Guerre de faible intensité

Guerre de faible intensité is the official U.S. doctrine that Noam Chomsky sets beside the government’s own definition of terrorism. His comparison turns on a contradiction: coercive violence directed at civilians for political ends is described as terrorism when used by an enemy, yet closely similar state practices may be presented as doctrine or counterterrorism. The expression thus anchors his broader argument about how political labels distribute responsibility and legitimate force.

Definition and comparison

Chomsky calls low-intensity warfare the United States’ official doctrine and argues that its standard definitions are almost identical to the official U.S. definitions of terrorism. He describes terrorism in those definitions as coercive means directed against civilian populations to achieve political, religious, or other aims. In his account, the attacks on the World Trade Center meet that definition and constitute a grave terrorist crime; the point of the comparison is not to diminish that judgment, but to apply the same stated standard to state action.

He rejects the claim that terrorism is simply the weapon of the weak. In his formulation, terrorism can be a component of state policy, and the doctrine is not unique to the United States. The category should therefore be determined by the character and purpose of the violence, rather than by whether the actor is a state or an adversary.

Labels, doctrine, and responsibility

The expression sits within Chomsky’s criticism of the phrase “war on terrorism.” He argues that calling a campaign a war against terrorism is propaganda unless the campaign actually targets terrorism—and says Western powers could not apply their own official definitions consistently without exposing their own state practices, and those of their clients, to the same judgment. A vague label such as war, he suggests, avoids the more demanding questions of crime, evidence, and responsibility.

He also describes postwar U.S. counterinsurgency programs as drawing explicitly on a Nazi model: Wehrmacht officers were consulted, and their manuals used in designing programs for use around the world. These plans, he says, were called counterterrorism. The terminology illustrates his larger concern: people and actions can be labeled terrorists, then freedom fighters, and later terrorists again as political alignments change. The label, in this account, does not by itself establish a consistent moral or legal distinction.

Political consequences

Chomsky connects the doctrine and its surrounding language to the political uses of the post-September 11 crisis. He argues that governments used the attacks to intensify restrictive policies: Russia and China joined the counterterrorism coalition while seeking latitude for their actions in Chechnya and against internal populations, and Turkey offered troops for the new U.S. campaign after its prime minister credited American support during Turkey’s repression of its Kurdish population. He also says Israel anticipated stronger U.S. backing for intensified repression of Palestinians.

Within the United States, he argues, fear and appeals to patriotism helped make domestic discipline and unpopular laws easier to advance. He contends that the Bush administration used the moment to pursue an agenda that included greater militarization, including missile defense and the militarization of space; weakening social-democratic programs; diverting attention from the harms of globalization and other public concerns; and transferring more wealth toward a small number of people. In this analysis, counterterrorism language joined foreign policy and domestic governance, presenting both as responses to an emergency.

Military strategy and global reach

Chomsky identifies the establishment of major U.S. military bases in Central Asia as a significant consequence of the new phase of the war on terrorism. He links their strategic importance to access to regional resources and to the broader effort to encircle major energy resources in the Persian Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, he says, Diego Garcia was the most secure base in the U.S. system directed toward the Gulf; Central Asian bases expanded the available capacity for intervention.

He further interprets the Bush administration’s campaign as an opportunity to consolidate U.S. military superiority and global dominance, in a way that repeated aspects of the Reagan administration’s earlier war on terrorism. He recounts that, during Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s visit to the United States in April, Abdullah urged greater attention to Arab reactions to U.S. support for Israeli repression. Chomsky reports that U.S. officials replied that they did not care what he or other Arabs thought, and that a senior official invoked the scale of the Afghanistan campaign to convey American capabilities. The exchange connects the language of counterterrorism to a strategy of deterrence and display.

Chomsky says the purposes of the Afghanistan bombing cannot be established from confidential documents, but argues that it is reasonable to infer that its consequences had been considered and that demonstrating U.S. power was a principal aim. He compares this interpretation with the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained in terms of preserving NATO’s credibility. In both cases, his analysis distinguishes the public justification of an operation from the strategic message it may send.

Significance

Guerre de faible intensité is significant in Chomsky’s argument because it brings the official language of U.S. doctrine into direct comparison with the official definition of terrorism. That comparison shifts attention from the identity of the alleged perpetrator to the means, targets, and political purposes of violence. It also exposes how the vocabulary of war and counterterrorism can leave state action outside the scrutiny applied to non-state actors.

The expression therefore functions not merely as a military term but as a hinge between definitions, policy, and power. Chomsky uses it to connect civilian-directed coercion with state doctrine, changing political labels with shifting alliances, and the post-September 11 campaign with military expansion and domestic measures. His argument is that applying one standard consistently would make the boundary between terrorism and state policy far less comfortable than official usage suggests.