Foundations of moderner to state, society, and the dynamics of Political Violence. There is a working definition of modern terrorism . Guest i tried to formulate one, which is a perilous path because so many others have tried. So, i think that the clear is way to understand what ive tried to do is to refer back to what in fact are two kinds of perspectives. One is the idea that governments and especially dictators, exercise terror against their own citizens, the hitlers, stalins, poll pol pots of the world, and the ice the world of post 9 11 were most familiar with, this is the insurgenties from below who seem to pose, and sometimes we realize how serious the threat is, they are in fact a danger to us. So what i tried to do to defind terrorism is to bring together 0 those two strands. Its an interactive process between governments and their security agencies on the one wand, and insurgences with their internantz networks on the other. Its the interactive process that has fascinated me. Host i want to read two statements from the introduction to your book and have you explain those a little further perhaps because those in power are inharenly suspicious of claims challenging their authority and those without political power covet it so desperately, all the parties involved in the violence are vulnerable to exaggerating their roles and terrorism is a way of seeing the world, of understanding or in many cases misunderstanding the dominant political paradigm of the particular historical moment. Guest right. You picked out some pregnant passages. Were talking about the question of accepting legitimacies of governments. We talk about failed states. We talk about varieties of kinds of government, dictatorships, authoritarian, democratic governments. What im interested is maybe this might be a way of explaining it this is a 200yearold story. Since the time of the french revolution in brief, we have faced a situation in which we dont really know what legitimate government is anymore. There was a time before the french revolution when monarchies ruled the world and it cass was clear and largely unquestioned. Everyone has now an assumption of right with regard to deciding what politics ought to be dominant and which politics ought to be seen as threatening and dangerous. That means you your opinion, my opinion, are as valid as the people who in fact are in power. So, there is that treacherous path of understanding how it is that governments that seem to strong and convinced of their authority, really arent. Thats one side. The other side is that, yes, people who feel that their views are not being paid attention to who feel they have answer that it more right and more valid and will create a more just world than the government in power at the moment, takes upon itself to use various tactics to bring the change another. When all else fails violences comes in play and then we have situations of terrorism. So its a very long, enduring involvement between two sides, and it is, yes, a way of seeing the world because once you i like to call it go underground, once you leave the conventional world that you and i live in, and participate, lets say, if youre talking about insurgent general insurgenciesjoining a movement, you have removed yourself from the legal and moral codes that most of us live with. The same thing happens to be true in governments. Its a world of utter secrecy. We are protected by those governments and they acknowledge were not supposed to have because by having it were endangering national security. This is the way we are to understand it. What is fascinating to me is when these two worlds interact with each other, when they provoke each other, when they become agents within the organizational structure of the opposite side, and adopt their habits. So, that is part of the way of seeing the world. When youre in a clandestine situation, its very difficult to understand you cant go back once youre there to understand the world you left behind. Host whats one of the examples of the interact between governments and terrorists you speak of . Guest there arent many but i think one or two of them most emblematic take me back to russia, and in the book, as im sure you know, have a vast canvas i look at, we were europe, russia, and latin america and other countries as well. One of at the best examples is the swaying that take place in russia. Theres one example which is not the most common but an exaggerated example of what goes on all the time. A person who is hired by the Security Agency of the government to become a mole in an insurgent organization let me try not to mention names because it will simple mr. Be confusing but youll be familiar with the time this person then is on the payroll of the government. He goes underground, joins a resolution organization, an insurgent generalsy that is a Violent Group seeking to overthrow the very government. One day, and this is what i think best responds to your question one day, that person is charged with the action, tactic, of essentially assassinating his boss in the government, who is, lets say, the prime minister, which happened on at least two occasions i know about in the period of imperial russia before the revolution of 1917. So the person then has a choice. Does hell blow his cover does he blow his cover or in fact carry out the assignment with all the perils involved . And the two cases that i know about theyre documented in my book in each of those cases they decided not to blow their cover and ended up killing their boss, the