From Oxford University Press: Does Counter-Terrorism Work? offers an historically grounded, systematic, and expert interrogation of the effectiveness of state responses to terrorist violence from one of the world's leading experts on terrorism.
MELANI CAMMETT: Welcome, everyone. Delighted to see you here. My name is Melani Cammett. I'm the director of the Weatherhead Center, and we are really honored to be putting on this event this afternoon. A special event on Professor Richard English's new book, Does Counter-Terrorism Work? I think clearly an important question, and we will find out the answer shortly.
So let me just give a little bit of background on Professor English, and then I'll say a few words about the format. So I gotta put my glasses on for this because the honors are quite extensive, and I would like to read them.
So Professor Richard English is-- I should first say, a member of the Weatherhead Center Advisory Committee. So we're very honored to have his presence in the senior governance of the center. He is also director of the Senator George Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen's University in Belfast. And he's published many books, including the award-winning Armed Struggle, The History of the IRA, and Irish Freedom, The History of Nationalism in Ireland.
And recently, he published, before this book, a book that might be perhaps, somewhat of a companion, Does Terrorism Work?-- A History. Also, the Oxford Handbook of Terrorism, which is a co-edited with a number of authors, including a colleague of ours here at the Kennedy School and the Cambridge History of Terrorism.
Richard is also a fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and many other titles. I could actually really keep going for a while, so I will not, but it's quite impressive. And one I do have to mention is that in 2018, he was awarded a CBE, which is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the understanding of modern-day terrorism and political history.
And he was also awarded in 2019, the Royal Irish Academy's gold medal in the social sciences. So a much awarded and very deserved scholar. And we're really honored to have him in our midst here today speaking about his important new book.
Now, speaking of the book, the book is on sale here. So after Richard speaks, we will have copies of the book for sale. The author is here, so you can even get a signed copy, which would be very exciting, I think. The format for today is that Richard will speak for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then we'll have about a half hour for discussion. And I know that Richard would be delighted to take your questions and engage with you and answer anything you might ask.
So thanks very much for coming, and I very much look forward to the talk.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Melani, thank you very much, indeed, for that gracious introduction. Thank you for doing me the honor of kindly inviting me to speak here. I'm really honored to be here, and looking around the room, I know that I will learn more from your questions, insights and comments after I've spoken than you will learn from me in my necessarily short sermon.
But I want to say some things about this book, which I hope will be of interest and of some value in terms of your own reflections on this subject, Does Counter-Terrorism Work? Does Counter-Terrorism Work?
It seems to me, a vital question. Responses to non-state terrorism transform the world far more than non-state terrorism itself. We saw this in the wake of the 9/11 atrocity of 2001 and the aftermath. We've seen this in the wake of the atrocity of 7 October last year and the bloodstained and gruesome and ghastly aftermath of that attack.
In terms of the laws under which we all live, in terms of the ways in which we treat each other, and in terms of human suffering, in terms of bloodshed, in terms of loss of life, including loss of life in conflicts directly related to and involving non-state and state terrorizing violence. Responses to terrorism transform the world far more than the thing itself. And unless we have an historically informed, rigorous, evidence-based, and serious-minded understanding of what does or what does not work in responding to terrorism, then our changing of the world in response to non-state violence of this kind is going to make it considerably worse.
Let's think about I mentioned the war on terror and the 9/11 attacks. After 9/11, much was done in responding to terrorism that was benign. I live and work in the United Kingdom, just about in the United Kingdom, if you live in Belfast, but in the United Kingdom, as we stand. And in the UK, between 2001 and 2012, there were 43 plots that were thwarted by the authorities. This is a good thing, because people who would have been dead or maimed are not dead or maimed.
But overall, the response to terrorism after 9/11 was one which I think should leave us feeling much more humble. The economist at UCSD, Ellie Berman, has pointed out that prior to 9/11, in the years in the run up to it, the average monthly death toll globally from non-state terrorism was 109 deaths a month.
In the period of the war on terror 2001 to 2007, that figure doesn't drop, it rises from 109 deaths a month to 158 deaths a month from terrorism, excluding terroristic attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you include those, the figure rises from 109 deaths a month to 529 deaths a month. These are humbling figures, and they reflect something which was one of the reasons that occasioned me to write this book, which I think there is a problem with how we think about how we analyze, how we reflect on the efficacy of counterterrorism.
I'm often struck by the shape of the libraries that we all live in. In my libraries, there's far more written about non-state terrorism than about things like the efficacy of counterterrorism, even though the scale of endeavor and the consequences in terms of the lack of life are far, far greater. There's not as much study of the efficacy of counterterrorism as there should be. It's a very unbalanced literature.
You have at one wing, a very critical, everything they do is too expensive. Everything they do is wrong. Everything they do is useless. And at the other end, there's a booster-ish kind of literature, and they don't tend to talk to each other. It's not particularly a balanced approach. And there's not enough thinking about what working would mean. Does counterterrorism work? What would that mean.
The great terrorism scholar, Martha Crenshaw, has been crisp about this, arguing in 2019, quote, "A satisfactory understanding," Crenshaw said, "A satisfactory understanding of what constitutes effective counterterrorism escapes us." And this is someone who admirably, in her own case, elegantly and eloquently, has been studying terrorism since the 1960s.
So what I wanted to do was to write a book, which in some small way, tried to nudge the debate forward by doing what? By thinking about what working would mean. So I suggest in the book that we need to have a framework for understanding comprehensively what working might mean. Counterterrorism, like most big endeavors in life, is going to have complex outcomes, which mean it's not yes or no, or it's not just this or that.
And so I argue there could be strategic success in counterterrorism. You could get rid of your main adversary. You could even clear the terrorist threat in your territory in a sheer way, and that would be the highest level of success. Historically, that turns out to be rare.
The second level could be what I would call partial strategic success, where you don't manage to get rid of all terrorism or even all of the adversaries you're really concerned about. But where, in the words of one of the major shapers of the UK's counterterrorist framework, Sir David Omand, you maintain conditions of normality. You maintain conditions of normality. You don't get rid of it, but you so constrain it as to be able to make continuous life of a normal, recognizable kind possible.
So there could be strategic success. There could be partial strategic success. Below that, there could be tactical successes of various kinds. You could have operational successes. Drone strikes on a particular leader, for example. You could get interim concessions, the release of certain hostages, for example.
