Terrorism

Although not a new phenomenon, the incidence of terrorism in the present age has several elements that make it distinctly different from previous experiences. Contemporary terrorism generally has several expected elements: It is egregious violence, perpetrated against innocents, for a political agenda. Furthermore, contemporary terrorism is typically staged before an audience for maximum multiplication of psychological effect. As former British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher noted, publicity is the oxygen of terrorism. It is often is undertaken by a nonstate actor (NSA). Terror and fear are the intended result. Globalized mass media and the Internet greatly magnify these results.

State-level actors do use terror for their interests and may be the invisible forces behind transnational terrorist groups doing their bidding. But state sponsors of terror run the risk of international opprobrium and sanctions, and can have state-centric remedies applied against them, including war. The disastrous example of Serbia and the Black Hand's assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1914 is a prime example. States that employ terror as a matter of policy—as in ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses—are subject to the aforementioned sanctions and perhaps war crimes proceedings. The application of terror by NSAs has garnered the most attention. (Schmitt, PP: 12-26)

What Motivations Exist for Terrorism?

The modern global community has passed through four significant eras of terrorist activity. The anarchist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought to overturn the international order. Post-World War II to the mid-1960s saw the liberationist and nationalist motivation for terrorism as many societies strove for political mastery of their destinies. Ideological motivations for terrorist activity, especially of the leftist sort, characterized the 1960s through the late 1980s. The latest division has been the religious period, which describes many groups since the late 1980s. In addition, motivations for terrorist activity can range from outrage over social and economic conditions for the attackers to inhuman policy decision making on the part of the terror masters who carry out their attacks.

Martha Crenshaw has surveyed terrorist motivations and mapped its motivation this way: terrorism has certain logic. It can be both effective and satisfying to the terror perpetrators. Robert Pape, studying the worrying trend toward suicide bombers as the weapon of choice in modern terror, describes this as a strategic logic. Although an immediate, existential defeat of its target opponent may not be possible, the terrorist movement is resilient and attractive because at a certain level it is successful, especially against a superior enemy military force. Terrorism is attractive because it works in the right circumstances where other methods have not worked. The apparently unstoppable Oslo Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians was stalled—perhaps stopped—by a cascading barrage of suicide bomber attacks from several organizations which claimed thousands of Israeli lives.

Who Becomes a Terrorist?

A comprehensive study commissioned by the U.S. government and published in 1999 profiled terrorists as generally poor and uneducated, with limited training and operational capability. Although there were notable exceptions—especially among suicide bombers—this view has described the ...