prime minister. So, the interactive process at that opinion was so intense that they were imitating each other. There are documents that the documents produced at the time by both the government and the insurgents are almost replicas of one another because theyre fascinated by the other side. At the same time theyre trying to take them out. Host did 9 11 change our understanding of how terrorism acts. Guest huge. Huge. One of the things i tell my students all the time is, please read the patriot act. I rarely meet anyone who has actually read it. Its a document that explains so much of the passion and heat of, yes, the post 9 11 world. When i try and introduce the theme to my students, which im doing now that this booking out ive been using it for the first time in my class one of my students said, we are the children of 9 11. How can we possibly understand that our government might be involved in the very things were calling terrorism . That said to much to me, how difficult the gap was from where im coming from, an experience that goes back from then 1960s and 70s, years spent doing research in the soviet union, to the passion of understanding that the islamic world is now what the communistsists and the anarchists and other enemies of the state have always been. Host back to the 60s, in the u. S. , the weather underground, the black panthers, were those terrorist groups . Guest they were but the terrorism of the situation involves an understanding of exactly what im talking about. The fact that the fbi and the cia were deeply involved in sending their own agents into these organizations and in some cases i have evidence from this as well in the book i dont think its a secret. These documents are publish actually provoking in some cases acts of violence because the insurgent organization this was true of the black panthers many times they werent doing what they were supposed to do in terms of violence at that particular moment so the government agent who is actually surveilling them from within provokes the situation. Takes it upon him or herself to create the violent act. That will allow then the forces of law and order to make the arrests that they want to do anyway. So, that happened over and over again. Host was 9 11 a political act . Guest 9 11 is a complicated story. For historians its still something we dont fully understand and cant yet until we have all the two ds, the distance and the documents that we need to fully understand it. 9 11 was an act of a political transition, i think would might by the best tie understand it. A number of acts led it to it. It wasnt, seems to be, a kind of climatic moment in the evolution which goes way, way back to a number of different streams, and ill just mention one of them. And that is the 1953 cia sponsored overthrow of the mose a government in iran, the capitol of tehran. This is public information. The iranians never forgot about that. The seize your of the embassy was one of the consequences them support of the shah turns into the ayatollah. So there are many streams like that one has to put together to understand 9 11 in the political manner that you ask about. Yes. Host professor miller, would you define the 1953 overthrow in iraq of a state sponsored terrorist act . Guest yes, i would, indeed. I have trouble with state are sponsored, also, i might add, because finding the difference between what a state sponsors and what a state actually does is a fine line in some cases. There are instances where its quite clear. We use the term with regard to libya for years. But in terms of the operation here, the british and the americans were directly involved in a Long Campaign by the way, this might be a footnote to your question i found out again, im not revealing any secrets here that the Ayatollah Khomeini was on the payroll of the cia at the time in 1953. A young student only too happy to support the demonstrations that led to the overthrow of the government. Thats what you get involved with. Host why . Guest why did he . Host ey. Why was he involved. Guest i dont know theres any evidence on his motives. He may have wanted the money. All these people were paid to demonstrate. The cia and the british and mi5 organized the demonstrations. Host why do you have trouble with the term state forked. Guest because it seems to distance the government from actions that in fact it is responsible for. It seems as though the government, by sponsoring it, is not actually doing it. That is all we really mean by that. For instance, the question of, lets take rendition, which is a post9 11 and patriot act condition that allows us to, as im sure you know, send captured insurgents to places to be tortured for information because were not allowed to do it in this country. Now, i think thats part of the situation of terrorism, to me its not sponsored. Its direct involvement. So thats all i meant was to make that distinction. Host do you consider the patriot act a terrorist act . Guest no. Its a legislative act. Its an amazing act because, among other things, it was passed by 991, only Bernie Sanders of vermont voted against it and theres never been a vote like that in the senate in my lifetime. Its no a terrorist act but provides an atmosphere in and governments can involve themselves in the very activities im talking about, legally. By the way, legal terrorism is something that exists in many governmental situations in different registers. Its important not to assume that theyre all the same because theyre not. Host over the course of the u. S. History, has