You could get control or maintain control or regain control of a population where that control had been threatened by non-state actors challenging the Iberian maintenance of a monopoly of the use of legitimate violence in a territory. You could strengthen organizations. There could be a lot going on in terms of the tactical level of counterterrorism.
And there could be as a fourth level, what I call inherent rewards. That can be a lot more going on in counterterrorism than countering terrorism. Most of you have only just met me, but you will already have spotted that I could never get elected in an election. But if I did want to get elected, there might be things I would want to do in counterterrorism that are not actually going to counterterrorism, but that might help me get elected.
I might exaggerate, for example, the potential efficacy of torturing suspects. I might exaggerate, for example, the likelihood of our getting rid of all terrorist groups of international reach. Would that be likely to work? No. Would that be likely to make things worse? Probably. Would that get me more chance to get high ratings? Possibly. There could be economic benefits.
So I argue in the book there's a series of different layers-- strategic, partial strategic, tactical, and inherently rewarding. Sometimes those can be aligned, and sometimes they can work against each other. You can have tactical successes, which make your strategic victory much less likely. You can have things that are inherently rewarding in terms of your career, in terms of the economy, in terms of your politics, in terms of your emotional catharsis, which, actually, make terrorism considerably worse. In other words, looking at it in terms of that layering approach means that you get a sense of the more complex outcomes rather than the yes or no, the good or bad, the automatically streamlined.
And they also argue that you need to look at things in terms of counterterrorism. And an historian would say this, in terms of a more historically-minded, long-term set of pasts and by implication, long-term set of futures. Terrorism has a way of almost enforcing a solipsism of the present that it's only the current thing you think about.
So after 9/11, it's only al-Qaeda. Then after ISIS established their caliphate, it's only ISIS. It's only the latest. Actually, it's not. Actually, the long pasts are crucial to the kinds of terrorism and counterterrorism that we're really interested in. And the long past of experience in terms of counterterrorism should not be thrown away.
Tony Blair, a very intelligent politician, the UK Prime Minister at the time of the 9/11 atrocity, he argued that, quote, "I conceived of September 11 as making all previous analyses redundant." "I conceived of September 11 as making all previous analyzes redundant." There was a watershed in time in terms of what would work in his judgment about counterterrorism. And for all of the extraordinary merits of Tony Blair as a politician, this was profoundly wrong.
Many of the things which were effective and which were shown to be effective in counterterrorism before 9/11 continued to be effective or ineffective after it. An exaggeration of what military methods could do was going to be disastrous.
The acquisition and appropriate and speedy life-saving use of high grade intelligence was likely to be very important. And attending not only to the terrorist symptom, but as far as possible to the root causes which underlie the generation of that terrorism was an important thing before as after 9/11. Credible analysis by the government were important before and after 9/11.
So the constant denunciations. These people, these terrorists are just psychopaths. Actually, they almost certainly aren't all psychopaths. These people are just criminals. Actually, it's almost certain that they're not just criminals. These people have no political support. If they didn't, you wouldn't be talking about them on television to us.
Credible analysis before 9/11 and after 9/11 was important. And many of the things which went wrong in the war on terror was because people like Prime Minister Blair and others, more influential in this country, thought that this changed everything and we could forget that which we knew about what would work and what would not work. And that cost huge numbers of lives. That cost huge numbers of lives, and we haven't yet paid the full cost for it.
So I argue for a long set of pasts and a long set of futures. A historian will also tend to look for case studies. So the book contains three, one on the global war on terror, one on Northern Ireland, where I live and work. And Melani kindly mentioned my book on the IRA, and there's stuff about them in the book, and then something also, on Israel-Palestine written before 7 October.
But to foreshadow some of the things I'm going to be hinting at in a minute, one of the central arguments in the section on Israel-Palestine was that Israeli counterterrorism often combined tactical ingenuity with strategic self-harm and often refused to acknowledge that Palestinian flourishing and Israeli security are two parts of the same future, rather than their enemies. And I fear that that's been vindicated in this appalling past year.
So that's the book. I think there's a problem with how we think about counterterrorism. I think it's a more important question than people have tended to want to admit. I think we need something which is balanced, which is historically minded, which has a proper framework, as I would see it.
You may not be persuaded by my framework for efficacy in counterterrorism, but you do need a framework for efficacy in counterterrorism to be able to assess what's actually going on in front of us, whether it be in Israel-Palestine, whether it be in terms of domestic terrorism in this country, whether it be in terms of the legacy of violence in various other countries, including, for example, places like Colombia. For example, the legacy of what happened in Afghanistan. We need to look at it in a way which is honest, calm, historical in its layering.
So briefly, in the remainder of this short talk, what I want to do is to take one of these case studies. And each context is, of course, unique. But there are family resemblances, I argue between them in terms of counterterrorism, and I think there are possibly intuitions which, albeit with application for different contexts, might be of some value as we think about the things we're facing.
And what I really want the book to do is to generate a kind of reflection, which is more honest about the importance this has for so many lives and tragically, for so many lives ending around the world in ways that mean that we have a proper discussion of the dynamics of what's going on.
So let me talk about Northern Ireland counterterrorism, but I really want you to be thinking about Israel-Palestine, for example, another conflict. But I'm going to talk about the place where I, despite my accident, was born and where I've chosen to spent most of my life and live and where I've spent a good bit of time studying some of the local versions of terrorism and counterterrorism, counterterrorism in the Northern Ireland troubles then, but please think of other places in terms of possible alignments, intuitions, and references.
UK counterterrorism in Northern Ireland included many things that went wrong. In the early days of the troubles, there was a heavy handedness. The British army in the early days of the troubles in the North of Ireland engaged in some violence which was transgressive, engaged in some violence which cost people their lives and limbs, engaged in violence, which prompted some of my former IRA interviewees to point out that the British Army was the best recruiting agent that there was for the IRA in the early years of the Northern troubles.
There's a very good book by Hugh Bennett now on the British Army in the early days of the troubles. And much of this is easily documented and gruesome reading, but very important to see. There was heavy handedness and an exaggeration early on of the likelihood of military counterterrorism being able to sort the problem out. And this was a gross error.
Interestingly, it was an error that had occurred some years earlier in Ireland, in an earlier wave of IRA violence that when the UK had been involved in the same kind of thing in the 1920s. but states, like humans, learn things slowly themselves rather than from things that other people have learned in the past, and it was terrible.
