IRVINE : Terrorism Expert Speaks at UC Irvine

Although a recognized expert on the theory and practice of terrorism, Brian M. Jenkins apologized to his audience at UC Irvine last week for offering lots of questions and few answers.

The former Green Beret and RAND Corp. political scientist spoke to about 150 students, professors, law enforcement and military personnel attending the first of nine lectures on terrorism.

To begin with, Jenkins said, there is no real agreement on the meaning of the word.

“What exactly are we talking about?” he asked. “There is no precise definition, no universally accepted definition of terrorism . It is used promiscuously, and applied to all sorts of acts of violence that are not, strictly speaking, terrorism. The word itself is inescapably a pejorative. Thus the word itself can be used as a political weapon.”

Nonetheless, he made the effort.

“I think it is possible to define terrorism objectively so long as we define terrorism according to the quality of the act, not the identity of the perpetrator or the nature of the cause. . . . There are some actions which no cause justifies and which we will call terrorism.”

The lecture series is sponsored by UCI’s Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies and runs through May, 1990. More than $1 million has been pledged or donated to the program, for three endowed chairs and a feasibility study for a new building, according to Larry Howard, a lecturer in the program and coordinator of the series. The series was underwritten by a $20,000 gift from Thomas and Elizabeth Tierney of Newport Beach, early supporters of the interdisciplinary Global Peace and Conflict program. The Tierneys also have contributed $400,000 to the program.

Jenkins, 47, who recently traded his job as chairman of RAND’s political science department for a managing partnership at the Los Angeles office of a corporation that advises companies on security, said that while airline hijackings and attacks on diplomats have decreased in this decade, indiscriminate bombings have increased. U.S. installations and citizens have become the No. 1 target.

“But does terrorism constitute a threat to our national security? Does common defense extend to security against terrorism? Or is the best that we can do is issue travel advisories? Warn Americans which regions of the globe to stay out of. It’s hard to answer that question. I don’t know the answer.”

Speaking as a former soldier with service in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, Jenkins urged that any U.S. military response to terrorism be well thought-out, inasmuch as “the use of military force is the most serious undertaking that a nation can contemplate. And it will be the rare opportunity in which we have proof, the target, the possibility of doing something about it.”

In any event, he warned, “we ought not to use military force as a pyrotechnic display in order to satisfy some domestic political pressure to be seen to be doing something.”