca m bod ia seeking refuge from the hostilities; United States Special Forces teams made
“secret reconn aissa nce a nd m ine-layin g in cu rs io n s i nt o C a m b o di an t er ri to ry ”— a l m o st tw o
thousand of these casualty rich missions took place by spring of 1970; United States
sponsored intelligence opera tions probed deeply into Cambodian territory; but the most
serious we re t he bo m bin g m iss ion s. Id. at 17 -8. “ 1 0 0 ,0 0 0 tons of bombs w ere dropped” on
Ca m bod ia by United States forces by 19 69 . Id. at 18. During 1970-1973 , these intrusive
activities escala ted: the rice crop contin ued to blee d into Viet nam ; refugees contin ued to
stream into Cam bodi a ; s o ld iers continued to seek refuge in Cambodia w ith United States
forces in p u r s u it; the frontier between Cambodia and Vietnam broke down; the eventual
United States invasi o n of Cambodia exacerbated an already disastrous situation; bombing

44. 180 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
revolution it is not in appropriate to report, in this instance, the
independent contributions of United States—inflicted terrorism
284
through invasive bombing. United States sources were aware of
the devastating affect these actions were having on the people of
Cambodia. It is unlikely that informed officials underestimated the
285
fearful carnage; what is more evident is their inability, or
unw illingness, to acknowledge the political im plication s of this
286
carnage.
patterns increased so that “540,000 tons were dropped in the last six months” of the bombing
in 19 73 . Id. at 19. The high-end estimate approximates a death toll of six hundred thousand
peop le from the se b om bin gs; t en pe rce nt o f th e C am bo dia n p op ula tio n. G LOVER, s u pra note
3, at 301. A low-end estimate approximates one hundred fifty thousand dead civilians from
United St at es b om bin g b etw een 19 69 an d 1 97 3. K IERNAN , supra note 276, a t 24. However
m an y p eop le a ctu all y d ied , the res ult s w ere cat as tro ph ic to the Ca m bo dia ns . Id. at 19 .
284. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 21 . Kiernan quotes a M arch 1973 U PI report: “Refugees
swarming into the capital from target areas report dozens of villages . . . have been destroyed
and as m uch a s ha lf their popu lation killed or m aim ed in the curren t bom bing raids.” Id.
Kiernan quotes another commentator, William Shawcross, as lab eling th e resu lt “wh olesa le
car na ge.” Id. Ki ern an als o q uo tes Ch hit Do , a C PK lea de r w ho lat er fl ed the cou ntr y, a s
saying
[t]he ordinary people . . . sometimes literally sh it in the ir pants when the
big bom bs a nd s hells ca m e. . . . Their m inds ju st froze up a nd th ey w ould
wander around m ute for three or four days. Terrified and half-crazy, the
peop le were ready to believe what they wer e to ld. T hat was what made
it so easy for the Khmer Rouge to win the people over. . . . It was because
of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept cooperating w ith
the Khm er Rouge, joining with the Khm er Rouge, sending their children
o ff to go wit h th em .
Id. at 23.
285. Id. at 24. Keirnan quotes a report to the United States army in July o f 1 973 stating:
“[T]he civilian population fears United States air attacks far more than they do Comm unist
rocket attacks or s corched-earth tactics.” Id. Perhaps it is useful to be reminded of the official
purpose of these bloody raids. “The decision to bomb was taken by Richard Nixon and Hen ry
Kissinger, and w as originally justified on th e ground s that they were targ eting N orth
Vietnamese bases s e t u p inside C am bodia.” G LOVER, supra note 3, at 301. Admittedly, the
United States did not pla n to terrorize or slaughter whole segments of the Cambodian
population. On the other ha nd , the U nit ed St at es w as no t w ith ou t in tel lige nce ap pa rat us . See
K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 24. Kiernan cites a United States Department of Defense
Intelligence Information Report detailing the extent of one raid’s impact on a civilian village
and warning that “the Com mun ists intend to use this incident for propaga nda p urposes .” Id.
Kiernan cites another United States in telligence source as re porting, “aerial bom bardm ents
against the villagers have caused civilian loss on a large scale” and then warning that peasant
survivors “w ere turning to th e CP K for sup port.” Id. at 2 0.
286. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 24-25. Kiernan quotes Kissinger as pondering, as late as
1974, whether the Cambodian insurgency—the general Khmer Rouge—was regional a nd
factionalized with a veneer of centralized control or whether real power now lay with the Pol
Pot center. Id. at 25. The irony, or as Kiernan labels it, the tragedy, is that until 1972
regionalization and factionalization did characteriz e Cam bodian comm unist forces; United
States policies pursued by Kissinger and Nixon “were largely responsible” fo r the shift of
power from thi s d isp ers ion to P ol P ot. Id. For Kiernan, “[t]he popular outrage over the United
States bombing, predictably manipulated by the CPK,” lay at the heart of Pol Pot’s ability to
sei ze c on tro l of C am bo dia . Id.

45. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 181
Regardless of how successfully denial functioned for United
287
States governm ent officials, in Cam bodia an organization that in
1969 had only four thou sand m em bers w as able, by 197 5, to
supercede competing forces and seize control of the Cambodian
288
governm ent.
The relentless terror inflicted by that government might not be
think able had it not been realized. Its terroristic strategies, like
those of th e Fren ch, the Ru ssia ns, and the Chinese, arose from
seem ingly bene ficial seeds. Arend t identified the seeds in Fra nce
289
with the extreme w retchedness of the people’s condition. The
Russians thou ght of their seeds as Marxist, and eventually as
Marxist-L enin ist, and, of course, they thoug ht of Marxist-Leninism
290
as serving the best interests of the people. The Chinese, too,
291
understood them selves as rooted in this soil. As early as 1976,
Democratic Kampuchea proudly announced itself ahead of “other
Asian com munist states, having ‘leaped’ from feudalism to a
292
socialist society straigh t aw ay.” Unthinkably horrific as the Pol
Pot regime’s actions might have been, they were born out of the
293
same h ope for a better world as these other revolutions.
287. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 301, reports Roger Morris, a member of Kissinger’s staff, as
saying:
Though they spoke of terrible hum an suffering reality was sealed off by
their tri te , life les s v erna cu la r: ‘ca pa bi lit ies ’, ‘ob jec tiv es ’, ‘ou r ch ip s’,
‘giv ea w ay ’. It was a ma tter too of culture and style. They spoke with the
cool, deliberate detachment of men who believe the banishment of feeling
renders them wise an d, more im portant, credible to oth er m en . . . . They
neither understood the foreign policy they we re dealing w ith, nor were
deep ly moved by the bloodshed and suffering they admi n istered to the ir
ste reo typ es.
Id. Kiernan quotes Kissinger as saying long after the even ts: “W e des tabiliz ed C am bod ia the
w a y the B ritish d esta bilized Pola nd in 193 9. . . . It was H ano i— anim ated by an ins a t ia b le
drive to dom inate Indo china — that organ ized th e Kh m er R ouge long b efore a ny A m erican
bom bs fell on Ca mb odian so il.” K EIRNAN , supra note 276, at 24.
288. G LOVER , supra note 3 , at 30 0-01 . “Altho ugh it w as ind igenou s, Pol P ot’s revolu tion
wou ld not have won power without United States economic and military destab ilization of
Ca m bod ia . . . [which] pea ked in 19 69-19 73 w ith the c a rp et b om bi ng of C am bo di a’s
countryside. . . . This was probably the m ost impor ta nt s ing le fa cto r in Po l Po t’s ri se.”
K IERNAN , supra no te 2 76 , at 1 6.
289. See supra note 67.
290. See supra notes 16 0-164 and a ccomp anying text.
291. See supra note 241.
292. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 25-26.
293. A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra no te 1 7, a t 11 1.
Neces sity and violen ce, violence justified and glorified b ecau se it
acts in the cause of necessity, necessity no longer either rebelled against
in a supreme effort of liberation or accepted in pious resignation, but, on
the contrary, faithfully worsh ipped a s the great a ll-coercing force which
. . . in th e w ord s of Ro us sea u, w ill “f orc e m en to b e fre e.”
Id. N or m a n C ohn, in la ter ed itions o f The Pursuit of the Millennium , claimed that
Co m m un ism an d N az ism ha d b een ins pir ed by arc ha ic fa nta sie s.

