Our third case study presents a striking example of a violent national response to an extended terrorist hostage confrontation. In this instance, Peru was assaulted by one of the worst rampages of international terrorism, sited in a most delicate legal and political milieu, with the highest potential diplomatic stakes. Lima's police and military units eventually responded with deadly – and amazingly successful – force, providing us another occasion to speculate about whether an array of modern non-lethal weapons might have provided additional useful capabilities.

BACKGROUND ON THE LIMA CONFRONTATION

The dual scourge of terrorism and ruthless counterterrorism killed as many as thirty thousand Peruvians during the 1980s and 1990s, creating a climate of fear, uncertainty, and division across the country. The most prominent indigenous terrorist group, Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), adopted a Maoist orientation, endeavoring to restructure the country along a peasant revolutionary model. A smaller Cuban-inspired group, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) was founded in 1984, offering a competing Marxist-Leninist vision for ridding Peru of foreign and imperialist influences. MRTA probably never attracted more than one or two thousand members; its armed struggle against the government consisted mostly of relatively small and episodic attention-getting enterprises, such as stealing food from a supermarket or a hijacked truck and distributing it for free in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, or temporarily seizing a foreign press office or a radio transmitter to broadcast a revolutionary exhortation.