Operational Level of Euroterrorism

In the past few years the number of terrorist events and activities throughout the world has increased dramatically. Many of these terrorist actions have been directed against the United States or other members of NATO Alliance. This increase in terrorism in Western Europe led Victorfranco Pisano to coin the term "Euroterrorism." Further, Claire Sterling examined a number of terrorist activities and through the biographies of well-known terrorists concluded that there was in fact an international conspiracy of terrorism and that the Soviet Union was the controlling nation. This research examines recent events of Euroterrorism to determine if these seemingly unrelated events have an operational level. This is done by attempting to describe the events of Euroterrorism by a campaign plan as defined in JCS Publication 2. This research finds that in fact terrorist activities in Western Europe do follow a campaign plan and, therefore, have an operational level. The study further examines the sources of this plan and refutes the work of other authors that accuse the Soviet Union of state directed terrorism. Instead, this paper concludes that the Soviet Union is responsible for state support of terrorism through its surrogates or puppet states, but does not direct the actions of the various European terrorist groups. Likewise, no other state appears to direct their actions. The paper then concludes that the events of Euroterrorism follow essentially national level campaign plans while the various terrorist groups receive support but not direction from external nations. Finally, a derived national campaign plan for the Red Army Faction is presented.