46. 182 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
For me, the process of bringing change, or more accurately, of
attempting to bring change-through-terror, to popula tions in
revolution ary contexts is part of the fascination of this study. What
I want to know is how and w hy, in the name of serving the people,
so many of the intended beneficiaries are deliberately slaughtered
294
or carelessly subjected to terrifyin g life threatening treatme nts.
Why is it that killing and fear became the strategies of choice for
achieving social ch ang e? Earlier in the article, obse rving
revolu tionary leaders attempting to change societies by requiring
people to conduct th em selves in accordance w ith ordained ideas, I
said that the problem of dramatic social reconstruction may appear
295
solvable at the level of ideas. At the ideation level of abstraction,
it ma y seem that the population needs re-education; it may be
A s with the chiliastic movem ents of centuries long past, mo dern
revolutionaries have . . . claimed to be ch arged with the unique m ission
of bringing history to its preordained consum m ation . . . ‘a rest lessly
dyna m ic and utterly ruthless group which, obses sed b y the a poca lyptic
phantasy and filled with the conviction of its o w n i n fallibility, set itself
infinitely above the rest of hum anity and recognised no claims save that
of it s ow n s up po sed m iss ion .’
C ONQUEST , supra no te 1 , at 7 5.
The ir guilt ‘is not mitigated by the fact tha t they believed their aim to be
a good one; they must be judged ultimately by reference to the cause to
w hich they d edica ted th em selves . . . the lie that b etray s him is a lie in
the soul; that the causes men dedicate them selves to . . . reveal the kind
of p erso n t ha t th ey rea lly ar e.’
Id. at 132 (quoting Jo hn Sp arr ow ).
294. Arendt says “[al]l rulership has its original and its most legitimate source in man’s wish
to emancipate himself from life’s necessity, and men achieved such liberation by means of
violence, by forcing others to be ar t he bu rde n o f life for t he m . Th is w as the cor e of sla ver y.”
A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17 , at 110. It m akes so me sense for m e to quote th is
statement by Arendt here in the preliminary comm ents to an investigation into the Pol Pot
re gim e since, in the end, I conclude that what occurred in Cambodia during his government
was a particularly terroristic form of enslavement. However, I am not convi n ced of the
inevita ble accuracy of this Arendt observation. What I am convinced of is the
appropriateness, in this context, of its introduction. Another idea worth pondering during the
remainder of the paper is set forth in C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 23 3, where Conquest qu otes
Douglas North, Nobel Prize winner in economics, as saying, “[t]he price you pay for precision
is inability to deal with real-world questions.” This idea is appropriately introduced because
my (our) desire for accurate responses to the disturbing questions of our times may m ove us
to seek precision when what would be more useful is an increased ability t o “dea l with real-
world q uestions.” Id.
295. P IPES, supra note 158, at 24-25, claims that these ideas were conceived during the
Enlightenm ent, incubated by the “patriotic” clubs of France in the mid 1700s, quickened by
Marx, then infused, by generations of “intelligentsia” acting as professional revolutionaries,
into po litic al e ven ts i n E uro pe , As ia a nd els ew he re. See also H EGEL: T EXTS AND C OMMENTARY
62 ( W a lt er K aufmann trans. & ed., Univ. of Notre Dam e Press 1977) (1807) [hereinafter
H EGEL] (“Regarding historical truths . . . insofar as their purely historical aspect is considered
. . . they concern particular existence and the accidental and arbitrary side, the features that
are n ot nece ssar y.”).

47. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 183
believed that the strength of the new will emerge in and from a
296
process of purification.
Revolutiona ry faith posits that beliefs can be changed when the
297
supportive network of institutions and ideas is radically modified;
298
this is an aspiration widely shared by m any social reformers. No
one was more committed to the realization of this idealization than
299
Pol Pot and his cadre. The regime initiated the change by
300
emptying, literally emptying, the capital city. Other cities we re
296. See G LOVER, supra no te 3 , at 3 06 on the sit ua tio n in Ca m bo dia :
There was a lot of talk of ‘purification,’ with political ‘enemies’
being likene d to ca uses of disea se. On e repo rt, proba bly by Pol Pot, said:
‘[T]here is a sick ness inside the P arty . . . W e can not loca te it pre cisely.
The illness must emer ge to be examined . . . we search for the microbes
wit hout success. They are buried. As our socialist revolution advances,
howe ver, seeping m ore strongly into eve ry corner of th e P art y, th e a rm y
an d a m on g th e p eop le, w e ca n lo cat e th e u gly m icro be s.’
297. See supra no tes 15 6 & 15 7 a nd acc om pa ny ing tex t.
298. P IPES, supra no te 1 58 , at 21 -25 . See supra note 15 8-160 and a ccomp anying text,
(stating that the intelligents ia fed on m aterialistic beliefs that conceive of human beings
almost entirely as creatures of changeable environmen ts, and und ersta ndin g peo ple in th is
way produces social engineering based strategies). Adheren ts reason that as e nvironm ents
chan ge, the h um ans wh o exp erience them will als o cha nge; pe rfect env ironm ents w ill create
perfect, or close to perfe ct, hum an b eings ; while im perfect , defective enviro nm ents in evitab ly
create imperfect , d efect ive pe op le. P IPES, supra note 158, at 21-25. Hence, to them, human
mise ry is a corre ctab le cond ition th at can be, ind eed needs to be, addressed at the level of
social sys tem s. Id. Create the right social system , populate it, enforce its structu r e s , a nd
pe op le w ill b e ex tra cte d fr om wr etc he dn ess . Id. Gl ove r te lls u s a bo ut t he Ca m bo dia ns ,
A s with the so cial exp erim ents of Sta lin an d M ao, the case fo r all
this was a consequentialist one. It was thought acceptable to destroy
things people valued, such as family, religion and the traditional culture.
It was thought justifiable to kill so m a n y and to put such pressure on
those left alive. T he b elief wa s tha t thes e thin gs w ould fu rther th e
R e v o lu tion, which in tu rn wou ld produce a state ‘overflowing w ith
ha rm on y a nd ha pp ine ss .’
G LOVER, supra note 3, at 305. Such social experimentation had not p reviously been
performable:
This century ha s in fact been th e first in which th e groups taking
over countries had the power to use state machinery to impose doctrin ally
produced errors on the whole of society. . . . [I]t finally b ecam e techn ically
poss ible to control an en tire society and ev entually to pe rvade it fully with
the regime’s propagandas and its terrors.
C ONQUEST , supra no te 1 , at 8 1.
299. Pol Pot and his cadre form ed a closed caste of profession al revolutionaries ve ry mu ch
akin in spirit to the “People’s Will,” the early Russian organization dedicated to political
terror; b ot h g ro up s in th e n am e of the people were capable of ignoring the beliefs or the needs
of th e p eop le. See supra no te 1 66 an d a cco m pa ny ing tex t.
The Party’s Four-Year Plan said , ‘technolog y is not the decisive factor; the
determining factors of a revolution are politics, revolutionary people, and
revolutionary methods .’ Pol Pot himself said, ‘Formerly to be a pilot
required a high school education- twelve to fourteen years. N ow ad ay s, it ’s
clea r th at po litic al c on scio us ne ss is th e d ecis ive fac tor .’
G LOVER, supra note 3, at 304.
300. Re cal l ea rlie r in the pa pe r w he n I s aid :
B ecause the overall theme of my research is an investigation into

