We are all aware of the current nature of the topic which we are discussing tonight. It is too much with us. Our frame of reference is a rather painful record of terrorist action which across the past five years has sought out a wide range of victims and evidenced increasing ferocity, followed by retaliatory measures by states or private organizations. The terrorists’ attacks have had various foci: internationally protected persons, for example. In the last five years forty-six internationally protected persons were subjected to attack or threat of attack, and sixteen of them were killed. This week, for example, the residence of the Israeli Ambassador to Cyprus was attacked. Then there have been attacks in terms of location or nationality, such as the Lod Airport massacre of last May, the Munich massacre of last September, the wave of letter-bombs last summer and fall. There is aircraft hijacking. The five year record has shown 311 successful international and domestic hijackings from 1968 to 1972, or a total of 358 endangered flights if one adds attempted hijackings. And in the course of these hijackings we find that some 200 persons have been killed or injured. It may be added with regard to the incidence of hijacking that in the first quarter of 1973 there were no successful hijackings in this country or abroad, although there were seven attempts, one of them this week. Yet another phase of terrorism is the attack on representatives of foreign enterprise; we saw two such last week in Argentina.

On September 8 of last year Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim requested tlie inclusion in the agenda of the 27th session of the General Assembly of an item on “Measures to prevent terrorism and other forms of violence which endangers or takes innocent human lives or jeopardizes fundamental freedoms.” The Secretary-General’s request was triggered by the kidnaping and killing of eleven Israeli athletes participating in the Olympiad—a time for the brotherhood of man radier than the inhumanity of man. In a larger sense, however, the Secretary-General’s request was a response to an alarming worldwide increase in attacks against civil aviation, internationally protected persons, and the transportation and communication ties which bind us togedier.

To the layman terrorism presents no problem of definition. To the lawyer, however, it bristles with definitional problems of the kind which has made the concept of aggression so illusive.

Basically the difficulty is to identify those acts of terror designed to bring about political change which disrupt international relations and which the international community views as contrary to desirable international norms of behavior. The problem is not a new one and recent history provides several examples of international cooperation aimed at the suppression of acts of violence which undermine the international order.

I find myself in agreement with Professor Dugard’s dissent concerning the title given us for discussion, namely the question of “terrorism.” I have titled my discussion instead “unconventional violence and international politics.”

Violence has constituted an important aspect of international relations for as long as recorded history. Despite all honest and important efforts, legal or otherwise, to control, regulate, and contain the kind of violence, legitimate or illegitimate, that can be utilized by states there is every likelihood that international relations will continue to be governed by the capacities of states to resort to violence in the pursuit of their real or imagined interests.

By way of introduction, I have certain preliminary comments which may be enlightening and provide for a sharper focus on the issues here. I wish to confess that I am an expolitical criminal, and I have not been rehabilitated. I have not been rehabilitated because I have never been caught, so the system never got a chance to rehabilitate me. As a youngster I plastered prohibited posters on the walls of the ancient cities of the Middle East. In my later youth I smuggled prohibited literature into socialist countries. And later yet I saw what I was not supposed to see, and talked to people I was not supposed to talk to, in fascist countries. So consequently I do have a special interest and a feeling for this business of political crime and terror.

Having heard the presentations of Professors Dugard, Moore, and Abu-Lughod and being required to respond to them, I find myself in a somewhat strange and uncomfortable position. I assume that most of the men and women in this room are lawyers or at least have a strong orientation to the law. I, however, am a social psychologist and not a lawyer. But as a result of watching a number of Perry Mason reruns on television, I know that my ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Less than a generation ago international relations textbooks either referred to the international system as a realm of anarchy or applied to it global generalizations such as the balance of power. That the number of major states in the system, their economic and military potential, their alliance patterns, and so forth might affect the resort to force and the results of such resort was largely foreign to analysis.