the been socalled legal terroristic acts . Guest i think do. Host by the government. Yeah. One of the best examples one of the chapters of the book is the story of slavery in this country. Loosely referred to as jim crow laws. They were laws on the part of the judicial syste violent action provoke reaction and i understand that. Host terrorism has been part of the American Experience since our birthhasnt it . Guest even before that. Another example of that, if i i hope this is what youre asking about is the episode euphemistically referred to as the native native american removal, which has its origins prior to the revolutionary war, but in the sense flowers in the 1830s and 1840s under president jackson. And that, too, was an episode of extraordinary proportions which indicates terrorism in a democracy. And again, i hasten to ad, im talking about registers. Not making comparisons from one terrible regime to that which our country has involved itself in, but the evidence is so clear. Families whose homes were there and whose land was seen as sacred, had been there for perhaps centuries, were ripped out of their homes, violently treated, and ordered to walk across the entire continent through several seasons of horrible weather, to a place that meant nothing to them in the west. And the origins of that go back to the involvement of native americans with the british during the revolutionary war. A very complicated story. Host what is this photograph on the cover of your book . Guest thats an interesting question because it gets back to a small dispute i had with my editor at cambridge press. He found out, and i thought it was great idea finally the scene from what is known in ireland as the troubles during the 1960s. We couldnt pin down the exact date. We did get permission for it because we found where it had been reproduced but its an incredible scene which strikes me as something that you cant not want to understand why this happened. How these children can be standing in front of this carnage. Host given the long history of the irish english conflict of the 6s 6s so and 70s, how it could have been prevented . How could it have been stopped . Guest that is the perhaps longest of all of the terrorism situations that im talking about. Its Political Violence that engages all three sides. Sometimes only two but in this case all three sides because we catholics, protestantses and the British Government and the story goes back hundreds of years. How to stop it . The only answer id like to give and its something we need to pay more tapings to the way it was stopped, by the intervention of then senator George Mitchell with the good fry accords of 1998, that finally at least its held since that time, which is remarkable, and a story that needs to be told because diplomacy works. Words work. One of the things i say tend of the book i hope that by revealing all this inflammation and by people knowing about it, well try to find ways to gauche and speak instead of doing violent acts in order to achieve the same ends. That is what happened in the irish situation at the end of the 1990s. Its a moment i think we all need to pay more attention to, how it was done, how mitchell managed that. Host has the u. S. Presence in afghanistan cut down on terrorism . Guest i again, because its a contemporary question i cant make predictions about i shudder to think about the damage we have done when i realize what has happened since 9 11 with regard to iraq and afghanistan. Im worried about it, yes. I think we have created more problems than we may have solved. But thats a guess. Host 1920. Wall street. Bombed. Who did it, why did that they d . What was the response . Guest before there were islamic militants and before there were communists there are an no, exists. So going back to the end of anarchists. So at the end of the 20th 20th century, the enemy of the day were the an narkists. There was an anarchist who had come to this country immigration in those days was before the First World War was very open. If you got here, you basically were in. A number of italians did form anarchist organizations. And this was an attempt to pick as anarchists and communists and islamic militants and governments all the wail through have always done, symbolic targets. 9 11 is all about symbols. And every terrorist act i know about is not just an act. Theres a purpose behind it as symbolic representation. So what petitioner example of attacking capitalism if you in fact are an anarchist socialist, as galleons group were, than choosing wall street as your target. It was seen at the time as a horrendous agent, although compared to five are pathetic. Host state society and the dynamics of Political Violence is this subtitle. The foundations of modern terrorism is the tight. Heres the cover oof the book. Dr. Miller, what do you teach at duke . Guest i teach this book in a course on precisely the title, the foundations of modern terrorism. I might add, if i have a moment to tell you that ive been teaching this subject since the early 1990s. I used to get class of maybe half dozen people until 9 11. And then hundreds came. Host why . Guest i think because everybody wanted to understand suddenly what this phenomenon of terrorism was bat. It was, as they like to say, in a way it had not been before. I thought of teaching this in the early 90s after the locker by crash. You remember that. Which obviously conference to give a paper which is how most academics get involved in their books, and that led me ultimately to the larger