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301
also evacuated. These evacu ations, while publicized as
the terrorism th at grows out of this revolu tionary tradition, I hop ed to
draw conn ections throu gh th e ferven t wish for libera tion; if I insis t on th is
image, like a bulimic, we would experience liberation through the process
of purge. And . . . when w e purge, we rid ourselves of more and more of
the facts and artifacts of hum an life. W h e n w e f i na lly move . . . to Pol
Po t’s regime in Cam bodia, we will find that pu rging an entire city of its
population and purging, that is exterm inatin g, an en tire qu arter o f a
na tio n’s p eop le is bo th p oss ibl e a nd no t en ou gh .
Sup ra text accom panyin g note 231 . The p urging bega n, as a pub lic event , in Cam bodia w ith
the po licy of e va cua tin g th e u rba n a rea s. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 33-64. Kiernan
describes in detail the communications confusions associated with this policy, “[t]ransm ission
of the evacu at ion ord er t ook tim e, a nd it re ach ed diff ere nt Z on e u nit s in diff ere nt v ers ion s.”
Id. at 33. However, the confusion in military directives only exacerbated the burdens of the
confused denizens of Phnom Penh who, for the m ost part, on sh ort notice were crudely ordered
to lea ve. Id. at 38. As one observer reports, people were told: “The inhabitants who put up
resistance or refuse to take to the road will be liquidated, as enemies of the people.” Id.
Kiernan not only describes the confusion at the level of military command, he ably gives eye-
witness accounts to reveal the acc om pa ny ing cha os. Id. at 3 9-4 7. To quote a sm all sampling,
Pin g Lin g, an ethnic C hinese en gineer, left his . . . home . . . ‘with
bullets whooshing past from everywhere.’ A large group of Khm er Rouge
stopped him and his companions and began searching their belongings.
Then another group approached and yelled, ‘let them move on!’ Ping Ling
comm ents: ‘Those surrounding us stared at this second group wit h
defiance in their eyes. . . . It seem s there is restraine d violence between
these two groups. It seems the second group [was] keen on our leaving
the city fas t.’ La ter tha t da y, in the city’s northern suburbs ‘we came
across another g ro up of K hm e r R ou ge th is tim e we ari ng kh ak i un ifor m .…
W e were told b y them to return back to the city.’ Unsure [of] what to do,
L i n g a n d his com panion s waited , ‘trying to catch ou r breath.’ But soon
afterwards, ‘out o f n o w here a loud-speaker blared out at us, ordering
ev eryo ne to m ov e o n, f oll ow ed by m ac hine gu n fi rin g.’
Id. at 4 2. A no the r ey e-w itn ess de scr ibe s,
‘a lot of confused people on the tops of build ings and in the street, not
knowing wh ere to g o.’ Four or fiv e sold iers w ere firing shots, ordering
them alo ng , cal ling eve ryo ne ou t in to t he str eet . Enormous crowds filled
the roadw ays, swa ying en m asse un der the pressure. At one p oint,
Khm er Rouge fired an M-79 grenade int o t h e c ro w d . . . . T h e c ro w d
panicked, and people ran in all directions.
Id. at 4 4. Y et a no the r ob ser ver rec ou nts :
[p]atients driven out of the hospitals we r e pushed in their hospital beds
by relatives, who ‘struggled with the beds, like ants with a beetle,’ some
‘with plasm a and drip bum ping alongs ide.’ Limbless L on N ol soldiers
[from the prior regime] hobbled and crawled with the crowd. ‘I shall
never forget one cripple w ho had neither hands nor feet, writhing along
the ground like a severed w orm , or a weeping father carrying his ten-
year-old daughter wrapped in a sh eet tied round his neck like a sling, or
the m an w ith his foot dangling at the end of a leg to which it was attached
by no thi ng bu t sk in.’
Id. Kiernan gives us more information about the immediate follow-up to the evacuation. H e
interviewed at least one hund red peop le involved. They w ere able to describe the e xperience
of thirty-six different groups of evacuees: “t h e th irty-six groups set out from the city and
walked west, south and ea st into the coun tryside for various lengths of time ranging from
several days to s ix weeks .” Id. at 48 . Kierna n rep orts th at the dea th toll from this sin gle
event, the evacuation of a city of approxima tely 2 million inha bitants, wa s nearly tw enty
tho us an d. Id. at 49.

49. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 185
302
temporary, were intended as perm ane nt. They were part of an
eight-point program. The eight points were: 1) evacuate the people
from all towns; 2) abolish all markets; 3) abolish the Lon Nol
regime’s currency and withhold replacement currencies; 4) defrock
Buddh ist monks and pu t them to work growing rice; 5) execute the
Lon Nol leadership; 6) establish cooperatives in the cou ntrysid e with
mandated communal eating; 7) expel the Vietnamese; and 8)
303
dispatch troops to the Vietnamese borders. Additionally, the plan
was to condense the development of the nation’s industry and
agriculture into a ten to fifteen year period and to use this period to
create a genuine so cialist society by screening, that is killing,
304
anyone unable to achieve the requisite level of purity.
In the first year of the regime, China emerged as the
305
“paramount external power in C am bodia.” Cambodia, previously
the refuge for people seeking shelter from the violen ce of Vietnam,
306
began leaking refugees into surrou nding countries. Returnees,
mostly intellectuals, were treated to twenty-day political education
courses designed to introduce them to the regime’s beliefs about
307
themselves and the outside world. They, however, like so many
of their fellow citizens, ended up as indentured agrarian serva nts,
308
and, most likely, the victims of genocidal terror. In accordance
309
with the eight-point program money w as abolished. The idea was
301. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 39-49.
302. Id. at 53, 58. “The evacuation was . . . a sea change in Cambodia’s political
demograp hy, facilitating both ethnic cleansing and the acquisition of totalitarian po we r. . . .
[W]ithout towns . . . citizens becam e far more ea sy to control.” Id. at 64. Kiernan quotes a
CP K pu blication: “We evacuate d the peo ple from the cities which is ou r class struggle.” Id.
303. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 55. Wiping out money and markets was designed to wipe
out all priva te pro perty , while defrocking the monks was a step toward wiping out religion.
Id. at 57. The problem of Vietnam was never solved. In fact, it was Vietnam that even tually
fac ilita ted the cou p d ’eta t th at top ple d P ol P ot fr om po we r. Id. at 441-55.
304. Id. at 56. “The Khmer Rouge’s ultimate concern was the purity of the society.” G LOVER,
supra note 3, at 303. As announced in its Four- Year P lan, the objective w as, in part, to
“[c]ontinue the struggle to abolish, uproot, and disperse the cultura l, literary an d artis tic
rem nants of the imperialists, colonialists, and all of the other opp ressor classes .” Id. Glover
offers us as a telling slogan the refrain , “[d]ry up the peop le from the enem y.” Id. at 302.
305. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 134. Pol Pot was in sp ir ed by th e C h in es e R e vo lu tio n. H e
is re po rte d b y G lov er a s s ay ing ,
Comrade Mao[’s] works and the experience of the Chinese revolution
played an important role . . . particularly under the guidance of Comrade
Mao[’s] works, we h ave found a roa d conform ing with the concrete
conditions and social conditions of our cou ntry . . . we h ave cre atively and
successfully ap plied M ao[’s] thought.
G LOVER, supra note 3, at 30 4. Glover reports that Pol Pot visited China during the Cultural
Re vol uti on an d fo llow ing the cap tur e of Ph no m Pe nh . Id.
306. K IERNAN , supra note 2 76, at 142 (describ ing the exod us to T haila nd).
307. Id. at 147-56.
308. Id. at 156.
309. Id. at 147.