There were also other transgressive things. There were instances where members of the state counter-terrorist forces colluded with people involved in paramilitary or terrorist organizations in ways that cost people their lives and in ways that, not only caused enormous amounts of human pain, but were also counterproductive in appalling ways in terms of the process of trying to counterterrorism.
So the picture I'm painting is not a pretty picture, but there is another part of the story, too, which is not as often told in the literature and not as often told on the news, which is that there was learning over time. And the counterterrorism became less a case of heavy handedness and more adept, not flawless at all, but there was a process of containment.
The Provisional IRA, the main anti-state paramilitary organization during the period of heavy-handed counterterrorism. The Provisional IRA between 1970 and 1979, on average, killed 105 people a year. During the period of more sophisticated counterterrorism, 1980 to 1993, that figure dropped from 105 a year to 49 deaths a year. Still tragic in every single case, but significantly less.
British Army, during the 1970s, 352 British Army personnel killed in the troubles, during the 1980s, down to 123. In other words, there was a containment. How did the process of more sophisticated, not flawless, but more effective counterterrorism manage to contain groups like the IRA and pro-state terrorists like the Ulster Defense Association, the UDA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF.
Through some of the things I've just alluded to, through moving away from an exaggeration of what military methods would do towards intelligence-led policing. Through moving away from saying these are just criminals and gangsters to saying there's a political problem here. It's ultimately, a conflict around the legitimacy and fairness of the state. That's why this is happening. That's why normal people are engaging in this violence.
There was a move away from incredible public announcements by politicians. They're just criminals. Let's treat them as such to more credible interpretations of it, which looked at the root causes. There was less short termism and more long termism. Things were learned not flawlessly, but in significant ways.
And what happened was you got then, not the defeat of terrorist organizations. Some people argue that groups like the IRA were defeated. I don't believe they were. I think they could have carried on with their violence until today, actually, but they chose not to.
Why? Because they were being contained. Because plan A, the violence was not producing the victory that they had thought it would. They had thought that the Clausewitzian process of making the war more painful for your enemy than it would be for them to give you what you want, they thought that would work. And when it turned out it wasn't going to work year after year and more and more of their operations were being thwarted and more and more of them were in prison, was there a plan B? And yes, there was.
So Melani kindly mentioned that I directed the Mitchell Institute at Queen's, named after Senator Mitchell, who chaired magisterially, the talks, which led to the 10th of April 1998, Belfast Good Friday Agreement. Those negotiations were inclusive. Those negotiations produced a compromise that didn't give anyone absolutely what they wanted, but gave most people enough of what they wanted to feel that there was a basis for a peace process.
Those negotiations wouldn't have been possible with representatives of paramilitary terrorist groups, had those groups not thought plan A isn't working. How can we get momentum through another route to plan B? Counterterrorism was a tactical containment, but it was part of a broader political engagement. And if there's one thing that you take away from this short talk from me is that effective counterterrorism has to be political. It can't ignore the politics from which the violence comes, which you're trying to address.
And there was containment, and then people, if we're not going to do the terrorism, is there another way? Yes, there is, because your representatives will be at the table. Yes, there will be the possibility for Republicans of getting reform. Yes, there will be another way of your achieving a United Ireland over the long term, which may yet happen. Yes, there will be a way of your getting things, which will be transformative containment, led to a strategic possibility, which made lives in Northern Ireland a small conflict, but thousands of lives have been saved since 1998.
Let's listen to some leading Republican and other voices on this. One of the most articulate of Irish Republicans, Danny Morrison, in interview with me here, quote, "The IRA," he said, "is a very political organization, and it made political decisions on the basis of what it felt it could prosecute. The focus was on what it thought was an achievable objective." Sometimes people write books about the IRA as if they're a bunch of Celtic dreamers. I've never met a more hard-headed bunch. I've never met a more pragmatic bunch.
If you are going to pursue an achievable objective, if that wasn't achievable through this method, was there something else achievable through another method? Another eminent Republican, Sinn Féin, Conor Murphy, again, in an interview with me, quote, "If it was becoming fairly clear," Murphy said, "that armed struggle wasn't going to drive people onto boats and out of Belfast harbor, then you had to have another dynamic, which opened up the possibility of great political change."
Jonathan Powell, on the other side, the chief British negotiator in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, Tony Blair's chief of staff, normally and rightly cited for his involvement in the talks, were being prepared to talk to people who represented the Republican movement and loyalist paramilitaries and rightly deserving that. But let's listen to what he said.
"None of this," Powell says, "is to say that terrorism can be dealt with in the absence of firm security policies and effective intelligence." This is Jonathan Powell, "Without the police successes against data, without the infiltration of the IRA by the intelligence agencies, and without the military campaign against the Free Aceh Movement, the conflicts," Powell said, "in the Basque country, in Northern Ireland and Aceh would not be over."
None of these things are lessons which you can neatly transplant to another conflict. Each conflict is, of course, a blizzard of details, which makes it unique. But it does seem to me that some of the long-standing principles associated with things working or not working in terms of counterterrorism are of deep relevance, as we look at the tragedy of what's unfolding at the moment in Israel-Palestine.
Had we been having this conversation in 1993, when the Oslo process was going well and when Belfast and Northern Ireland were mired in cycles of bloodstained violence. I heard people give lectures saying peace is going to happen in the Middle East, but it could never happen in Northern Ireland. And as often, with academic arguments, there were plausible basis for this.
Israel was more globally important. Israel was more associated with international interest. Israel was something where the levels of violence were higher. So peace could happen there, but it could never happen in Northern Ireland. Now, the argument is the opposite. Peace was always going to happen in Northern Ireland, but it can never happen in the Middle East.
None of this is true. Historians will tell you-- now, there are some very distinguished historians in the room. Historians will tend to stress contingency rather than inevitability. These futures are contingent. They're not impossible. They're not inevitable.
And what could happen if we looked at a more serious political approach to counterterrorism is to learn humbly some of the things that in various parts of the world have gone profoundly and appallingly wrong. And to try to think about creating futures where human flourishing through political processes can complement and be supported by counter-terrorist containment, which quite properly, quite properly wants to save people from being the victims of non-state violence.
Thank you to Melani for hosting me. Thank you for being so patient and listening to me. I would love to have questions and responses and thoughts if people want to come up to the microphone, and I'll do my best to answer them. But thank you very much, indeed.
