Brian Jenkins, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry

The Rand Corporation is closely linked to the Pentagon by historic ties and an ongoing dominant funding relationship. As Rand's top authority on terrorism, Brian Jenkins would hardly be able to contest the Western model of terrorism, and he has never done so. In fact, for many years Jenkins has been actively involved in formulating terrorist strategies for his own government. Having served in the Green Berets, Jenkins became a counterinsurgency specialist at Rand, writing and advising on the best ways to defeat America's insurgent enemies in Guatemala, EI Salvador, and elsewhere. A 1977 article coauthored by Jenkins is an apologia for U.S. intervention in Guatemala and Guatemalan state terrorism. (24) As an important advisor in the construction of a counterinsurgency program in El Salvador in the early 1980s, Jenkins recommended that traditional methods be supplemented by the use of propaganda to discredit insurgents as "terrorists."(25) In another coauthored report in 1984, Jenkins recommended that the U.S. engage in low-intensity warfare against Nicaragua through a proxy army, actions that fall within Jenkins's own definition of state sponsored terrorism. In short, Jenkins's role as government advisor on policies involving state violence and insurgencies puts him in a serious conflict-of-interest position as an expert on terrorism.

Jenkins has written extensively on terrorism and has made numerous appearances at conferences and as a media expert of choice. He also edits 'TVI Journal' (the acronym stands for "Terrorism, Violence, Insurgency"), a journal that he acquired from members of the 'Soldier of Fortune' network in 1985. (26) It is interesting, given his position at a government-sponsored agency and as an advisor on U.S.-sponsored terrorist activities, that Jenkins is one of the "moderates" among the terrorism experts. His moderation is displayed in that he is one of the few among the establishment experts who has openly castigated Sterling's Soviet network model. (27) He also acknowledges that terror is not a monopoly of the left, that guerrilla movements may be legitimate responses to real grievances and cannot be dismissed as terror-based, and that eye-for-an-eye policies and strategies of preemptive actions have serious shortcomings.

Jenkins is, however, incapable of addressing openly Western primary terrorism and its causal role. His own country cannot be a terrorist state, nor are its allies, by rule of arbitrary political assumption. He says that "terrorist activity accompanies postwar decolonization, which continued up through the 1960s."(28) Neither the French in Algeria nor the South African government and army, however, were "terrorizing." Only the rebels were. Although he formally admits that states can terrorize directly or through "vigilantes" or other surrogates, in his recent and general discussions he never mentions "death squads" and "disappearances," or names Guatemala, Argentina, South Africa, or Operation Condor as illustrative cases, although they involve big numbers. He notes that "arbitrarily taking 100 deaths as the criterion, only a handful of [terrorist] incidents of this scale have occurred since the beginning of the century. Lowering the criterion to 50 deaths produces a dozen or more additional incidents." (29) Looking back at table 2-1, we can see that Israel alone has produced as many large-scale terrorist incidents (100 or more dead) as Jenkins's count for the twentieth century, and in table 3-1, it is obvious that Western state terrorism could otherwise easily provide a large increment to his numbers.

Jenkins's exclusion of these other cases violates his own criteria of inclusion. He acknowledges that official military forces may be terrorists if they attack civilian populations in violation of the rules of war or if they maltreat prisoners. He mentions the My Lai massacre by American troops in Vietnam as a possible case of terrorism. (30) If one did include My Lai, this by itself would exceed the largest entry of Jenkins's incidents for the entire century, and My Lai was only one of many similar assaults on civilians; It is also a well-documented fact that the torture and killing of prisoners in Vietnam was very extensive. (31)

Jenkins never explains why Western state violence — which fits his own definition and criteria for inclusion as terroristic — is excluded. He simply refuses to examine the data and assess their importance. He says that the killing of several hundred U.S. marines at Beirut was "the deadliest incident in the annals of international terrorism,"(32) although the victims were soldiers. The far larger number killed at Sabra and Shatila, for example, were noncombatants. In his list of political leaders terrorists have killed or tried to kill, he includes Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, the pope, Ronald Reagan, and other Western leaders, but not General Schneider and Salvador Allende or Fidel Castro. (33) As countries who are leading targets of terrorists, he offers the United States, France, and Turkey, among others, but not Cuba and Nicaragua. 

Jenkins notes that nations other than the United States and its allies "do not see moral distinctions between ramming a truck filled with explosives into an embassy and dropping high explosives on a city from a military aircraft. Even some of our allies have difficulty perceiving the difference between state-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East and U.S. support for the 'contras' in Nicaragua."(34) By Jenkins's own — and any standard Western — definition, support of the contras is clearly state-sponsored terrorism, and the CIA Pentagon mining of Nicaragua's harbors and other activities are even direct state terrorism. But Jenkins cannot bring himself to say this straightforwardly. As an employee of Rand and coauthor of a report advocating U.S. sponsorship of terrorism in Nicaragua, he could hardly do this. We will see that our next expert, Robert Kupperman, shares this inability to follow through on definitions — a clear demonstration of their role as agents of the state and their disqualification as objective analysts.