50. 186 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
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for everyon e to transform him self/herse lf into a peasant.
Indefinitely indentured to China’s economy, Democratic Kampuchea
relied on tu rning its popula tion into an unpaid, underfed,
311
overworked labor force to survive. It resulted in depriving
Cambo dian peasants of the three most cherished features of their
312
lifestyle: their land, their families, and their religion. Life in the
countryside was marked by extremely demanding daily production
targets, barely adequate rations, the establishment of commu nal
eating, repeated deportations and massive popu lation movem ents,
dwindling medical supplies, the ongoing terror of executions, trends
toward increa sing h arshness, and the emergence o f the brutality
313
which was to become the hallmark of the regime.
310. Id. at 149 n.238. Kiernan reports Michael Vickery’s interpretation: “I t w a s . . . a
com plete pea san t revolu tion. . . . [N]ation alism , popu lism and pea san tism really won out over
co m m un is m . . . . [It was] a victorious peasant revolution, perhaps the first real one in m odern
tim es.” Id. at 164. Kiernan further quotes Vickery as claiming that the DK w as “pulled along”
by “the p e a s a n t eleme nt.” Id. Echoing Arendt’s explanation of Robespierre's role in the
French R e v ol ut io n , a c co rd in g to K ie rn a n , V i ck e ry ’s th e si s i s t h at th e C en t er , t h at is th e C P K,
Pol P ot’s politica l party , was itself com prised of
middle-class in te lle ct ua ls wit h s uch a ro m an tic, id ea liz ed sy m pathy for
the p oor tha t they did not ima gine rapid, radica l restructuring of society
in their favour would lead to such intolerable violence. . . . [T]hey did not
foresee, let alone plan, the unsav ory developm ents of 1975 -79. They w ere
p et ty bo urg eo is ra dica ls ov erco m e b y p ea sa nt is t ro m an ticis m .
Id. at 165 . Kiernan d isagrees w ith Vickery. He proposes an altern ative e xplan ation wh erein
Pol Pot and his closest associates directed affairs, or rather, misdirected affairs so that in the
end, “DK mismanagement had simply been so serious tha t no t ev en pe as an ts c ou ld s urv ive .”
Id. at 165 -66. O n the other h and , Kiern an d oes n ot discla im that early on the regime enjoyed
widespread peasant su pp ort . Id. at 1 67 . For these supporters, “in 1975-76,” Kiernan reports,
“ n ationalism was p ervasive, victory swee t, hope m illennial.” Id. at 213. Wh at he g o e s on to
say, howe ver, is that by 1977, “the DK system was so tightly organized and controlled that
little spontaneo us pea sant activity w as poss ible.” Id. at 212.
311. Id. at 163. “ E conomically, the country had become one, ‘gigantic workshop’ of
indentured agrarian lab or.” Id. at 164. Reflecting Arendt’s work on totalitarianism, Kiernan
reports that initially, in the process of turning Cambodians into unpaid indentured workers,
each individual in the massive labor gangs was assigned a nd individualized daily production
target as th e “CP K atom ized its citizens to ass ure m axim um social control.” Id. at 167.
312. Id. at 1 67 .
[E]merging kinship structures were a departure from traditional peasant
society, which had ‘no larger organized kin groups beyond the fam ily or
ho us eh old .’ The deliberate social classificat ion res em ble d a cen su s, a
process characteristic of modernity, not of peasant comm unity.
Multilayered, carefully calibrate d , r ig id ly in s ti tu t io n al iz e d, t h e n e w D K
caste system ha d as little to do with peasant class politics as the new
cen tra lize d la bo r m an ag em en t sy ste m ha d to do wi th p ea sa nt f arm ing .
Id. at 18 6; see also id. at 215 (“Along with massacres that threatened peasant life itself, it was
the CP K’s att ack on the fam ily t ha t al ien at ed pe as an t su pp ort ers .”).
313. Id. at 173-80; conditions in the Southwest Zone are discussed at 16 8-2 04 . For exam ple,
T w o hundred fam ilies walked sixty kilom eters on a ca n of rice (250
g ra m s) per pers on. So m e died on th e trek . The re st arriv ed a t their
destination to be told that there were no trucks to take them on, and they
wou ld all have to go b ack! M ore died. Back in Bati they found crowds of

51. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 187
314
Conditions deteriorated. While in some areas the starvation
315
of 1976 eased, it was replaced by large-scale killings. In other
316
areas, hunger and starvation remained a fact of life. The loss of
children was often added to unthinkably burdensome work
317
requ irem ents and obligatory commu nal eating. The CPK
new people ‘from all over Region 33.’ There was no f o od for them, and
m an y m ore die d w ait ing a w eek in t he rai n. . . .
Id. at 179.
We w orked incessantly. . . . It all depended on them. There was no rest
time. . . . They said they were going to raise the living standards of the
poor, so t he y w on . But wh en they took over they collectivized everything:
cattle, buffalo, plates, everything . . . they put it all in one place. You
could only eat w hat y ou were given. . . . And, anyone suspected of not
being happy with them, they killed.
Id. at 1 85 .
[T]he C P K h ad ‘e xe cu te d m or e p eo p le in 197 5 than in 1976 .’ How ever,
‘death from disease and malnutrition—most likely in combination—was
greater in 1976 than in 1975.’ A DK official . . . [later] reported that by
August ‘the whole of w estern Cambodia, as well as the southwest region,
was sufferin g from fam ine, an d the re wa s wid espre ad s tarva tion in
Ka m po t.’ W ors e w as to c om e.
Id. at 19 3. Id. at 205-09 (describing con dit ion s in the Ea ste rn Z on e). Id. at 216-20, 224-26, 232-
36 (de scr ibi ng the N ort hw est Zo ne ). Fo r ex am ple ,
[I]n 19 76 m any peop le in [the] . . . area died of disease, though there was
no starvation. . . . How ever, food ran out before the harvest, and famine
struck late in the year. Four hundred of the eleven hundred people in the
village died in Novem ber and Decem ber 1976. . . . The population of one
cooperative in Preah Net Preah district fell from 5,017 to only 2,982 in
Nove mb er. . . . O ne rea so n fo r th e 1 97 6 s ta rva tio n w as th e ce nt er’s
de m an d fo r ric e fo r its ow n s ta ff an d fo r ex po rt to Ch ina .
Id. at 2 35 . “All the intellectuals working with the Region 5 committee were to be killed, San
says. ‘Most of us were killed in ea rly 1976 .’” Id. at 232.
314. Id. at 2 37 (“[L ]ife w as tou gh er a nd tigh ter tha n b efo re. W e worke d day a nd night.
Rations fell.”). “By the end of 1977, of the Region 5 chalat workforce of fifteen thousand, fewer
than seven thousand rema ined. W om en no longe r men struated .” Id. at 239. Kiernan reports,
reiterating t he A re nd t t ot alit ar ia n t he m e: “ ‘H ap py’ collective w ork . . . cam e to an end in
1977: individual da ily harvesting targ e ts n ow had to be completed in order to receive food.
The practices of collective cooking and reduced collective work were only supe rficially
inconsistent. B oth gave th e autho rities greater control over the p opulation.” Id. at 24 3.
315. Id. at 1 88 . Fo r ex am ple ,
The new s ubdistr ict ch ief . . . h at ed an d s ta rve d th e n ew pe op le. . . .
According to Uch, 70 percent of the population o f K o h Touc subd istrict
perished. . . . [The] Ko h Tou c subdistri ct became home to one thousand
new people in 1975, all of whom perished in Democratic Kampuchea.
Id. at 195-96. And, “in 1977-1978, the rate of killings more than doubled .” Id. at 2 04 . “[T]he
num ber of killings increased. San reports that the Southwest executed the local cadres, then
killed their wives and children; they said th is practice ‘avoids venge ance.’” Id. at 241. Kiernan
reports that in the N orthwest, the most seemingly benign of the regime’s regions, “in 1977,
the [death] toll probably exceeded one hundred thousand, as massacres escalated to the
highest levels eve r.” Id. at 246.
316. Id. at 240 (“B y late 1 977 , a daily c an o f rice wa s sha red a m ong five peop le. Peop le
dropped like flies .”). Kiernan cites anoth er eye-witnes s who reports, “in 197 7 food beg an to
be taken a way.” Th is appa rently led to “’starvation on a large scale’ in 197 7-78.” Id. at 243.
317. Id. at 18 9. “[I]n early 1977, children aged three and over were taken from their hom es

