Between Minimum Force and Maximum Violence: Combating Political Violence Movements with Third-Force Options

In most liberal democratic states it is the responsibility of the police forces to cope with “internal” threats, including terrorism, since in such states terrorism is invariably defined as a criminal act rather than a manifestation of insurgent political violence. In many such instances, the resultant quantitative and qualitative overtaxing of law enforcement capabilities to keep the peace has led to calls by sections of the public, as well as by the legislative and executive branches of government, to expand both the legal and operational means available to combat terrorism, and to boost civilian agencies’ capacity to deal with terrorism in proportion to the perceived threat. The deteriorating situation in Ulster in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1972 and beyond is an illustrative case in point. Although there have been cases of successfully transmogrifying police forces into military-like formations, the best-known and arguably most frequent example of augmented state responses to the threat posed by insurgent political violence movements is the use of the military in the fight against terrorism and in the maintenance of internal security. While it is imperative that the threat of a collapse of national cohesion due to the overextension of internal civil security forces be averted, the deployment of all branches of the armed forces against a terrorist threat is not without its own pitfalls. Paul Wilkinson has enunciated some of the problems posed by the use of counter-terrorism military task forces, not the least of which is that