subject which took a long time to do because i did a few other books in between, but the sum has grown increasingly important, i think, because its now been taken up by the media and has become something that i wished would never happen havent. Another thing mention at the end of the book, one of the things that has happened is that terrorism has now become a permanent part of western civilization and its governments and societies, which is a terrible thing to admit. And the other thing that is part of this is that any one of us can either become an agent for the Government Security services or an underground insurgent, and we really cant ever know who we can trust and who we cant trust. And thats pretty scary also. Thats the atmosphere of post9 11 and that means we really need to find out what this phenomenon is and how to confront it and one of the ways historians, i hope, can provide help, is by looking at where we came from in order to understand where we are. Host russia. At the olympics, sowhich i olympics, a lot of talk about terrorism and the iron gate around the olympics. What is going on in russia . Guest whats going on in russia is, again, complex story that goes back centuries to truly understand it. Most analyses of the situation go back to putin himself. Its even more complicated than his singlehanded seemingly singlehanded involved in this. He is not stalin, although perhaps he has fantasies of power of that sort. But this is a nationalism story. Ukraine is a divided country, always has been, the birthplace of everything russian. The first russian state was in kiev. Our earliest records of russia are ukraine. Moscow was the second capitol and but the government involvement between ukrainians and russians are deep. Hardly any difference in the languages. Its a complicatedster of inclusion and exclusion might be a way to understand it. If you take a vote, as this recent referendum has just shown us, of course the outcome is obvious. What is not paid attention to is that 12 of the crimean population, part of ukraine, is tartar, which is muslim, which is a population that was deported by stalin during the Second World War and have never forgotten this. Theyre the population most concerned right now about that referendum. But the overall story as to whether putin will seek to take over control of the eastern half of ukraine, which is all russian speaking and devoted to russian nationalism, thereby serving up perhaps the russian part of the country, which is much more closely involved with the eu and poland and the united states, remains to be seen. Host what about the chechneyans . Guest well, thats a story about russian terrorism that works on both sides, and exemplifies what i have been talking about. Host works on both sides . Guest both sides. Chechens are engaged in violence and are responsible for outrage juice acts. The russian government does its share of the same. There were a series of apartment buildings blownup moscow in 1999 when putin was just asserting his power and taking over from yeltsin. There is speculation to this day and documentation to cause concern about this, as to whether in fact the Russian Security forces planted the bombs in the moscow apartments in order to blame the chechens, who are despised in russia, as are the roma, as are and have been jews and many others. So, again, theres a mix here of volatile passion that i dont think we know the answers to yet. Host martin miller, professor at duke, the foundations of modern terrorism is the book. Judith kelley talks about election observers. Part of booktvs College Series and is 20 minutes. Host duke professor judith kelley, the author of monitoring democracy when International Election observation works and why it often fails. Professor kelley, when did International Election monitoring come into vogue . Guest it really started taking off in the late 80s, beginning 90s. There had been election monitoring under u. N. Regimes in different ways with decolonization but this is a new flavor of it where it really was outsiders going in to sovereign states, monitoring their elections, and the way it came into vogue, the way it rose, is very important for understanding how it works today. So, initially we had a lot of governments towards the end of the cold war that had not been democratic and now wanted to show off their intentions to behave more democratically, and so they had an incentive to invite monitors in, even though this is sort of a sacred thing. Its the heart of democracy, one could say, the heart of sovereignty. Then to invite somebody in and say, are we doing our core exercise of electing our government in the right way they a had incentive to do that because there were so many of the oldtimers that continued into the new government they needed external verification, and so invitations started to become more common to monitors, and as this was happening, this odd dynamic started happening, where the ones that had no incentive to invite the monitors in, the ones that were not with honest intentions, started looking obviously bad for not doing so. It became almost like a declaration of cheating. So you get this tipping where if you dont invite somebody in, now you look bad. So now more and more countries start inviting monitors in. And that starts to create a dill him ma, who should be the monitors . Like where should this authority reside in the Global Community . There was a push to have that reside within the United Nations for a long time, but a lot of latin american countries were