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318
governm ent, the Center, sought absolu te pow er. Ethnic cleansing
319
was an important attribute of their program. The emphasis on
320
purity became an obsession. The Center began splintering; an
to a children’s center. . . . Those aged ten and ove r were sen t to works ites.” Id. at 1 95 .
318. Id. at 245. “[F]rom late 1976 we w ere forbidden to sing,” reports an eye-witness, “[due
to] the villagers’ tendency to make subversive readings of the lyrics of CPK songs.” Id. at 247.
Ag ain , su pp ort ing Ar en dt’s the m at ic d esc rip tio n o f tot ali ta ria nis m , Ki ern an op ine s:
A ng ka r’s o ve rw ee nin g p re se nce se em s to ha ve de nie d s om e
peasa nts any experience o f perso nal sp ace or t im e, to wh ich the y could
withdraw and con sider their verdict on Democratic Kam puchea. They
thus drew no dis tinction betw een th eir ow n priva te an d D em ocratic
K am pu ch ea ’s offic ial vie ws . Asked i f t h ey h ad p er so n al ly li ke d th e C P K,
s om e pe as an ts h av e re pli ed , “O f cou rse , we ha d to like the m , we had no
choice!” . . . A C ham villager describes his e xperience th is w ay : “They
could bea t us if they felt like it, even if we ob eyed their law s. There w ere
no laws. If they wanted us to w a lk , w e w a lk e d; t o s it , w e sa t ; t o e a t, w e
ate. And still they killed us. It was just that if they wanted to kill us,
they wo uld take us off and k ill us.”
Id. at 250. In C ONQUEST , supra note 1, at 74, the au thor refers to totalitarianism as a system
of governance in which, “the state recognize s no lim its to its au thority in an y sph ere, an d in
practice extended that authority wherever remotely feasible.” Later on he says:
W e see th e s t a te a s a m echa nism for enfor cing th e lega l order. . . . This
notion of the state is w holly different from th a t o f t h e tot ali ta ria n. . . .
For them the state is the possessor of total power over its subjects, and
it is the practical embodiment of the ideological fantasies and intentions
of the rulers.
Id. at 202.
319. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 251-309. The racism of the Khmer Rouge is an important
thesis in Kiernan’s book. According to his figures, peoples of various non-Khm er ethnicity
made up ap proxim ately twenty percent of the Cambodian population at the time the CPK
ca m e to po we r. Id. at 251. He estima tes that total population figure to be slightly under eight
million pe op le in 19 76 . Id. at 210 . Inferentially, this would yield a n ethnic m inority
population of approximately one and one-half million people. Subjected to particularly harsh
treatment e ve n b y D K g ov er nm e n t s ta n da rd s , C h am - C am bodian M uslims, Chinese,
Vietnam ese, Thais, Laotians, and various tribal minorities experienced death tolls that
freq ue ntl y ex cee de d 5 0% . Id. at 2 94 , 30 7.
320. G LOVER, supra note 3, at 306. Glover also compares Cambodian purging to the actions
of the F rench , Rus sian , and C hines e revolu tiona ry pred ecess ors. W hile these prior regimes
were obsesse d with ferreting out and eliminating traitors, in Cambodia, guilt was presumed.
The obsession with purity is apparent in the government’s comparison of people as “rotten
fru it:”
Frequent em phas is was p laced on th e need for dra stic mea sures to
protect the purit y of the Re volution from contam ination by rotte n fruit.
O n radio and at meetings the slogans echoed the theme: ‘What is infected
must be cut out,’ ‘What is rotten must be remo ved’, and ‘It isn’t enough to
cu t d ow n a ba d p la nt , it m us t b e u pr oo te d.’
Id. T uo l S le ng , th e m o st n ot orio us of th e C am b od ia n d ea th ca m ps, w as on e resu lt of this
obsession wi th p uri ty a nd pu rific at ion . Id. at 308. Glover says that the ob session w ith
enem ies g re w , until it becam e apparent that the struggle against enemies w ould be a
permanent fea tur e of life. Id. at 307-308. In Cambodia, he says, this realization was nu rtured
and ap pla ud ed . Id. at 308. Camps were established to house the constant flow of enemies;
these cam ps w ere pla ces w here th e ene m ies could be tortured, could confess, and could be
executed. Id. Glover calls Tuol Sleng, “a place of appalling cruelty,” and we ll ke pt r eco rds . Id.
Kiernan also discuss es Tuo l Sleng an d its function w ithi n the Santebal, or Special Branch,
calling it the “nerve center o f the purge a ppara tus.” K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 314-16.

53. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 189
attempt was made on P ol Po t’s life, thus irritating the already
321 322
insatiate need for control. Arrests increased. Relations with
Vietnam and other bordering countries slipped from guarded
323 324
caution, into open aggression. “Gen ocide gathe red spe ed;” in
325
efforts to assert control, whole districts or Zones were evacuated.
321. K IERNAN , supra note 276, at 319-23. “The Part y . . . a d opted ‘a framework of
procedures for implementing our revolutionary auth ority’ . . . entitled . . . The A uthority to
Smash [people] Inside and Outside the Ranks.” Id. at 320. “The rate of arrests skyrocketed
in late 197 6.” Id. at 3 35 . Po l Po t is qu ote d a s s ay ing : “D o n ’t b e a fr a id t o l os e on e or tw o
peop le of b ad ba ckg rou nd . . . . Dri vin g ou t th e tr ea che rou s fo rce s w ill b e a gre at vict ory . . . .
Everyone m us t be ver ified .” Id. at 336. Kiernan reports that approxima tely sixty five hundred
prisoners were “smashed” at Tuol Sleng in 1 97 7, a bo ut f ou r tim es t he 19 76 tot al. Id. at 355-56.
B y mid-year 1978 , more than fifty fi v e h u ndre d h ad alr ea dy en ter ed thi s ca m p. Id. at 355
n.121. “[T]roops in the Phn o m P enh area were forbidden to have any contact with the
po pu lat ion .” Id. at 353 . At least tw o atte m p ts w ere m ad e to po iso n P ol P ot. See id. at 321,
353. Kiernan reports, as part of his description of massive repre s s io n , a n eye-witness
describing the results of a d em onstration: “Th ere were k illings throughout 19 77 . . . . They
started arresting and executing peop le, one a fter an other . . . . Peop le were put on trucks and
taken a way, night a nd da y. . . . There wa s no prison . People we re just killed.” Id. at 3 42 .
322. Id. at 35 0.
323. Id. at 357-66. “Phnom Penh radio charged that entire ‘generations of Vietnamese’ had
‘devised’ cruel strategies ‘to kill the Cambodian people’ and ‘exterminate’ them. Vietnamese
w ere a lte rn at ive ly c al led th e ‘h ist oric e ne m y’ a nd C am bo di a’s ‘he redi ta ry e ne m y.’ Id. at 366.
See also id. at 366, 37 3-7 6, 3 86 -92 (de scr ibi ng fur the r re lat ion s w ith Vi etn am ); see id. at 366-
68 (de scr ibi ng rela tio ns wi th T ha ila nd ); see id at 3 68 -69 (de scr ibi ng rela tio ns wi th L ao s).
324. Id. at 353. “[A]s the genocide gathered speed, more and more of the victims, even at the
nerve center of the rep res sio n, w ere nonpolitical. . . . Instability persisted even as mistrust
spr e a d .” Id. Kiernan reports that purges in the Eastern Zone during 1978 resulted in the
massacre of between one hundred and two hun dred fifty thou san d pe ople. “V ickery ca lls [it]
‘by far the m ost violent event o f the entire DK period.’” Id. at 404-405 n.67.
325. Id. at 40 5-16 (discussing con ditions in the E astern Zo ne). Color coded scarves w ere
used to identify the dep orte e s , “ n o on e b esid es t he Ea ste rn e va cue es w ore blu e sc arv es. . . .
[I]t w a s a ‘sign’ for people to be ‘killed off.’ After a month or two, easterners realized the
dea dly significance of the blue sca rves and stopped wearing them .” Id. at 407. “In Sandan
district, according to on e account, 19 ,000 out of 2 0,000 d eportees p erished.” Id. a t 4 0 9.
“During his eva cuatio n . . . in 1978 , Ngo y Ta ing H eng claims to have witnessed the m urder
of mo re than six thousand people, when K hmer R ouge de lib era tel y b lew up thr ee l arg e b oa ts.”
Id. at 411. And, “[o]f the seven thousand people on the tra in, t hre e th ou sa nd we re s ele cte d.”
Id. F urt he r, “[i]n m id-1 97 8, thr ee t ho us an d P rey Ve ng pe op le ca m e to ou r co op era tive . . . .
Two months later they were all executed. . . . [We were informed that] the Eastern Zone
peop le were ‘sick’ . . . none could be spared , they would be com pletely ‘cleaned up.’” Id. at 412.
Ki ern an als o co ver s tr ea tm en t of t he N ort hw est Zo ne . Id. at 416-23. According to one of the
cadre, “the 1 978 killings, th e wo rst he had know n . . . took the lives of ord inary b ase p eople
for the first time.” Id. at 419. And, “each evening for a week, these w om en wo uld take twenty
to th irt y p ris on ers ou t, k ill th em , and th row their bo dies into pits.” Id. at 418. “Of the ninety
thousand peop le in the wh ole of P reah Ne t Prea h dist rict a t th e e n d of 1976, just ove r sixty
thousand survived two ye ars later.” Id. at 421. Kiernan covers the treatment of the
Southwest Zo ne . Id. at 42 3-3 6 . One villager rep orts, “All Vietna me se and Chine se were
rounded up an d wipe d out.” Id. at 4 24 .
D K raiding pa rties from the Southw est kidnapped thousa nds of Khm er
Krom from their villages inside Vietnam. . . . [c]lassed as ‘depositees’
[they] work[ed ] twelve hou rs per day . The rice they produced was taken
away . . . the workers subsisted on gruel . . . starvation wipe d out a
hu nd red fam ilie s.

54. 190 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
326
A half million refugees fled the country. Increasingly, the
327
leadership relied on kinship rather than ideological relations.
328 329
Hanoi invaded. Phnom Penh w as again emptied. Retreating
330
DK forces continued to destroy the land and slaughter the
331
population, but the time of this regime had come to an end. The
332
new Peop le’s Repu blic of Kam puche a gradu ally assumed pow er.
Ha rold Lasswell once said, “[s]oldiers are the tradesmen of
333
killing, but officers are the managers of violence.” The violence in
Cambodia was intense and, in some sense, managed. Yet, for the
most part it was neither the violence of war nor the violence of crime
334
mana gem ent. It seems strikingly similar to the violence
335
associated with warlords.
IV: C ONCLUSION
A. Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
“One learns that what one supposed was not what
336
one w as suppose d to suppose .”
“Historical study is only fruitful for the fu ture if it
follows a powerful life-giving influence, for exam ple
Id. at 425-26. “1978 w as the worst year for killings of Cha ms , whom South western ers singled
out for execution.” Id. at 42 8. Kier nan quo tes a n eye -witness as saying, “[a]nyone they
suspecte d of not being happ y with the m, they k illed.” Id. at 434.
326. Id. at 441-42. Four hundred thousa n d relocated in Vietnam. One hundred thousand
relo cat ed in T ha ila nd . Id. at 442.
327. Id. at 437 . “Nearly all pub lic positions are . . . held by the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary group,
their wives, or peop le unkno wn to ou tsiders or using aliases.” Id. at 443.
328. Id. at 450.
329. Id. at 451.
330. Id. at 453.
331. Id. at 454.
332. Id. at 455.
333. D YER, supra note 64, at 131.
334. See Fe ldm an , supra note 31, at 484-85 (concluding at least in th e co nt ex t o f te rro ris m ,
it is not necessary to choose between the war–crime dyad. Instead , he suggests we reexamine
and , perha ps, reform ulate the fra m ewo rk w e use for add ressin g intern ation al terro rism .).
335. See Rise of Warlords, T HE C ORNER , at http://www.thecorner.org/hists/china/
w a rlo rd s.h tm # T H E W AR LO RD S (last visited F eb. 15, 200 3) (an online h istory forum ) for a
general definition of warlord. “A warlord was a comm ander of a personal army, ruling a
territory, an d a ctin g m ore or le ss ind ep en de ntl y. . . . [T]h e w arl ord s ex plo ite d th e p eop le.” Id.
In reference to how warlords governed their respective territories: “[F]or the most part they
governed with terror. . . . Adm inistration wa s carried out w ith violence and force.” I d . The
term ‘wa rlor d’ is ofte n a ss ocia ted wi th C hin a. Id. See also 19 O XFORD E NGLISH D ICTIONARY
913-14 (2d ed . 1989 ) (referring in one of its definitions to the 1916-1928 period of Chinese
history ). H o w e v e r, C h in a is not the only referent for the term. The same dictionary begins
by quoting an 1856 tract by E me rson “Piracy a nd w ar gave p lace to trade, politics, and letters;
the wa r-lord to the law-lord.” Id. at 913.
336. H EGEL, supra note 295, at 96.

55. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 191
a new system of culture; only, therefore, if it is guided
and domina ted by a higher force, and does not itself
337
guide and dom ina te.”
“The sorts of beings we presume ourselves to be
define the sorts of orders we may recognize and deem
338
important.”
In this project, I took upon m yself an inq uiry into the history of
terrorism. During the project, I have learned far more about
genocide than I wanted to know. I have learned far more about the
current horro rs occurring in the ordinary lives of citizens
throughout the w orld than I wanted to know. I have learned more
about the stru cture of the m odern political world than I w ante d to
know. I have learned far, far more about the role of governm ents in
the seemingly endless torture and slaughter of men, women and
children than I ever wanted to know. And , I have learned to
proceed with ex treme caution when thinking, let alone speaking,
about terrorism. I have reached the following conclusions.
First, for myself, I have little doubt that the Pol Pot regime
attempted to enslave the popu lation. I believe Len in and Stalin also
endeavored, in the nam e of Revolution , to enslave the peoples of the
Soviet Union. While I doubt that any of the named individuals
would hav e un derstood himself as aligned with the awful history of
the African slave trade and slave ownership in the Americas, the
339
flavor of those practices infuses the ir conduct. While nothing
337. S TANLEY V . M C D ANIEL , T HE P HILOSOPHY OF N IETZSCHE 224 (196 5).
338. Da vid Ha ll, F ro m : “Modern China and the P ostm odern W est,” in F ROM M ODERNISM TO
P OSTMODERNISM 698, 703 (Law rence E . Cah oone ed., 199 6).
339. 15 O XFORD E NGLISH DICTIONARY 6 6 8 (2d ed. 1989) (defining “slavery” as a form of
servitude or bondage, as the condition or fact of being entirely subje c te d to or under the
domina tion of some power). From the same source, “slave-drive” is defined a s d e m a nding
“hard or servile labor.” Id. Also— and this is in part my point— “to dem and an exc essive
amount of work from (a perso n).” Id. In the cases of the Russian, Cambodian, and perhaps
the Chinese Revolutions, the amount of work d em anded from p eople w as grievous enough to
cause the de at h o f sig nifi can t po rtio ns of th e p op ula tio n. See, e.g., supra note 2 24 (r eferring
to St ali n’s “ arm y of un pa id la bo rer s”) ; supra notes 259 & 265 and accompanying text referring
to the exp loit at ion of th e C hin ese pe as an ts; supra notes 31 1, 313, & 317 (referring to the ‘work
to death’ policies of the Pol Pot regime in Cam bodia). Because of the unfortunate history of
the United States, my immediate association to slavery is with the concept of the
capitalization, in the form of hum an o wn ership , of peop le. This p ers pe ct iv e o bs cu re d fo r m e
the fact that this capitalization could appear in various forms. The w i l li n gness to take
advantage of people in order to advance a particular social or political theory, when extended
to the d egrees noted in these re volutionary settings, connotes an attitude of rightful
domination, an attitud e of justifiable e xplo itation in wh ich the hum anity of the e xploite d is
sufficien tly discounted by the exp loit er t o ge ne rat e en sla vem en t. I b el ie v e, b e ca u se o f m y o w n
coun try ’s history, that I am not only sensitive to the p resence of this cate gory of treatm ent,
but profou ndly sad dened by it.

