World: The City as a Battlefield: A Global Concern

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it gives the FBI a green light to investigate bombings or attacks on police, cases that previously were not normally handled by federal authorities. On one issue, U.S. officials insist that they intend to play it tough. If an official or a foreign diplomat is kidnaped, they maintain that they will reject ransom demands in an effort to discourage terrorists from trying again. Despite the obvious need for toughness in such situations, any democratic country faces dangers from too harsh as well as from too weak a reaction. The only countries that may prove immune to the new terror may be the most authoritarian ones. Winning out over terror is of little benefit if it leads to a police force with permanently enlarged powers and a citizenry with permanently curtailed rights. In fact, this is precisely what many of the guerrillas want to bring about: government repression that provokes widespread discontent and ultimately revolution. The final weapon against the urban guerrilla is a secure and self-confident society that can contain its enemies without resorting to the terrorists' own methods.

At Manhattan's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which conducts liberal-arts training for New York police officers. Law Professor Isadore Silver argues that the U.S. has had it relatively easy so far because terrorists have been committing acts that are more symbolic than anything else. "They attack police stations, corporate headquarters, research labs, but more often than not. they call and warn in advance that they're going to do it." Says Silver: "It's as though they were sending up one last desperate cry: 'Damn it, pay some attention to us!' "

Pay Attention

The U.S. is paying plenty of attention to them, both to their excesses and to the underlying causes of their despair, if despair it is. In fact, some observers believe that the radical movement in the U.S. has passed its peak. Harvard's Seymour Lipset notes that "terrorism can mark either the beginning or the end of a movement."

It is undoubtedly far too soon to proclaim the end of the urban guerrillas in the U.S. Sooner or later, however, the terrorists themselves may pay closer heed to a lesson that their hero Mao Tse-tung could have taught them. "Guerrilla warfare must fail," Mao wrote, "if its political objectives do not coincide with the aspirations of the people and their sympathy, cooperation and assistance cannot be gained."