Russia is a terrorist state

Contrary to popular and most scholarly opinion, states can commit acts of terrorism. That is exactly what Russia is doing to Ukraine. Every Russian terrorist should be held accountable.

There has been a debate among scholars of terrorism whether, by definition, states can commit acts of terrorism.  Distinguished scholar and author of “What Terrorist Want,” Dr. Louise Richardson, has argued:

Terrorism is the act of substate groups, not states. This is not to argue that states do not use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy.  We know they do …. Nor do I wish to argue that states refrain from action that is the moral equivalent of terrorism.  We know they don’t.  Nevertheless, if we want to have any analytical clarity in understanding the behaviors of terrorist groups, we must understand them as substate actors rather than states.

I have always disagreed with this line of thinking. 

The critical feature of terrorism is the intentional use of violence against civilians.  Terrorism has such a powerful opprobrium because violence against civilians is in all circumstances morally unjustifiable. It is heinous in its disregard for innocents. It indiscriminately kills the most vulnerable among civilian populations – infants, young children, the elderly, the sick and infirm, the poor who lack secure shelter, the hospitalized who are immobile. The most morally bankrupt terrorists intentionally target these populations or use violence so recklessly that civilians are inevitably harmed. Terrorism is also universally condemned because of its capacity to instill traumatizing fear throughout civilian populations.  Acts of terrorism inflict mental anguish far in excess of the physical violence they cause.

The notion that only individuals and non-state actors engage in this type of conduct, to my mind, has always been wrong. The harm to the civilian population is the same no matter the perpetrator – Timothy McVeigh bombing a government office building in Oklahoma, al Qaeda operatives flying a jetliner into the World Trade Center, or Vladimir Putin ordering missiles be launched into dense urban areas of Ukraine.

I do not agree with Dr. Richardson that to understand the concept of terrorism and the behaviors of terrorists, we have to exclude state actors. Quite the contrary. By learning why individuals and groups use terrorism as a tactic, we can gain more, not less, insight into why officials who are backed by the power of the state resort to this tactic as well. 

Some exclude state actors from the terrorist label because they believe a different legal and rhetorical category applies when state actors target civilians: “war crimes” and “war criminals.”  It is true; state actors who intentionally target civilians are violating the laws of armed conflict and therefore war criminals. Yet I have never felt that the “war crimes” label sufficiently captured the full atrociousness of the conduct in the same way as terrorism does. In both theory and reality, discussion over war crimes gets caught in the fog of war. Remember, unlike terrorism, which is always illegal, war is regulated violence. When the difficult to define line between lawful warfare and illegal warfare is crossed, perpetrators have committed war crimes.  But the legalistic nature of this inquiry and the cumbersome system we have for holding war criminals accountable for their misdeeds have robbed the “war crimes” designation of much of its moral power. Accountability for war crimes is more frequently evaded than imposed.  In the rare case when justice comes, it is often delayed by decades.

Excluding state actors from being labeled terrorists too often has given immoral state leaders a pass. They always claim their actions are for the greater good of the state. And these claims are often accepted, either by other state actors in real time, by international tribunals, or sometimes through the lens of history. But the very point of the unequivocal prohibition on targeting civilians is that this action should never be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis.  Like the ban against torture, the prohibition against targeting civilians is a norm that should not be violated, even if some form of strategic advantage could be gained. Intentionally killing civilians is always wrong. Period. 

Calling intentional violence against civilians “terrorism” – no matter who does it – changes the moral dimension of the inquiry surrounding that act of violence. I have seen this in my undergraduate classes when we discuss the definition of terrorism. After kicking this around for a while, I often ask my students whether the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was an act of terrorism. The students’ first response is to regurgitate their high school history lesson that doing so was justified to end the war against Japan.  But bringing the “T” word to the debate immediately shifts the focus from geopolitics to what happened to those innocent children, the elderly, pregnant women, and thousands more who had absolutely nothing to do with Japan’s making of war. 

I do not pretend to have an answer to the ethical debate over Hiroshima, but this I know for sure:

From day one, Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine and the Ukrainian people has been an ongoing campaign of terrorism. Calling this a war is an insult to war. Putin has been shelling civilian areas indiscriminately, without even pretending to attempt to limit the violence to legitimate targets of military value. Over 1,000 bodies of civilians were found in Bucha, Ukraine 650 of them were executed.  Human rights organizations have documented “unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, and torture.”  Then on Monday, in a fit of pique at Ukraine’s recent battlefield successes and in an effort to satisfy the bloodlust of Russian war hawks, Putin lobbed powerful missiles into 10 Ukrainian cities, hitting mainly civilian neighborhoods and urban energy facilities (which are not lawful military targets).

Putin is acting no differently than al Qaeda or the IRA.

Neither the IRA nor al Qaeda could achieve their political objectives through conventional means. So, instead they attempted to make political gains by frightening civilians into believing they would never be secure unless they acquiesced to the groups’ demands. The IRA thought terrorism against British nationals would force the U.K. to withdraw from Northern Ireland; al Qaeda hoped attacks on civilians would convince America to remove its troops from the Middle East.

It is becoming apparent that Russia cannot achieve a battlefield victory against Ukraine through conventional warfare, so it too is now accelerating its terror campaign. Russia hopes to spread fear, break the Ukrainian people’s will to fight, and create political pressure from within Ukraine to agree to a territorial settlement favorable to Russia.  From what we have observed over the past eight months about the resiliency and determination of Ukraine and its citizens, Putin’s terrorism, like most terrorist campaigns, is unlikely to succeed. 

The world has been mainly ineffective in holding perpetrators accountable for war crimes; but this is not true for terrorists.  Multiple U.S. Presidents have echoed a common message to terrorists that “we will find you, and justice will be done.” Osama bin Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri were all on the receiving end of this resolve. Israel pursued the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre across two continents for over seven years to impose accountability. Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani used illegal, immoral violence to suit his purposes for decades until he was finally stopped.

Ukraine and its allies should be equally committed to bringing accountability to the cowardly Russian terrorists who are intentionally aiming massive missiles at children and neighborhoods of civilians peacefully going about their daily activities. I am not advocating violence against a head of state like Putin.  But Putin’s high military commanders are terrorists. They should be treated as such for the rest of their lives.