I agree with the foregoing description of the central international system and the structure of power in it. In military terms it is almost as much conventionally as nuclearly bipolar. Indeed the whole logic of the Nixon Administration’s policy presupposes the stabilization of a bipolar balance as the basis for a more multipolar diplomatic pattern among the five major centers of economic and diplomatic power. It also presupposes that the stabilization of this balance is the condition for a retrenchment by the United States. Such retrenchment is to be manifested in a lower level of effort and a more indirect involvement rather than in a disengagement from our political commitments or previous involvements throughout the globe. Thus, as far as the United States is concerned, the very condition for detente is a more subtle and diversified global engagement by the United States. The center of American foreign policy remains, as it was supposed to be in some previous administrations, the orchestration of a global modus vivendi between the United States and Soviet Union. Now this modus vivendi is supposed to be manifest in a whole network of agreements and understandings linked together in such a way as to reduce room for maneuver and to moderate the behavior of both superpowers. On the basis of tacit agreements between them relating to mutual cutback of intense and often disruptive competition in the Third World, it may be expected that (1) the patterns of diplomatic conflict and alignment among the five major centers of power will become more complicated and diversified and that (2) military security concerns will recede into the background of international politics and a whole set of other issues will come to the front.

In speaking about arms control negotiations in a multipolar world, it is necessary to bear in mind that we are not really in a multipolar world right now. But perhaps we are starting toward one, at least as far as nuclear power is concerned. Britain, France, and China possess only relatively small nuclear forces at present but they will grow in time and eventually will have to be taken into consideration at least in arms control negotiations involving nuclear weapons. France and Britain at the present do have a nuclear deterrent force which would deter an attack as far as the Soviets are concerned. The status of the Chinese nuclear force is very much more uncertain. It is possible that they now possess a very limited deterrent to an attack by the Soviet Union. Certainly there is no question that at the present time they do not have any means by which they can threaten, even in retaliation, a nuclear attack against the United States. As a consequence, the Chinese do not provide any direct threat to us and we can go ahead and negotiate agreements with the Soviet Union without any real consideration of Chinese participation. One need not conclude from the growing Chinese nuclear power that they must necessarily be brought into the SALT negotiations in the near future.

It is a basic premise of my remarks here today that it is necessary to take quite seriously not only the rhetoric but the reality of the term “the global village.” That is to say, it is now clear that 98% of humankind sees the entire world as human society. This phenomenon, it should be underscored, is a psycho-historical first, and has had a drastic impact on the images and the attitudes we have in regard to authority structures within domestic societies, as well as within the international community. One of the implications of saying that there is a “global village” is that sometime within the next two decades many people throughout the globe are likely to begin to discuss quite seriously the governance of that global village in ways perhaps which we previously had eschewed. I should like to address myself initially to that theme and then come back to the role of the United Nations and some specific recommendations.

I propose to discuss the topic through an examination of the practice in East Africa, especially as it relates to its Asian community. There is considerable confusion in the rules of international law on this topic. Few rules are above controversy and in many instances, the practice goes against what are alleged to be the rules. The answer in several instances depends on interrelated but separate issues, each of which might be controversial. Lack of clear answers is partly due to the great number of variables. Additionally, some of these variables are matters properly governed by international law; others by domestic law. Moreover, there is, generally speaking, a need for greater consensus among states on the scope of the variables before the set of rules can function effectively. Thus questions of nationality are central, but the jurisdiction over them is domestic; problems of statelessness are controversial; the right to leave a country may depend on the right to enter another; the possibility of expelling a person is contingent on the obligation or the willingness of another country to receive him.

This discussion on “Expulsion and Expatriation in International Law” is very timely indeed. Today we are witnessing a new type of people “in orbit,” not astronauts but “refugees in orbit.” In a recent bulletin, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees vividly describes how a typical refugee in orbit wandered from country to country over the past half year in quest of some one country that might let him in and stay. What made the case dramatic was that during that long period the refugee was shuffled from airplane to airplane, and confined in airports. Compelled to leave the country of residence and lacking proper identity and travel documents, many people cannot disembark legally anywhere. In earlier times there was always the possibility of jumping ship. But today, under the closed national boundary system policed by more sophisticated entry and exit control, such unfortunate persons are condemned to a nightmarish cycle of enforced airplane journeys and periods of practical imDrisonment in ainrart waiting rooms.

“Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own”— this can be considered the basic philosophical principle of social relations just because it asserts the right of everyone to leave the territory of any state and therefore to escape the jurisdiction of any state. Although conditions in the world must change substantially for this principle to be always practicable, the import of its proclamation is the recognition that state sovereignty over the individual can be limited in the future.

Mr. Ghai has put the problem of expulsion of the British nationals of Asian origin from Uganda in its right perspective: It must be looked at not as a sui generis but as an example of the policy of Africanization being carried out in the whole of Africa. That policy is in conformity with the many UN resolutions adopted by the General Assembly since 1962, on the right of states to permanent sovereignty over all their natural resources.

The proposals of Mr. Chalidze and Mr. Chen are intriguing, but I would characterize their innovations as on the “frontier” at this time. Mr. Chalidze proposed the option of exile, in effect, as an alternate form of punishment for both political and common crimes—though, he considered, in practical terms the option would be available only to persons convicted for political acts. Many questions come to mind regarding this proposal, such as the uncertainty of the distinction between political and common crimes, and whether governments might not use the option to impose increasingly severe penalties so as to drive political dissenters into exile. However, I think it more urgent for the present discussion to concentrate on the right to leave as it applies to the ordinary citizen who has not been prosecuted or convicted for illegal acts, political or other, but who wishes to begin his life anew in another country for whatever reason.

Dr. Hassouna questioned the appropriateness of my inclusion of the claims of Jews to return to Israel on the ground that they want to settle there, not to return. This question illustrates the complexity of the group claims for return and the need for clarification. Return implies a certain subjectivity and identification on the part of claimants in relation to the area to which they wish to go. Many Jews outside Israel do believe they have significant ties with Israel and identify it as their homeland. In this sense, claims of Jews to return to Israel were included in the examples of group claims. It was meant to be descriptive, not preferential.

I would like to make one brief point before we go on to our speakers. Having done a good deal of talking on university campuses about the laws of war during the last three years, I have been very much struck by the amount of cynicism, disillusionment, and rejection of the idea of having laws of war at all. When I have endeavored to make a case for them, many students and faculty members have reproached me with me notion that there is something fundamentally inconsistent between the idea of law and the idea of war.

It is apparent that the laws of war (by which I mean both the law protecting prisoners, sick and wounded, and civilians under the control of a belligerent on the one hand, and the law governing the conduct of hostilities on the other) are in large part old and in considerable part obsolete. The. Geneva Conventions of 1949, the most recent major international instruments in diis field, cover the protection of prisoners of war, the sick and wounded, and civilians in occupied territory. But they reflect the experience of World War II, and their applicability to more recent types of warfare is not always easy. Civil wars, mixed civil and international conflicts, and guerrilla warfare in general all raise problems under those conventions. Moreover, all too often nations refuse to apply the conventions in situations where they clearly should be applied. Attempts to justify such refusals are often based on differences between the conflicts presently encountered and those for which the conventions were supposedly adopted. Other aspects of the laws of war, except for the use of poison gas and bacteriological weapons (which were the subjects of the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol), and the protection of cultural property (the subject of a 1954 Convention), have been left untouched since the Hague Conventions of 1907. The expansion of military objectives and changes in weaponry and fire power have increased many fold the vulnerability of noncombatants. The law has not developed apace.

Modern mass media feed, or overfeed us with reports on the horrors of armed conflicts. Little is heard, however, about restraints observed in accordance with valid rules. Little is also heard about the efforts made in recent years to update the rules applicable in armed conflicts. Even international lawyers know much more about the proposals to update the law of the sea than about the draft rules worked out by the ICRC for international and noninternational armed conflicts. There is also ignorance about the conferences of government experts which have discussed the ICRC drafts in Geneva in 1971 and 1972 and the world conference proposed by the Swiss Government to convene early in 1974.

The two highly interesting and stimulating presentations we have just heard provide us with an excellent survey of a number of important aspects of the law of armed conflicts, both as it stands today and from the point of view of lex ferenda. As George Aldrich correctly predicted, although the program for this meeting promised “conflicting views,” there appears to be much common ground between him and Hans Blix, much more than in fact has been apparent of late between the U.S. and Swedish Governments on certain other (though related) matters.