The War of Nerves Moves On : Terrorism: For all the peaks of public anxiety, on balance we’ve made progress against indiscriminate mayhem.

Did we win the war against terrorism?

Our virtual obsession for so much of the ‘80s, terrorism aroused national alarm--Americans avoided Europe in the summer of 1986. It stirred deep anger--public opinion demanded retaliation and supported summary justice. It elicited bellicose warnings--”You can run but you can’t hide.” It provoked the use of American military power on several occasions--and defined the limits of that power.

Looking back through a landscape ringed with concrete anti-truck-bomb barriers and explosives-detection machines, how did we come out?

The ‘80s saw undeniable progress in combatting terrorism: Intelligence improved; many terrorist attacks were thwarted. We invested heavily in the security of our diplomatic posts abroad. We increased security measures for our airlines, with discernible results: Terrorist hijackings declined. We extended our legal jurisdiction to cover terrorist crimes abroad and demonstrated our willingness and ability to apprehend terrorists overseas and bring them to trial in the United States. The use of military force in response to state-sponsored terrorism is now an established precedent.

We also made progress on the diplomatic front. The United States and its European allies cooperated more closely, although our constant moral hectoring caused some resentment in Europe; we had scant European support for our use of military force against Libya. Cooperation with the Israelis remained strong, although they bitterly opposed our new relationship with Yasser Arafat, whom we persuaded to publicly renounce terrorism. For our part, Americans did not see all violence in Israel’s occupied territories as Palestinian terrorism. Perceptions change.

Despite this progress, the ‘80s saw terrorism increase to its highest level. And it was bloodier. The most alarming trend was the increased incidence of large-scale indiscriminate violence. Bombs were set off on city streets, aboard airliners, at airports and in department stores and discotheques--all actions calculated to kill in quantity.

Bombs aboard airliners are the major security challenge we face today. In the past two decades, terrorists have brought down 14 airliners, taking 1,494 lives--about 10% of all airline fatalities.

While bombings caused spells of mass public anxiety, the taking of hostages caused political crises that raised moral dilemmas. As the ‘80s began, Americans were being held hostage in Tehran; as the decade ended, Americans were being held hostage in Lebanon. In the last 10 years, there were only 258 days in which American citizens were not being held by terrorists somewhere in the world.

Hostage-taking raised fundamental philosophical and moral questions: Does providing for the “common defense,” as called for in the Constitution, extend to the threat of terrorism? Or can our government do no more than issue travel advisories? What commitment does our government have to its citizens when they are held hostage abroad? Should we ever bargain for hostages? Our policy says no. Some of the American hostages in Lebanon are approaching their sixth year in captivity and their freedom is not in sight.

Ideologically motivated terrorists in Western Europe --the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, Action Directe--declined in the ‘80s, but they did not disappear. For the West, Palestinian and Iranian-inspired extremists posed the greatest danger. Despite Arafat’s new line, this is likely to remain the case.

Fears fed prejudice. The Khomeinis, the Kadafis, the Abu Nidals became models for a hundred Hollywood villains. Arab-Americans complained of discrimination.

The decade began with the United States accusing the Soviet Union of being the instigator and coordinator of international terrorism, and it ended with the two countries consulting on how they might cooperate in combatting terrorism. Fears in Moscow that violent strains of Islamic fundamentalism might spread to the nation’s 50 million Muslims, or that ethnic antagonisms might provoke domestic terrorist campaigns caused Soviet leaders to reevaluate their policy. The new Soviet posture met skepticism and suspicion on this side. A tentative dialogue continues.

The ‘80s also began with the promise of swift retribution but ended with our frustrating inability to identify and apprehend those responsible for bringing down Pan Am 103. Terrorists, we learned, can hide.

If terrorists provided no targets to attack with conventional military power, thoughts turned to other measures that are officially prohibited. Some members of the Senate even wondered aloud whether assassination might not be an appropriate way to combat terrorists. That, in turn, raised a broader question: To what extent should those things we call American values constrain operations even against those we call terrorists?

At the end of the decade, we can say only that we made it more difficult for terrorists to do dreadful things. Beyond that, the war against terrorism defies tidy reckoning. There is no bottom line. No unconditional surrender. No final victory. Terrorism will persist in the 1990s. The war continues.