AUDIENCE: Thank you for those wonderful remarks. I'm too depressed to talk about Palestine and Israel. You will pardon me. I basically, can't even see the news or open television. So I'm going to ask you two very quick and general questions. The first one is, it seems, to me, you've lumped together terrorism and political violence that can come from terrorism or political violence that can come from an insurgency.
And the horizons of both terrorist groups that are hidden in urban areas and are disconnected from a population and an insurgency that is living on the population seems to me have different horizons and maybe their political goals are different.
The second is a more legal question, and I've tried to research it and haven't found a convincing set of arguments, either in one way or the other. While in a situation of occupation, it is-- I hate to use this term, but fair game because it's still a human being on the other side of the barrel, to kill a soldier, that's still a human life. But while that is legally one thing, what is the argument in either one way or another to attack someone who's participating in the occupation, but who's not a soldier, but who is armed?
And here, the legal bodies are very nuanced about this. So what are the legal international covenants? We know that civilians under any circumstances are a red line, and they should not be touched. We know that soldiers can engage with armed combatants on the basis of Geneva Convention or some other set of rules.
But what happens to that gray zone of paramilitary forces that are neither civilians nor soldiers? What legal texts can governments and can human rights activists and so forth, draw on?
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you. I mean, that's two very difficult questions, but I'll do my best to answer them. On the first. I mean, yes, one of the nightmares of working on terrorism is that the definitional debate is never resolved. Because the question of what terrorist violence is, as opposed to insurgent violence, whether terrorist violence is only done by non-state actors or not, that is a library of vast amounts of work.
I mean, a couple of quick thoughts on that. Where you have a movement which uses terroristic violence but also, could be labeled more of an insurgency because it's a larger scale operation or where they hold territory or where they do other things like social service provision, and so on, in other words, where they move beyond terrorism, but they still do terrorism, many of the points I'm using in my argument, I think still obtain.
So if you take a group like Hamas, clearly had territorial influence, clearly provided more than just terroristic violence, social service provision over many years, and so forth. And yet, one of the spectacular things of what happened in the past just over a year was the profound failure of intelligence by the Israelis and now seems to be quite a lot of evidence about what was going to happen. And there was a strategic choice taken. Hamas weren't up for a fight. And that was something which, I think, according to my argument, would have been more likely to have been addressed.
And similarly, I think some of the things which states do against those insurgencies can have the same counterproductive effect that you have against more clearly terroristic groups, the mistreatment of prisoners, the state collateral damage, as it's euphemistically called, the killing of civilians in places where you lose a village for a very long time.
So I think although they are different, Hisham, in terms of scale and goals, many of the things that are effective in counterterrorism seem to be the same. Torturing prisoners is an ineffective way of getting the kind of speedy, actionable intelligence.
On the legality of it, I mean, I think there's gray zone there again, because obviously a lot of non-state groups would say that it's not just a case of shooting soldiers because people who are, in other ways, are important to the enemy, whether they be armed police, whether they be armed civilians, whether they be people in the legal system, they may be the sort of targets who are going to be more undermining of the state if you target them than soldiers.
And also, they're pragmatically much easier to hit. Soldiers tend to have a good number of mates with them who are well armed and will fight back. But somebody who's much more vulnerable is likely to be an easier target. So there, the pragmatism and opportunism and the fact that the sense of fighting the state might be more effective through bleeding beyond the competence is something which will override any legal definitions.
Where I would argue human rights activists, scholars and frankly, all of us in this room, what we should do is have a cosmopolitan approach to human suffering, which tries to see all of it as something where human rights transgressions, whichever side is doing it, are limited, criticized, and actually dealt with after conflict. And that's one of the things which again, Northern Ireland has problems with but is crucial.
But I think that there are ways of seeing that much that's claimed as legitimate target turns out to be transgressive in these conflicts, state, and non-state actors. Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for speaking with us today. My name is Stephen Ellis. I'm a graduate student, international relations here at Harvard. I'm from the Philippines. So what could the Philippines learn from the troubles in Northern Ireland? Because we've got two insurgent groups who are separatists, communists in the north, Islamic separatists in the south. Both subscribe to violent extremist acts. If you read the news.
And what could the Philippines do if it has an administration that refuses to let the ICC into the country, but supposedly wants to participate in a rules-based order, to put it mildly? Thank you.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you, Stephen. So on that, I mean, I do think that, obviously, there are very great differences between the Philippines and Northern Ireland, but some scholars who've studied aspects of the sorts of things
I'm looking at who have had an interest in the Philippines. I'm thinking of work like the Shapiro, Felter, and Berman book on Small Wars, Big Data, does argue that a combination of security, containment and reinforcement of order, coupled with hearts and minds and the provision of the sense of benefit for the community locally is applicable to the Philippines, as it is to other places.
And so in that sense, for all of the different scale and much more difficult scale, I think, there is something, I think, which is applicable. In terms of the rule-based order. I mean this is the long-term baked that you can use for regimes. And it seems, to me, that that's something which is not always going to be effective.
On the other hand, it does seem to me that there are perceived to be so many credibility and economic and internationally rewarding gains to be held from being involved in international rules-based operations, that there is a way, therefore, that people will moderate, modulate behaviors if they're thinking long term.
The Northern Ireland case, I think of there is having some relevance. This sounds like a strange thing to say, but I always love it when you have a self-servingly, ambitious politician who wants to do that Yeatsian thing of thing, how will the future view the past? Because I think then you have something to work with.
So I think sometimes things that are not glorious human qualities in terms of glorious human qualities can be very valuable in terms of how people and their regimes will think, how is this going to be viewed? What is the longer term status that I'm going to have? And I think there the international community needs to be-- well, it needs to be more robust than it's been in applying these things even handedly. But it's one of the best resources that we have.
AUDIENCE: Hello. So I was very excited to hear the hope for solving the conflict in the Middle East. And I also think it's helpful to think about ways to counterterrorism. Also, thinking of ways that are political, engaging the international community to counterterrorism everywhere.
What I found less useful, really, is the comparison with the conflict in Northern Ireland. It's 2 million people. It's less than 5% of the population of the UK. That's a very, very different context compared to the Middle East, where you have two populations of comparable sizes.
I also don't find it very useful, and actually, not very sound argument to justify a terror group like someone that came out here. This question that I've heard a lot, actually, here or this putting in question that the actions of Hamas on October 7 were terror attack, given all the civilians that were killed that day, including babies, girls, rape. So quite horrified with putting that in question. And I also, don't find it very useful.
