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 (Hamm, pp.34).

There exists no agreed upon definition for terrorism within the international system. The United Nations has been unable to draft a summary definition despite shepherding more than a dozen international conventions (treaties) on many aspects of terrorism. Moreover, the argument is continually restated that what one nation may view as a terrorist act, another will see as legitimate resistance. Despite the requests of its close ally, the United Kingdom, the United States refused to name the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as a terrorist group for many years. Likewise, the United Kingdom allows the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) to operate openly in its borders despite the pleas of many of its allies. Consensus on definition, to say nothing of identity, remains elusive in this area. This entry, therefore, addresses several questions that are often asked about terrorism.

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 (Heymann, pp.67).

Martha Crenshaw has surveyed terrorist motivations and mapped its motivation this way: terrorism has a certain logic. It can be both effective and satisfying to the terror perpetrators. Robert Pape, studying the worrying trend toward ...