56. 192 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
could hav e been fu rther from my thou ghts w hen I began th is
research, what began as a study of terrorism seems to be ending
340
with an em phasis on its relationship to slavery. I understand
why that happened. That is, I understand how the strong-armed
341
imposition of ideology y ields reliance on th e tools of enslavement.
What I do not yet know well enough to say is whether inspired
violence is too closely associated with the compulsion of others to be
safely used to liberate rather than to enslave a people.
Second, I said that the violence of the regime in Cam bodia
seemed similar to the action of warlords. Thus, I find myself raising
the wh ole question of the legitimacy of governance techniques, an
issue no easier to address then the initial investigation into the use
of the term terrorism . In this context, I join C arr in finding m yself
unwilling, actua lly un able, to define “state terrorism” out of the
equation. Exclusion serves to simplify our concerns. Nevertheless,
whatever apparen t me ntal cla rity we a chieve b y reliance on such a
simplistic formulation, is illusory. I have become convinced that
those who wish to enjoy an honest and informed perspective on
terrorism must consider those who hijack airplanes, bomb bu ildings
and assassinate leaders along with those who, having gained control
of entire popu lations, torture, exploit, enslave and m urder to
achieve their ends. We cannot have one rule for those excluded from
nation-state arenas and another for those who hold positions of
power within these entities and hope to develop sound analysis or
342
wholesome policies for containing terroristic violence. What I was
340. See A RENDT, O N R EVOLUTION , supra note 17, at 110 (identifying as the core of slav ery
the desire of som e to liberate them selves by forcing oth ers int o se rvic e). See also P IPES, supra
note 158 (stating his belief that the Russian revolutionaries were interested more in gaining
domina tion over the peopl e in order to remake them in their own image than in freeing or
libera ting th e peo ple to re m ake them selves ).
341. Cass R. S un ste in, Wh y They Ha te Us: The Role of Social Dy nam ics, 25 H ARV. J. L. &
P UB. P OL’Y 429, 429 (2002) (“When group polarization is at work, like-minded people, engaged
in discussion with one another, move toward extreme positio ns . . . . [P]eop le can m ove in
literally d ang erous direction s. . . . They pro duce a cult-lik e atm osph ere.”).
342. Nicholas N . Ki ttri e, A New Look at Political Offenses and Terrorism , in I NTERNATIONAL
T ERRORISM IN THE C ONTEMPORARY W ORLD 354, 371 (Marius H. Livingston et al. eds., 19 78).
[A]ll concerned s hould see k to overcome the current ideological breach by
dealing both with nongo vernmental and governmental violence and
ill e ga lity. To bridge the current gap, one will have to dispel the serious
concern that while ‘sieges of terror’ are being condemned and re gulated,
‘reigns o f te rro r’ a re le ft fre e o f in te rn at io na l in te rv en tio n. T he ou tco m e
must reflect the growing realization that peop le are e ntitled to exp ect all
rights enunciated in the Un iversa l Decla ration on H um an R ights a nd in
similar documents.
Id. See also W . M ich ae l R eis m an , International Legal Responses to Te rro ris m , 22 H OUS. J.
I NT’L L. 3, 39 (199 9) (“State-spo nsored terrorism is the m ost noxious an d dan gerous of its
species, yet its authors and archite cts eva de a ll deterrence and prospect of punishment if the
fiction is that states are not involved and only their agents are deem ed responsible for the

57. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 193
taught in law school by Harold Lasswell and Myers MacDougal can
be understood in relation to terrorism. Any undertaking not steeped
in a deep and abiding respect for human dignity is neither
promising nor safe. Th is princip le app lies to the terroristic
un dertakin gs o f rev olu tion aries a nd governments alike.
Third, for the time bein g I can do no better than to join Malcolm
343
X in the mandate to know history. I think , had I been tau ght to
study with care the histories of revolutions, I might not have been
so inclined to follow mo dels of such dub ious in tegrity. Instead of
romanticizing revolutionary leadership for their successful
liberation of oppressed peoples, I might have understood to take
heed of th eir failures.
Fourth, this abbreviated survey of revolutionaries cum terrorists
has left me with an enormous debt to the millions of men, women
344
and children whose lives were sacrificed to ideas. It is a debt
imp ossible to settle in ordinary terms. If I have learned nothing else
from this study, I have learned the necessity of humility, the
dang ers of grandiosity, the sanity of proportionality. I have learned
that the wo rld of real politique seems a vain-glorious search for
justifica tion in the face of a starved and tormented people.
I cannot order anyone to cease and desist from the patterns of
condu ct we witnessed in these pages. I can ask every one of us to
reach deeper into a sense of sha red existence, shared huma nity,
whenever some seemingly irrefutable plan of ours involves
terrorism .”).
343. M ALCOLM X, T HE E ND OF W HITE W ORLD S UPREMACY : F OUR S PEECHES BY M ALCOLM X
26 (B en jam in G ood m an ed ., 19 71 ).
[O]f all things that . . . [a] man . . . can study, history is the best qualified
to reward all research. You have to have a knowledge of history no
ma tter w hat you are going to do; anything that you undertake you have
to have a know ledge of history in ord er to be succes sful at it.
Id.
344. See H en ry J . Ri cha rds on III, Exclud ing Ra ce Strategies From International Legal
History: The S elf-Executing T reaty Doctrine And The S outhern A frica Tripartite Ag reem ent,
45 V ILL. L. R EV . 10 91 , 11 32 (20 00 ).
D eveloping m ethod ologica l and legal int erpre tive prin ciples to
elimina te the scrubbing of information from international legal history
about pas t ra cial oppression, oppression done by identifiable decisions
and actors to the voiceless, is essential to ‘giving voice to the voiceless’
under inter n a t io n al law. But, in an affirmative sense, the stake of the
voiceless i n t h e i nt er na t io n al le g al pr oc es s , g ro w in g ou t of th e ir ow n
group histories, must be identified and m ade part of both the
jurispruden ce and the interpretation of international law, and thus part
of its history, because of the impact that this law has h a d o n them, and
be cau se t his im pa ct m ak es t he m pa rt o f th e st ory of it s a uth orit y.
Id.

