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.