A CONFLICT OF FREEDOMS
Conor Cruise O'Brien argues that
traditional Western liberalism is ill-equipped to deal with terrorism
LIBERALISM and terrorism appear as opposing concepts, but they have something in common. Both belong to the large and heterogeneous family of the devotees of freedom. Freedom is the most powerful and the most ambiguous of abstract ideas. There are two main divisions within the massive ambiguities. There is freedom combined with order and limited by law. This is the freedom of England's Glorious Revolution and of the American Constitution. This is the 'manly, moral, regulated liberty' which Burke defended in Reflections on the Revolu- tion in France. This is the freedom of the mainstream liberal tradition in the English- speaking world. And it is also the freedom of the mainstream conservative tradition in the same world. In their philosophy of free- dom, the common ground between the two traditions is more important than the differ- ences. Edmund Burke belongs to both those traditions, and no one should seek to wrest him from one of them in order to monopo- lise him for the other.
Outside the zone of ordered freedom, now more or less coextensive with the West- ern world, the idea of freedom and the love of freedom take starker and more elemental forms. Freedom is thought of as the appur- tenance and rightful heritage of a particular group of people defined by nationality, reli- gion, language, ancestry or territorial affilia- tion, and usually by some combination of several of these elements. Some other group or groups of people are felt to be denying freedom to us, who must have it. Freedom so understood is one of the most powerful of human motivating forces and the most destructive, impelling large numbers of peo- ple to risk their lives for it and to take the lives of others, the, enemies of freedom. Serbs and Croats cut one another's throats — and all for freedom's sake.
When the communist system collapsed in Europe, many Westerners were confi- dent that freedom would take its place, and so it did. But in many parts of the for- mer Soviet Union, the freedom that emerged was not freedom as understood in the West, but rather a conflict of free- doms: national and ethnic freedoms, at war with one another. Russians are making a brave effort to establish an ordered ver- sion of freedom, but that version is chal- lenged by other versions.
Much of the world today breathes what Edmund Burke called 'the wild gas' of liber- ty. Burke used that phrase about the French Revolution in the condition it was in 1790, a year after the Fall of the Bastille, and two years before the advent of the Terror. The Whigs — the ancestors of modern liberals — believed that the French Revolution was over, having brought about the triumph of liberty. Burke was about to break with the Whigs over that proposition. He wrote in Reflections: When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose; but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subdued, till the liquor is cleared and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure before I venture publicly to congratulate men upon a blessing that they have really received one. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it has been combined with government, with public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too, and, without them liberty, is not a benefit in itself, and is not likely to con- tinue long. The effect of liberty to individu- als is, that they may do what they please. We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints.
I referred just now to the contrast between 'ordered liberty' in the West and passionate versions of liberty in the world outside. The contrast is obvious, but it is not clear-cut. Within the West also there are passionate absolutist libertarians claiming inspiration from within the Western tradi- tion, as in the cases of the persons arrested for the Oklahoma City bombing. And West- ern liberals are ill-prepared to cope with ter- rorism. This is a question of psychology, not of formal liberal doctrine.
In the British tradition that doctrine was formulated most authoritatively by John Stu- art Mill in On Liberty. Mill wrote: 'The sole end for which mankind are warranted, indi- vidually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.' The doctrine of 'self-protec- tion' would seem to authorise democratic societies to take such measures as may be necessary to defend the citizens against ter- rorist conspiracies, without defection from liberal principles. If the ordinary courts, and the ordinary criminal laws, are inadequate to protect the citizens from terrorism, then a liberal of the school of Mill could legislate, without a qualm of principle, for the intro- duction of internment without trial of per- sons whom the security authorities believe to be terrorists. John Stuart Mill is the leading British lib- eral thinker. But a figure more representa- tive of the British liberal tradition is the great liberal politician, William Ewart Glad- stone. And Gladstone is the classic embodi- ment of the weakness of the English liberal mind in trying to cope with terrorism. Glad- stone admitted that his whole attitude to Ireland was changed overnight by a single Irish terrorist act: the Fenian bombing of Clerkenwell Prison in 1867. That bomb con- vinced Gladstone that the Irish must be suf- fering from terrible grievances, which it was his duty to remove. 'My mission is to pacify Ireland,' he declared. He tried to do this by a series of reforms, beginning with the dises- tablishment of the Irish (Anglican) Church in 1870.
The Irish terrorists were not interested in matters like Church disestablishment. But they were very interested in the effect which their Clerkenwell bomb had had on the mind of the leading British politician of the day. What Gladstone's reaction to that bomb taught them was that terrorism works. And that lesson is the most enduring legacy of Gladstonian liberalism. 'Violence is the only thing the British understand' is the favourite maxim of Irish Republicans even today. Canary Wharf in 1996 is heir to Clerkenwell in 1867.
At the level of logic, the liberal mind is in the grip of a fallacy: that terrorism can be rooted out by concessions and compromise, without any need to resort to inconvenient and painful emergency measures, like internment. This is a fallacy, because the terrorist mind is absolutist and unap- peasable. Irish terrorists want to destroy Northern Ireland, and will not voluntarily stop anywhere short of that. Arab terrorists want to destroy Israel, and will not voluntar- ily stop anywhere short of that. Both sets of terrorists are interested in concessions and efforts at compromise only as evidence that the bombings are moving the enemy in the right direction, however slowly.
Compromises are possible, of course, but only with terrorists who are willing to become ex-terrorists, like Michael Collins in the 1920s or Arafat now. But terrorism survived the compromises. In the current case, Israel surrendered territory to Arafat, hoping to get peace in exchange. But unreconstructed terrorists, ignoring Arafat, have been able to use the territory surrendered as a base for attacks on Israel.
To seek to end terrorism by compromise is a fallacy in logic, because it misrepresents the nature of the phenomenon with which it attempts to cope. But beneath the fallacy lies a powerful emotional force: guilt (excep- tionally strong in Gladstone, for example). British Gladstonian liberals — to be found today among both Tories and Labourites feel chronically guilty about Britain's past treatment of Ireland. Israeli doves — the lib- erals of Israel — feel guilty about Israel's treatment of Palestinian Arabs. In both cases, there are some reasons for guilt. Unfortunately, feelings of guilt are of no help in the struggle against terrorism. On the con- trary, they are a resource which the terrorist knows he can exploit, and he does so with a savage satisfaction.
In some cases, but not in all, there are political initiatives that could isolate the ter- rorists, and perhaps eventually lead to their defeat. For Israel, peace with Syria is the best available option: to give back the Golan Heights, in exchange for which Syria would eliminate terrorism in Lebanon and dry up the sources of supply for terrorists in the Territories.
In Northern Ireland, unfortunately, no promising political option is within reach. There are two sets of private armies there, a Protestant one and a Catholic one. Efforts to appease one — at present the Catholics do not appease it, and they risk arousing the latent violence of the other one. Efforts to make the realities of Northern Ireland con- form to a Gladstonian agenda are doomed to failure. The best hope for Northern Ireland would be a co-ordination of security mea- sures between London and Dublin, including the introduction of internment — applied evenly to both sets of political-sectarian paramilitaries — on both sides of the border (which worked during the second world war and in 1957-62). At present, British and Irish versions of liberalism (combining in Ireland with nationalism) inhibit that response. I fear that the necessary measures will not be taken until things get much worse.
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