I do find useful some comparisons with other conflicts terror in other countries, such as my own country, which is Spain. So we had decades of terror, Basque terror. The terror organization was called ETA. And one of the measures that Spain took and many countries in Europe, including the UK, as far as I know, is that incitement to violence against the group is penalized, especially if you're in rallies and political rallies. You can't incite violence against the group. You are penalized for that. There's a law against this in the penal code.
And that would be very useful if Spain also applied that to the official government discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as other countries in Europe. And also, another very useful measure that also Spain took was that you can't go to elections if you're a party that is a terrorist party.
So there's a process for this. It's a legal process. You can go to the Constitutional Court, and that party can be called illegal. And that has happened several times in Spain as well. And this has been, actually, also quite effective in reducing terror in Spain.
So I wonder this was is not the same approach that is taken with Palestinian terror, as we have heard, people justifying it. And when Israel withdraw from Gaza in 2005, they elected, in front of everybody in the international community, they elected this a federally designated terror organization called Hamas. And there was no opposition to this, not even by countries that in their own countries would never allow for this.
I would find a discussion along these lines much more helpful, especially for each of us, whichever country we are from, we should take responsibility, rather than blaming others. And I think that would be much more helpful. So I wanted to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you very much, indeed. So there are bits where we agree, but on the bits where we disagree, it seems to me there are three, so I'll try and argue specifically on them. On the scale. I mean, clearly, the scale of different conflicts is a significant element to it. But I think in the Israel-Palestine case it remains true that over many years, an exaggeration of what military means can do in countering terrorism has proved less effective than its practitioners thought.
It is true that the most sophisticated likely end of Palestinian terrorism will come when there is something which addresses root cause issues, which relate to Palestinian grievances. It does seem, to me, crucially true that high-grade intelligence in its appropriate lifesaving use, will be decisive in the future, as in the past, in Israel, as elsewhere. And it does seem to be true, as in Northern Ireland, that the international dynamics of people, the ways in which international actors can make it more difficult or more easy to produce peace and to produce an eirenic future is significant.
So for all the differences of scale, I would hold to the view that there are intuitions, though as I said in my talk, I think they're very different cases.
The Hamas attack. I mean, let me be absolutely clear, the Hamas attack was gruesome, grotesque, entirely unjustifiable, repellent, and absolutely without basis in terms of any kind of morality or justification. OK, absolutely. 100%. I have no hesitation, and I'm not going to make any sense that it was someone else's fault. The fault was the people who did it, and it was grotesque and appalling. That is true, and I think that needs to be said.
But that doesn't mean that you, therefore, ignore-- I don't think you would necessarily suggesting this, that you ignore the things that I'm saying. Actually, IRA attacks, UVF attacks, UDA attacks. None of them should have happened in Northern Ireland. None of them should have happened, and they evolved appalling human rights transgressions. What I'm trying to do is think about a future where thousands of lives are saved, rather than repetitions of them. But I want to be absolutely clear on what I think of what happened on 7 October, because I think that's important.
[ ? ] and Spain, I mean, it's a really interesting case, and it's a much closer case, the Basque Country, to Northern Ireland in terms of Western European terrorist organization fighting in terms of a secessionist campaign against the Western European liberal democracy. I mean, interestingly, the point you make about political parties and being terrorists, I mean, the British state's argument for a long time was, we've got no problem with people talking about a United Ireland.
The home Secretary in 1971 said, if the people of the North and the people of the South want to come together by agreement peacefully, set up a United Ireland. He said, not only would we not get in the way of it, but he said the whole British people would be very pleased about it.
In 1985, the UK state papers in the archives say our animus against Sinn Féin is because of their expressed support for terrorism. Now, once you stop the terrorism, come and talk and we'll deal with it. And to some degree, what you're describing there is the dynamic of the peace process.
Now, it is slow and jagged and had they really given it up and all of that. As a former PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde, said end games in terrorism are messy, they're not neat. But there was a shift. So the Fire Center of Sinn Fain, of the Republican movement, now is Sinn Féin, whereas the Fire Center used to be the IRA, and that's one of the basis of the peace process.
So I think on all three of those things, I suspect we might be in slightly more agreement than you. Thank you.
AUDIENCE: So thank you very much for a very insightful and thoughtful and interesting talk, and I look forward to reading your book. I'm a comparativist and do comparative political science. And so when you spoke and you explained your cases, I immediately thought of, I was sitting there thinking, OK, I've got to find a case where what Melani calls the value of zero.
And I thought of Sri Lanka. It may be normatively reprehensible, at least to me, but one could make the argument that counterterrorism worked in Sri Lanka, in terms of what the Sri Lankan government wanted to achieve through repressive measures without a political compromise. So that's the first of political science challenge, if you will. How would you explain Sri Lanka?
The second question relates to Oslo. You mentioned that. And I thought A, I remember those times. I lived through them. I remember the optimism. I was part of the optimism. But if we think about those days or the period of September 1993 and '94 and '95, early '96, this was a time of trying to resolve a conflict politically through territorial compromise. And there was a lot of optimism.
Hamas, although it didn't have much support back then, engaged in what I think you would call terrorism based on your definition of killing masses, hundreds of civilians, suicide bombers on buses, and in public places. And at the time, the explanation was that they were engaging in this kind of activity to derail peacemaking.
And they were given the opportunity to join the Palestinian Authority, that is, to join that political process. And they said no, because the objective is to derail it. We don't want peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians. So how would you address that problem?
Now, I would add to that I think may be overestimating the extent to which Israel has been thinking through military might as the only solution. In fact, I would argue that the reason why Israel agreed to go through the Oslo process was because there was a realization that military might is limited.
There is so much that you can achieve with military, and there needs to be a political solution. Then the Oslo peace process failed. There was the Second Intifada, and Israelis reached the conclusions, rightly or wrongly, that diplomacy doesn't work. So they turned to unilateralism. And that was the withdrawal from Gaza that was spoken about by the earlier speaker in 2005.
Then they reached a conclusion that unilateralism doesn't work, so they go back to military repression. So how would you reconcile that? It seems that the cycle is far more complex than simply saying military doesn't work, when nothing seems to be working.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you for those questions, which again, as with the previous questions, are very rich, so I'm very grateful for them. Yes, I mean, there are things you could decide to do, which would brutally crush an organization. I mean, Sri Lanka is a bloodstained case. I hold it as axiomatic, but I don't want the state I live in to do that. And I think that that remains an important aspect of what liberal democracies should hold to.
