Abstract
The definition of terrorism and its differentiation from war and guerrilla warfare has been a problem for science, international relations and legal systems for decades. This article posits that defining terrorism requires also the definition of other warlike phenomena, so as not to conflate the acts or events. Therefore, the proposed criteria for defining terrorism and guerrilla warfare are presented as a means to differentiate their definitions from that of war. The methodology is a review of the concepts of the nature and essence of war, as described in the Carl von Clausewitz book, Vom Kriege (in the standard German edition of Hahlweg and its widely accepted English translation by Howard and Paret). These concepts were cross-analyzed with recent scientific discoveries about the behavior of social animals, with a focus on humans. The resulting classification allows historical or contemporary events to be evaluated to determine what kind of conflicts they are.
Highlights
The definition of terrorism and its differentiation from war and guerrilla warfare has been a problem for science, international relations and legal systems for decades
Without a clear and precise definition of terrorism, it becomes impractical to study the history of such a phenomenon, because if we do not know what terrorism is, how can we investigate its beginnings? without a definition for terrorism, how can we define those who practice it are? Are those who practice terrorism combatants, noncombatants, ordinary criminals or something else?
The first hypothesis of the present article consistent with Townshend’s observation, is that to produce the concepts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare it is necessary to compare their characteristics with a similar phenomenon that already has definitions about its nature and essence: war
Summary
There is no international consensus for a definition of terrorism. According to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, the term “terrorism”, of which the first recorded use dates back to 1795, would mean: “The systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”. According to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, this would be the meaning of terror: “violent or destructive acts (such as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands.”4 Such definitions, do not exhaust the variety of meanings that have been given to both terrorism and terror, especially over the past decades. Margariti (2017) explains how this problem has been addressed: “criminal conducts related to terrorism are considered as transnational offenses whose criminalisation and prosecution are matters of domestic concern only.” She defends an international conceptualization for terrorism “by treating it as crime which is much more than the sum of all prohibited acts provided by the anti-terrorist conventions.” 9. While existing definitions about the nature and essence of war, which is a similar phenomenon, may not satisfy the great variety of paradigms related to war, they at least bring them substantially closer together
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