America's introduction to global terrorism': the labor Day hijackings, Black September, and their challenges to the era of detente.

• Author: Swails, Nicholas E.

Editor's Note: Continuing our practice of featuring new contributors from the ranks of academia, this article based on a recent M.A. thesis, looks back to earlier incidents of terrorism to see how they were perceived or misperceived by American policy-makers.

1. Introduction

   The late 1960s and early 1970s was an era of detente-a time when President Nixon and Henry Kissinger sought to bring a realist approach to the Cold War, Vietnam, and open relations with China. During this era of detente two terrorist events in the summer of 1970, the Labor Day weekend hijackings of four airliners by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the 'Black September' crisis in Jordan under the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) posed a challenge to the administration's realist foreign policies.

   The challenge these two events placed on the administration's pursuit of detente was that these Palestinian nationalist organizations through their use of multi-national hijackers and fedayeen forces used terrorism as their means to disrupt the Middle East peace process, to articulate their agenda of bringing the voice of the Palestinian people to the world's attention, and to free the Palestinian hostages held by Israel, the US and other states. (1) By attacking other nations across many boundaries with multi-national forces the Palestinian organizations and their terrorism became 'transnational'. The transnational nature of the organizations and their terrorism challenged the realist approach of the administration because it would undermine the three reasons the administration pursued detente in the region: 1) in order to maintain the US-Soviet balance of power in the region, 2) to restrict Soviet influence on radical Arab governments, and 3) to ensure important US-Soviet cooperation in a peace process as outlined in 'the Rogers Plan.' In addition, the transnational nature challenged the traditional state-to-state diplomacy, which Detente and the administration relied on during this era.

   The structure of this article is as follows: a discussion of what transnational history is and how it is used to analyze other nationalist organizations and how it can be applied to the Palestinian nationalist violence of 1970. The basics of the Nixon administration's and Kissinger's foreign policies will be explained followed by a chronological account of the Labor Day hijackings and Black September to outline the challenges the administration faced. Finally, a short historical-graphical discussion of the international histories of post-1967 will detail the US involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict through the administration's pursuit of Detente and how these histories do not take into account the transnational nature of the organizations. This article will end with how the arguments made can contribute to the historiography of the US involvement in the conflict by adding a transnational historical perspective.

2. Transnational History and Transnational Organizations

   Before this article can address the administration's struggle to understand the transnational nature of the Palestinian nationalist movements it is important to define transnational history and how this type of history can be used to analyze nationalist organizations. A starting point for our discussion of transnational we will begin by understanding 'transnational' as "various types of interactions across national boundaries" by various peoples, institutions, goods, and capital as argued by historian Thomas Bender. (2) Akira Iriye describes transnational history as a "global interconnectedness" that involves nations who interact "cross-national[y]" with other groups, institutions, nations, etc. (3) Ian Tyrell, David Thelen, and other historians argue that transnational history is a focus on the relationships between the nation and "factors beyond the nation."4 These interconnected relationships can be economic, cultural, social, political, or for the purpose of this article can revolve around terrorism.

   For an example of how transnational history can be used as an analytical tool a look at Matthew Connelly's A Diplomatic Revolution will show how his argument that the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) in Algeria was very successful in internationalizing its fight for independence with the French in such a way that it would involve not just Algeria and France, but other nations and international institutions. (5) The FLN used their fight to gain support from various nations, peoples, and institutions across many national boundaries. The FLN worked remarkably well at developing "bureaus" and "delegations" in "Cairo, Damascus, Tunis, Beirut, Baghdad, Karachi, Djakarta, and New York" to promote talks and negotiations which made possible the maneuvering the FLN hoped for in the United Nations General Assembly. (6) It is important to point out that while the FLN used the UN General Assembly the PLO and PFLP do not use the body in 1970. The transnational history and nature of the FLN is important to this article because it illustrates the FLN's success in internationalizing its nationalist movement outside the borders of Algeria and involved not just the French colonial government, but the US, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. Also, Connelly and others argue, Yasser Arafat witnessed the celebration of the FLN in Algiers and later modeled Fatah-the dominant faction of the PLO--on the FLN. (7)

   Understanding transnational history as the "global interconnectedness" between the nation and factors outside the nation and taking into account Connelly's transnational history of the FLN's allows for an analytical connection of both arguments to the Palestinian nationalist organizations involved in the terrorist events of 1970. By combing both arguments the PLO and the PFLP can be understood as non-state actors that initiated attacks across national boundaries who focused on domestic or foreign targets, which triggered relationships between the organizations, the international system, and the US, Soviet Union, Israel, and Jordan. (8) The hijackings involved PFLP members, passengers, pilots, and equipment from various nations and the involvement of many nations and other international institutions. Black September involved an array of foreign fedayeen forces that attacked the Jordanian military in Amman and the involvement of many foreign diplomats and the possible involvement of foreign militaries. The use of a transnational perspective allows the argument that the transnational nature of these organizations challenged the Nixon administration's three reasons for their pursuit of Detente in the region and the traditional state-to-state diplomacy necessary for the success of Detente.

3. Transnationalism and Kissinger's Detente

   The transnational nature of the hijackings and 'Black September' threatened the reasons why the administration pursued detente with the Soviet Union as their principle foreign policy. As mentioned previously, Detente was sought for three reasons: 1) in order to maintain the US-Soviet balance of power in the region, 2) to restrict Soviet influence on radical Arab governments, and 3) to ensure important US-Soviet cooperation in a peace process as outlined in 'the Rogers Plan.'

   During Kissinger's tenure as Nixon's national security advisor (1969-1973) the "official" decision-making involving the administration's Middle East foreign policies was left to the State Department. The department's framework for a post-1967 Arab-Israeli peace was named for Secretary of State William...