But yeah, I mean, the UK had the capacity to destroy South Armagh and West Belfast completely, and to kill prisoners rather than in prison. I mean, you could have done it and I would argue that there are some aspects of that which-- to go back to the definitional point that was raised earlier on, deliberately terrorizing political violence by a state seems to be something that I'm also opposed to, not just non-state violence.
So I think there are things, which would as you'd expect as a liberal, democratically inclined chap not to want to endorse. But yes, you could be more crushing. And there are other cases. There are cases in terms of Latin American history where there have been repressive regimes and autocratic regimes and so forth. But I don't want to go there in terms of politics.
On the Israel case, yeah, I mean, I'm not of the view that Israel has always thought that military things are on their own, the method I do think at the moment, there is probably an exaggeration of how far the IDF and comrades are going to be able to sort this out. But I think, as you say, that comes in cycles. The difficulty for states countering terrorism is a bit like the difficulty for people who are anti-state, and I've heard Palestinians argue this.
When we try nonviolence, it doesn't work. And when we try terrorism, people say, well, don't do that. That's not going to work. And they say, well, we'll try-- so the sense of what's not working. And the blizzard of things that makes historical politics develop in different ways contingently in your different cases is something which, obviously, I as an obscure professor have no answer for.
But I mean, I think the spoiler mechanism is interesting, which is what it's sometimes referred to with Hamas. And of course, there were pro-Israeli spoilers as well, who significantly, in the case of one assassination, decisively made a difference. So I think there was that.
Interestingly, in the Northern Ireland case, this wasn't what happened. I mean, there are two aspects that I pick on which aren't adequate answers to your question, but I they're significant. One is that the UK government's attitude towards Northern Ireland is, of course, very different from the Israeli government's attitude towards Israel-Palestine, because it's not an existential crisis as seen by the UK in regard to Northern Ireland.
Indeed, the Madrid government, going back to an earlier question, the Madrid government is more interested, by far, in the Basque country than London is in Northern Ireland, as Reginald Maudling's 1971 quote about "If you want to go, we'd be delighted" indicates. So in that sense, the relationship between the government to the region is very, very different in terms of how much it really matters and also, how invested it is.
So someone like Jonathan Powell, if you read his accounts, which are very elegant and eloquent, they're more like he's discussing a problem between people who are extraneous to what his state is really about. It's seen as other, rather than as something which is definitive of the nature or future of the state. I think that is different.
The other thing is that interestingly, the sorts of things which the UK state used to condemn the IRA and Sinn Féin for being, these people are very rigid in the way they run people. They won't have any dissent. They really keep a tight lid on things. They're prepared to have someone run over. During the peace process became kind of, God bless them, because it meant that they actually got this movement to go.
And remarkably, they managed to bring the bulk of the movement with them. I mean, there are splinter groups, as we speak, on the Republican side, as there are residual terrorist groups on the pro-state side. But broadly speaking, the Republican movement that shifted from the peace process brought its people with it. And that's an interesting case study. I mean, when I was young, I used to think of great topics for books and then try and do my best to write one.
Now, that I've got a gray beard, I think of great topics of books. And one of you is going to write it, but a really interesting thing would be the way in which Republicans manage to get people to shift from one kind of politics to another, violence to peace. But also, United Ireland will never go into Stormont. Actually, we will. Consent principle for Northern unionists can't accept that. Actually, we will.
Socialism, that's being nasty to European capitalists. Now, let's go to dinners and try and get investment. It's a huge change, and they've brought their people with them in an extraordinary means of mobilization. And that is an interesting case study to look at, whether you can find that relevant for other cases, I don't know, but it is something important.
So what you have in the 1990s in the Israel case is that, of course, for various reasons, the spoilers win and people then give up some hope. Although, for quite a long time, there was still opinion poll evidence suggesting that a significant number of people in both main blocks thought that some process of peace was still a desirable thing. And I still think the question is, are we going to have Gaza wars like 2008, 2012, 2014, 2023? Is this going to go on until my funeral, or are we going to go back to the-- someone mentioned hope earlier on?
Are we going to say there might be a possibility of this blizzard, of things working in a more hopeful way? I feel bleak. I mean, you can't switch your phone on without feeling desperate. On the other hand, I think that we have to try and invest in thinking about those things which make the odds more likely.
What happens in the election in this country is a significant. If we're talking about Israel-Palestine, what happens next month is-- I mean, it's important for this country too. But it's important internationally in terms of the dynamics. Because the international configuration with Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland got lucky because he had an American president more interested than was normal.
It's hard to remember it, but in those days, the European Union was a context within which Britain and Ireland got on well. Now, when you say EU, it pushes them apart, but it was something that brought it together. So there were international dynamics where people jumped on. At the moment, the International dynamics in regard to Israel-Palestine almost always make it worse.
AUDIENCE: This question is more focused on US global war on terror. Most people look at 9/11 as the seminal moment that the US was attacked, but the actual first al-Qaeda attack was in 1993, of course, on the same building that was attacked on 9/11/01. So I would love to hear your thoughts, using your framework as to what happened or didn't happen in those eight years from that first al-Qaeda attack on US soil leading up to 9/11. Or if you had any other examples, globally, of those canary-in-a-coal-mine type attack moments that could or would lead to something greater and were ignored or thought about incorrectly?
RICHARD ENGLISH: Yeah, these are great questions, so thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, I've often wondered about the first World Trade towers attack, because it could have gone very differently. Do I think the response at that stage, had it gone differently, would have been hugely different? I suspect probably not. But I do think that the alarming thing to which you refer is that it wasn't, in a way taken, seriously enough.
And if you talk to. I Remember Peter Bergen, who unlike most of us interviewed bin Laden. But I mean, he was trying in August 2001 to get The New York Times to run a story saying, actually, when you look at the timeline between what this bloke says and what happens, there's often a thing, something big is going to happen, and the paper wouldn't run it. So there is a tendency.
So part of this is the dynamics of our species that we respond. The time to solve crises is between them, but between crises, we don't look at them. So at the moment, in the UK, if you've got the head of-- I'm sure the head of MI5, if someone says to him that there's a problem with legacy in Northern Ireland at the moment, it's an issue.
He'll probably say to the prime minister call that a problem. I mean, I've got at least four hostile states. I've got an increasing number of right-wing oriented, online radicalized lone actors. I've got the traffic coming in about possible Palestinian sympathetic attacks.
