Incidents of terror against the peoples, facilities, and businesses of free world nations are not random acts of violence, but part and parcel of a coordinated and directed war that the West, thus far, has failed to confront with the same sense of purpose and power that enabled the Allies to defeat the Axis bloc in World War II.
This is the clear conclusion reached by an assembly of experts on terrorism. Soviet foreign policy, and NATO military policy, who met last month in Tel Aviv at a conference on State Terrorism and the International Situation, sponsored by the International Security Council (ISC).
The participants did more than wring their hands and recite the known list of atrocities that have been written in blood on the pages of the last 15 years. They singled out a "radical entente" of Soviet client states that provide the support network for most terrorist groups.
More importantly, they spelled out a plan of action to counter international terrorism, a program that must be spearheaded by the United States.
"The campaign of terror has become a regular form of warfare," the conference's Tel Aviv Declaration asserted.
"It is not deployed in a set battle with a direct confrontation of military forces, but is, for all that, a blunt and brutal military instrument, extremely flexible, adaptable to almost any circumstance, unpredictable in its thrusts," reads the declaration.
"And, since terror does indeed terrify, it tends to paralyze its targets and victims, and often succeeds in draining them of the will to fight back."
The declaration was read by former deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Charles Lichenstein, who served under Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Lichenstein was known then for his sharp tongue and clear understanding of the role the Soviet Union has played in polarizing nations and peoples against each other since 1945.
He is also a critic of the trend in the Reagan administration to speak loudly but carry a small attack against terrorism.
"The combination of (Secretary of State) George Shultz's wrath and that of The New York Times (which had recently run an editorial about terrorism headlined "We're Beginning to Get Angry") must be causing fear and trembling throughout the terror circuit from Damascus and Tripoli to Nicaragua and Cuba," Lichenstein quipped.
The former ambassador listed what he saw as the three key aspects of modern terror:
·Terrorism is war. "We are speaking of a weapons system that is devastatingly effective."
·With very few exceptions, all terrorism is state-sponsored, state-implemented, or state-condoned.
·"State terrorism, handwringers to the contrary notwithstanding, is
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