58. 194 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
sacrificing the safety and well-being of so many of our fellow
345
citizens.
Finally, because I am a law yer and b ecau se all this study mu st
lead us somewhere , we m ust begin to ponder the role of law, the role
of the rule of law, in matters terroristic. There is an existing
literature suggesting the development of international tribunals as
346
the soundest route; some of this literature suggests support for
the international court of criminal ju stice with jurisdiction to h and le
347
charges of terrorism.
While not wishing to criticize the suggestion, and with deep
respect to Justice Goldstone, my own studies lead me to conclude
that we are not yet developed enough as an international
348
com munity to imagine this as a successful endea vor. Recall how
earlier in the pa per dispara te definitions of terrorism were
345. See id. at 1133.
Each people of color has its own jurisprudence, which has been trampled
under the supervening law of a con qu erin g or do m ina tin g gr ou p. . . . This
includes their expectations about international or ‘outside’ law as they
wou ld . . . understand for it to impact fairly on them and what it would
mean in their lives. These legal histories must be incorporated into the
acc ep ted sou rce s of int ern at ion al la w.
Id. (em pha sis ad ded ).
346. See R ICHARD J. G OLDSTONE , F OR H UMANITY : R EFLECTIONS OF A W AR C RIMES
I NVESTIGATOR 12 0-3 8 (2 00 0); see also Ro y S . Le e, An A ssessmen t Of The ICC Statute , 25
F ORDHAM I NT’L L.J . 750 (2 002 ); Ph ilip pe Ki rsc h, The In ternationa l Crim inal Cou rt, 46
M C G ILL L.J. 255 (200 0); but see Le e A . Ca sey , The Case Against The International Criminal
Cou rt, 25 FORDHAM I NT’L L.J. 840 (2002) (discussing why the Un ited State s should refuse to
end orse a n inte rnatio nal trib una l).
347. See G OLDSTONE, supra no te 3 46 , at 1 34 -35 .
The secon d ha lf of the twentieth century has witnessed the
proliferation of wars and wa r crimes. Huge areas such as the Great
Lakes region of Central Africa have become destabilized, as more than a
million peop le have been killed and m any m illions more ha ve been forced
to flee their homes with accompanying misery and hardship. In Rwanda
there are tens of thousands of homes in w hich the eldest mem ber of the
fam ily is a teenager. In Sierra Leone unimaginable atrocities wer e
comm itted against innocent women, men, and children whose limbs were
am putated with machetes. . . . If this trend is not to continue . . . then the
international comm unity will have to ta ke positive step s to arrest it. One
effective deterrent w ould be a n internation al crimina l justice s ys te m ,
sufficien tly empowered to cause would-be war criminals to reconsider
their am bit ion s. . . . An overw helm ing num ber of hum an rights
protagon ists worldwide . . . believe tha t wh en th e Ro m e Tre aty is ratified
by en ough natio ns, a w orka ble and w orthwh ile court will be established.
Id.
348. G OUREVITCH , s u p r a note 17 , pas sim , provides disturbing details about the failures of
the in te rn at io na l co m m un ity to take effective action in the context of Rwanda. Having
detailed the failure of the inte rnatio nal com mu nity to deal effectively with th e problem s it,
in part, contributed to, Gourevitch eventually concludes: “The W est m ight later wring its
hands over the criminal irresponsibility of its policies, but the nebulosity known as the
internationa l comm unity is ultim ately accoun table to nob ody.” Id. at 325.

59. Spring, 2003] TERRO RISM 195
displayed as problem atic with regard to investigating the
349
situation. These same definitional difficulties make law-making
350
among nations imp ractical. Further, recent events regarding
351 352 353
anarchy, genocide, and w arfare mu st be ta ken as warnings
against assum ing easy or simple answers to complex international
problems. We are not ready yet to a ssum e levels of respon sibility
adequa te to the task at hand. Of course, this does not mean we a re
excused from action. Incapacity is cause for hu mility, n ot for
349. See su pra notes 19 & 42.
350. See supra no tes 31 & 33 -41 .
351. See generally M ARK B OWDEN , B LACK H AWK D OWN: A S TORY OF M ODERN W AR (200 0).
B ow de n’s book details what is called the Battle of the Black Sea, a mission undertaken by
American forces to capture two lieutenants of a Somalian w arlord. The Americans ended up
pinned down overnight in Mogadishu. The survivors were rescued the next day by a
multinational force except for one individual who was held hostage bu t eventually released.
That event tha t left eighteen A me ricans dea d and ma ny others w ounde d. It also resulte d in
the death of approximately five hundred Somalians, while injuring more than one thousand.
A s a result of the battle, an “unprecedented [United Nations] effort to salvage a nation so lost
in anarchy and civil wa r that m illions of its people were starv ing ,” w as ab ort ed . Id. at 410.
The troops were originally committed to Somalia to end a famine caused not by natural
disasters, but b y “cynica l, feu din g w arl ord s d elib era tel y u sin g st arv at ion as a w ea po n.” Id. at
426. Once the famine was under control, efforts at stabilization and nation-build ing were
und ertak en w ith lau dab le inten tions. A s Bo wd en rep orts it, “[t]he batt le came at the end of
a chain of em inent ly defen sible d ecisions mad e by sensible p eople.” Id. at 427. Bowden
reports that the battle of the Black Sea and its resulting pull out of United Nations forces
ended “a brief head y period of pos t-Cold W ar innoce n c e , a time wh en Am erica and its allies
felt they could sweep venal dictators and vicious tribal violence from the planet . . . Mogadishu
has had a profound cautionary influence on U.S. m ilitary policy.” Id. at 410. Bowden says
that “[l]ea rn ing w ha t A m erica ’s p o w er can and can’t accom plish is a m ajor challenge,” w ith
no ea sy a ns we rs. Id. at 427.
352. G OUREVITCH, supra no te 1 7, a t 95 .
Genocide, afte r a ll, is a n e xer cise in c om m un ity b uild ing . A
vigorous totalita rian o rder re quire s tha t the p eople be in vested in the
lea de r’s scheme, and w hile genocide may be th e most perverse and
ambitious means to this end, it is also the m ost com pre he ns ive . . . . The
specter of an abs olute m enace tha t requires absolute eradication binds
leader and people in herm etic u to pia n e m brace, and th e
individual— alway s an an noyan ce to totality— ceases to ex ist.
Id. Gourevitch’s development of the idea that the international community is not up to the
task of soun dly handling these challenges was alluded to in note 344. Perhaps it is sufficient
to add: “[i]f Rwanda’s experience could be said to carry any lessons for the world, it was that
endangered people who depen d on the international commun ity for physical protection stand
defenseless .” Id. at 3 51 .
353. See G OLDSTONE, supra note 34 6, at 336 . How ever, Justice Goldstone is m ore op tim istic
about the future of the international community to bring about positive change. “As the world
contracts in consequ ence of m odern techn ology, so the interna tio n al comm unity is able to
exert more pressure on rogue g o v e rn m ents to resp ect hum an rights. W hat is requ ired to
encourage . . . this . . . trend is the political will of the mo st pow erful nations.” Id. at 135 . “I
have no doubt,” he says later on, “that the twenty-first century will witness the growth of an
international c ri m in a l j us ti ce s ys te m a n d t h at th e vi ct im s o f w a r c ri m e s w ill no longer be
ign ore d.” Id. at 1 38 ; see also Ja ck M . B ea rd, A m erica’s New Wa r On Terror: The Case for
Self-Defense Un der International Law, 25 H ARV. J.L. & P UB. P OL’Y 559, 579-82 (2002)
(expressing some optimism as regards the ability of the internation al com mu nity to cope w ith
the th reat o f terrorism ).

60. 196 J. TRANSNATIONAL LAW & POLICY [Vol. 12:2
neglect. Nevertheless, we cannot expect sound answers to emerge
from oversimplified formulas. Perhaps it is my personal inclination
as a scholar to study mo re, to know more. Certain ly continuin g to
investigate the conditions and episodes of terrorism appeals to me.
For now, I am satisfied that turning attention to history rewards
with knowledge. That is as sound a place to begin as I kn ow of.