The fact that people are upset about what happened in the conflict that's over isn't really a crisis, but it's sort of bubbling away in Northern Ireland. So the dynamic you're talking about is the thing between crises.
On the other point about things, which are signals which are indicators of what might happen in the future, I think this is being filmed. So I'll answer that privately because I don't want to be the professor who says, hey, here's this thing that's-- in case someone says, oh, it's that bloke from Belfast came up with the idea. And so I'll chat to you when it's off camera.
But it's a really interesting question. I mean, generally, my sense as a recovering pessimist in our species, my sense is that-- and this is how I approach everything in my life, which is one of my psychological difficulties. I always assume the worst. My favorite Edmund Burke quotation is, "Better to be despised for two anxious apprehensions than ruined by too confident security." And that's from the greatest-ever Irish person, but it's right.
So what I would do is, I would I'd be one of those people who gathers up the endless, awful things that might happen and then try and get attention for them and prepare what you can. And some of it is about stuff, which I've tried stumblingly to make. But I think there are things we know will work well or badly.
My prediction is if there's a large attack on this democracy by an external actor, the reactions to that wouldn't be as different as I'd like them to be. And it doesn't matter who gets the job next month. Professor Armitage.
AUDIENCE: Richard, you've spoken and written clearly to encourage citizens and also, presumably to empower counter-terrorist authorities. But what can terrorists learn from your book?
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you very much. That mischievous question. So let me take two things, which I would like people to observe. One is that most terrorist campaigns end without strategic victory. And most terrorist campaigns that states are interested in are about serious issues. I mean, we've been discussing ones which relate to autonomy, secession, and so forth, but there are others around intra or inter religious or about economic. They're serious things.
If you really want to make change, you need to be looking for plan B as soon as you can. So from the terrorist point of view, I think the thing would be to say you've made your signal. You've blown things up. You've done atrocious violence. You've got our attention. So let's assume you're not going to win. How do you get to something else and try and find friends.
The other thing about it is, I think that the logic of terrorist assumption is that the longer the thing goes on, the more that Clausewitzian pressure is going to become unbearable. Whereas the historical pattern more frequently is that the longer it goes on, the more bearable it is. States become better, soldiers are more difficult to kill, and people get bored.
I mean, my wife and I were living in London in the late '80s, and first time there's a bomb on the line at Tooting Bec, and a second time, another bomb a third time, people got bored with it. It's very hard to get the intention. So in that sense, there is a way in which terrorism becomes less effective the longer it goes on, and I think that's part of it too.
Now, I think that the sharp-eyed people involved in terrorist movements, they need to find that they've got someone to dance with who will say, well, actually, I can't meet you directly, but I can send someone who can, and eventually, we might see. And interestingly, the Basque Country is mentioned. I mean, the resolution, as it seems in the Basque country, is so far short of what ETA said was essential. The resolution in the North of Ireland is so far short of what the IRA said was essential.
So while some people, including some famous people who used to work in these parts, would argue that you should never address root causes with terrorism, often, it seems to me you can address the root causes of terrorism in ways that drain much of the reservoir of sympathy, but fall far short of what terrorist vanguards claim to be essential. And that is, at the risk of sounding like a less pessimistic person, that is an optimistic lesson. Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Maya, and I'm an undergrad here. I'm actually in Professor Cammett's seminar, and I have two questions. One, considering that both Hamas and Israel are not willing to live side by side, I mean, as someone mentioned before, Hamas is actively trying to intervene in cases of peace processes and Israel is, obviously, not going to let a terror organization to live by its side, how do you suggest that something like that could be negotiated? Because I think you mentioned that before.
You said, terrorism is not effective, but diplomacy is. So considering there isn't a compromise that can be achieved in that case, what kind of advice would you give both Israel and Hamas? And the second question I have is, maybe it's kind of similar, but how would you act if you were Israel? You said the military response was probably not the best solution. I think you talked about how counterterrorism, in this case, is not effective. So what would be effective in the case of Israel? I'm Israeli, by the way.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Well, thank you very much for those questions, which raise really important points. I mean, I think after October the 7th, the prospect of Hamas being involved in a deal with Israel is gone.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
RICHARD ENGLISH: It's gone. I think there were moments when there were signals being sent when it might have worked. I mean, there were interesting feelers being put out, but I think that's over. But one of the dynamics that hasn't probably been talked about enough, certainly, in Britain and Ireland, but which is vital is the intra-Palestinian rivalries and dynamics, in other words, the rivalries between different wings of who will represent the Palestinian people.
And that seems, to me, to be an opportunity. I mean, there's a lot that's wrong with the Palestinian Authority, but it does seem, to me, that in an earlier phase, people in that part of the movement did accept that some kind of compromise was essential, did recognize that Israel would need to exist in some kind of deal.
And it seems to me, therefore, if you're to say to Palestinians, this kind of atrocity of 7th of October is unacceptable. You have to say, well, there has to be something else. And I think, therefore, you need to build coalitions of Palestinian leaders with whom you can do a deal.
I do think that's a possibility. I don't think it's going to happen immediately, obviously. I think it will need someone else, but Netanyahu in charge. But none of us lives to the age of Methuselah. So I think there are ways in which things will change there. What you need is an opportunity for there to be Palestinian leadership, which can seize the day in a non-Hamas way in terms of the atrocity that they practice, which I think has effectively ruled them out.
Which brings me to the second point. I mean, clearly, military methods can do something. I mean, I think sometimes there are legitimate things that can be done by armies. I think there are cases where sometimes there are choices between wrongs, but one is less wrong. And it can be the case that military methods, if selective, if targeted, if careful, can do some good. And I think I can well understand why Israel wants to degrade the force of Hamas, and I can understand that.
My point there is that I think two things. One, I think there's an exaggeration at the moment of what can be done in terms of military victory, which I don't think is going to be as complete as rhetoric suggests. And two, you do pay costs. I mean, when I started doing reasonably frequent lectures in America on this kind of stuff, the sort of campuses like this extraordinary campus, the atmosphere was very different about Israel 20 years ago from what it is now.
AUDIENCE: Was it better?
RICHARD ENGLISH: For Israel.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Yeah. It used to be about 10-nil to Israel. And not that, a simplification, but there was a much-- whereas now, I mean in this past year, campuses-- Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, UCLA.
AUDIENCE: It started October 8.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Sorry?
AUDIENCE: It started October 8.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Yeah. And obviously, the reason for this is ugly in the same way as in the UK, the spike in anti-Jewish attacks in the UK was after October the 7th. It wasn't after the Israeli response. The biggest spike was after the attack on Israelis and others in Israel, which is important.
But my point is there I think there are ways in which you do pay a cost. Now, that's not me saying, therefore, it's easy. You can just stop shooting people and it'll all be OK. But I do think that the hearts and minds and international opinion is an important part of effective counterterrorism, and I think that's one of the costs that you sometimes pay.
AUDIENCE: So I totally-- I mean, you obviously know-- 10,000 times more than me. So I totally agree with that. But it doesn't--
RICHARD ENGLISH: Not necessarily at all.
AUDIENCE: --on counterterrorism. But my question is, so yes, there is a price. I'm a big believer that Israel has to sustain its place in the international scene. That's 50% of what Israel is for, in my opinion. But how would you do that? How would you deal with internal pressures. And obviously, on October 7, every Israeli was so pissed, and that would be like the understatement of the century.
So as a politician-- obviously, you're not a politician, but as the government who I personally don't identify with, but as the government, what would you do differently? And also, it's very obvious that there are some military-- the military force will not achieve a lot of the goals that it supposedly should be. But I'm asking, because I don't know what would be another way to deal with that?
RICHARD ENGLISH: So two things. I mean, one, clearly, there's an emotional aspect to the reaction to the horror, not only to the horror of October 7, but to the fact that globally, a lot of people seem to turn on Jewish people after October the 7th, and that's horrific, and so there's an emotional aspect to it. And in my framework, inherent rewards include things like the sense of hitting back, the sense of some sort of catharsis.
This terrible thing has been done. Look at those pictures of the appalling abuses of humans. We've got to do something. States are human, too. And citizens who vote for politicians are human. And of course, that's an emotional part of it.
As an analyst, in a way, my approach to this is a bit more like a medic. If you turn up at the doctor and say, I'm ill, I don't want the medic to thump the table and condemn the disease. I want them to say, why has it happened? What do I know about it? How am I going to make you healthier? So on that bit.
The second thing is, points I've mentioned, I think that it has to be the case that Israeli security, which I defend, and I've said clearly about what I thought about the Hamas atrocity, I'm going to say I think Israel should continue to exist and of course, has the right to defend itself. Israeli human security and Palestinian flourishing have to be two parts of the next future.
And I'm not hearing that at the moment. So that's what I would say. But as you've rightly observed, I wouldn't get a job in that kind of business.
AUDIENCE: It's OK. I probably wouldn't too.
RICHARD ENGLISH: But I rather hope that you do, because I think that--
AUDIENCE: I hope so, too.
RICHARD ENGLISH: One of the things that's a joy about teaching university and getting the privilege of meeting with people and learning from people's questions here is that I'm constantly struck by the fact that so many students at universities, such as this one, have a commitment to a better future. And I think that hope is something which, don't let cynical old professors like me eat away at it.
Because I think what I've tried to say in my talk is, it is actually a message of hope. There are things we know which will make people die less, be maimed, less, be traumatized less. There are things we know which will save lives. If the things that I have been talking about in terms of counterterrorism had happened after 9/11, many, many thousands of people would now be alive who are not.
Actually, if what I'd been saying about intelligence and counterterrorism has happened, I think October 7 might have been thwarted. So are things which are really life saving about this, which more important people than an obscure professor can operationalize.
Going back to David's point, I mean, I do think that professors have to profess I never assume I'm going to change anything, but I do want to put things out there to say there are things we know we know, to borrow a phrase from a famous fellow. There are things we know we know. And actually, we shouldn't forget those because it costs lives for all of us.
And so the things that we all-- Israel is a tragic example of it. But this country is facing into a febrile election. And the last time you had one of those, it could have ended up with something far less amateurish than it did. And there are people now, as you know, you have read them, people writing books about how civil wars start and so forth. It's becoming something where responding to non-state terrorism is something which is very close to home as well.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you.
MELANI CAMMETT: We're just about out of time, but maybe we can get Winston in for a last question.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Yeah, thank you. These are great questions. So sorry I've gone over time, but Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Thank you so much for this privilege. Ruslan Yusupov, here, scholar at the Harvard Academy, working on the People's War on Terror in China's Xinjiang region. So I'm looking forward to read the book, but you mentioned in your talk the transition from the heavy-handed response to more to learning and then, hopefully, to the political, pragmatic solutions and hopefully, to peace.
And I was wondering whether you can speak a little bit more about the factors that contribute to the state rethinking, given the sovereign kind of a power to violence, the state rethinking its own approaches. Is it the international pressure? Is it-- I don't know, the difference in systems, authoritarian opposed to liberal one, when there are think tanks, where there is a freedom of speech? Or is it the pressure of the terrorist groups in themselves continuing the intensification of violence, showing the state that counter-violence doesn't work and therefore, you need to some other solutions? And whether there is any kind of a particular factor that stands out for you? Thank you.
RICHARD ENGLISH: Thank you very much. Always nice to have an easy question to finish with. So something about China. Thank you very much. I think three things which you've partly hinted at yourself. I mean, one is the pragmatic question, if things aren't working and we've still got a problem, is there another way we can learn? And I know there are cases where there have been attempts at cross-case examination of what other states of different regime types have attempted.
International pressure can play a significant part. And economic relationships, reputation, hearts and minds, losing face, those sorts of things can play a significant part. I mean, I think the structure of the stage is important. I mean, what one book I read recently about the country you're expert in talked about a fractured authoritarianism and the ways in which those structures make a difference can be obstacles.
But it seems, to me, that there are ways in which the sometimes there are learnings which relate to a particular problem, in this case terrorism, or what's presented as terrorism, which can then reveal fractures, which are in the structure, which it might be beneficial to deal with anyway. So there can be learnings.
I mean, I am a pessimist, so I'm going to end on a pessimistic note. As someone who was born and has lived almost his whole life in what used to be an empire. The British Empire, it didn't end well, but we had two fortunate things, really good friends with the next empire, spoke the same language, and look at the state of us.
And I would say that what happens in China and what happens in this country-- I'll be gone by the time it happens, but the relationships there are going to be crucially important. So the more there can be cross-case learnings where things are done in ways that are subtle and sophisticated and effective by China, that will have a huge resonance globally as well in terms of not just what's happening in China, but how we all think about treating others.
And on that note, I think I'll finish. So thank you very much, indeed.