terrorism in us essay

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The 20th Anniversary Of The 9/11 Attacks

The world has changed since 9/11, and so has america's fight against terrorism.

An American flag at ground zero on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Mark Lennihan/AP hide caption

An American flag at ground zero on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

In the fall of 2001, Aaron Zebley was a 31-year-old FBI agent in New York. He had just transferred to a criminal squad after working counterterrorism cases for years.

His first day in the new job was Sept. 11.

"I was literally cleaning the desk, I was like wiping the desk when Flight 11 hit the north tower, and it shook our building," he said. "And I was like, what the heck was that? And later that day, I was transferred back to counterterrorism."

It was a natural move for Zebley. He'd spent the previous three years investigating al-Qaida's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. And he became a core member of the FBI team leading the investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

It quickly became clear that al-Qaida was responsible.

The hijackers had trained at the group's camps in Afghanistan. They received money and instructions from its leadership. And ultimately, they were sent to the U.S. to carry out al-Qaida's "planes operation."

President George W Bush gives an address in front of the damaged Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack there as Counselor to the President Karen Hughes and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand by. Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images hide caption

President George W Bush gives an address in front of the damaged Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack there as Counselor to the President Karen Hughes and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stand by.

As the nation mourned the nearly 3,000 people who were killed on 9/11, the George W. Bush administration frantically tried to find its footing and prevent what many feared would be a second wave of attacks.

President Bush ordered members of his administration, including top counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, to imagine what the next attack could look like and take steps to prevent it.

"We had so many vulnerabilities in this country," Clarke said.

At the time, officials were worried that al-Qaida could use chemical weapons or radioactive materials, Clarke said, or that the group would target intercity trains or subway systems.

"We had a very long list of things, systems, that were vulnerable because no one in the United States had seriously considered security from terrorist attacks," he said.

That, of course, quickly changed.

Security became paramount.

And over the next two decades, the federal government poured money and resources — some of it, critics say, to no good use — into protecting the U.S. from another terrorist attack, even as the nature of that threat continuously evolved.

The response to keeping the U.S. secure takes shape

The government built out a massive infrastructure, including creating the Department of Homeland Security, all in the name of protecting against terrorist attacks.

The Bush administration also empowered the FBI and its partners at the CIA, National Security Agency and the Pentagon to take the fight to al-Qaida.

The military invaded Afghanistan, which had been a haven for the group. The CIA hunted down al-Qaida operatives around the world and tortured many of them in secret prisons.

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The Bush administration also launched its ill-fated war in Iraq, which unleashed two decades of bloodletting, shook the Middle East and spawned another generation of terrorists.

On the homefront, FBI Director Robert Mueller shifted some 2,000 agents to counterterrorism work as he tried to transform the FBI from a crime-fighting first organization into a more intelligence-driven one that prioritized combating terrorism and preventing the next attack.

Part of that involved centralizing the bureau's international terrorism investigations at headquarters and making counterterrorism the FBI's top priority.

Chuck Rosenberg, who served as a top aide to Mueller in those early years, said the changes Mueller imposed amounted to a paradigm shift for the bureau.

Robert S. Mueller, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, talks to reporters on Aug. 17, 2006, in Seattle. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption

Robert S. Mueller, then-director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, talks to reporters on Aug. 17, 2006, in Seattle.

"Mueller, God bless him, couldn't be all that patient about it," Rosenberg said. "It couldn't happen at a normal pace of a traditional cultural change. It had to happen yesterday."

It had to happen "yesterday" because al-Qaida was still plotting. Overseas, its operatives carried out horrific bombings in Bali, Madrid, London and elsewhere.

In the U.S., al-Qaida operative Richard Reid was arrested in December 2001 after trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with a bomb hidden in his shoe. More plots were foiled in the ensuing years, including one targeting the Brooklyn Bridge.

Over time, the FBI and its partners better understood al-Qaida, its hierarchical structure, and how to unravel the various threads of a plot.

That stemmed to large degree, Zebley says, from the U.S. getting better at pulling together various threads of intelligence and by upping the operational tempo.

"If you have a little thread that could potentially tell you about a terrorist plot, not only were we much better at integrating the intelligence, but we did it at a pace that was tenfold what we were doing before," he said.

But critics warned that the government's new anti-terrorism tools were eroding civil liberties, while the American Muslim community felt it was all too often the target of an overzealous FBI.

The digital world helps transform terrorism

By the early days of the Obama administration, the U.S. had to a large extent hardened the homeland against 9/11-style plots. But the terrorism landscape was evolving.

At that time, Zebley was serving as a senior aide to Mueller. Each morning, he would sit in on the FBI director's daily threat briefing.

"I was thinking about al-Qaida for years leading up until that moment," he said. "And now I'm sitting in these morning threat briefings and I'm seeing al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa, al-Shabab. ... One of my first thoughts was 'the map looks very different to me now.' "

Robert Mueller (left) and Aaron Zebley testify on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 24, 2019, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption

Robert Mueller (left) and Aaron Zebley testify on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 24, 2019, before the House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference.

Ultimately, AQAP — al-Qaida's branch based in Yemen — emerged as a significant threat to the U.S. homeland.

That became clear in November 2009 when U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. A month later, on Christmas Day, a young Nigerian man tried to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underwear.

It quickly emerged that both men had been in contact with a senior AQAP figure, an American-born Yemeni cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki.

"My sense when I first heard about him was 'well, he's some charismatic guy, born in the U.S., fluent English speaker and all that. But how big a threat could he be?" said John Pistole, who served as the No. 2 official at the FBI from 2004 until 2010 when he left to lead the Transportation Security Administration.

"I think I failed to recognize and appreciate his ability to influence others to action."

Awlaki used the internet to spread his calls for violence against America, and his lectures and ideas influenced attacks in several countries. Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, a move that proved controversial because he was an American citizen.

A few years later, a different terrorist group emerged from the cauldron of Syria and Iraq — the Islamic State, or ISIS, a group that would build on Awlaki's savvy use of the digital world.

"When ISIS came onto the scene, particularly that summer of 2014, with the beheadings and the prolific use of social media, it was off the charts," said Mary McCord, who was a senior national security official at the Justice Department at the time.

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Like al-Qaida more than a decade before, ISIS used its stronghold to plan operations abroad, such as the coordinated attacks in 2015 that killed 130 people in Paris. But it also used social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram to pump out slickly produced propaganda videos.

"They deployed technology in a much more sophisticated way than we had seen with most other foreign terrorist organizations," McCord said.

ISIS produced materials featuring idyllic scenes of life in the caliphate to entice people to move there. At the same time, the group pushed out a torrent of videos showing horrendous violence that sought to instill fear in ISIS' enemies and to inspire the militants' sympathizers in Europe and the U.S. to conduct attacks where they were.

"The threat was much more horizontal. It was harder to corral," said Chuck Rosenberg, who served as FBI Director James Comey's chief of staff.

People inspired by ISIS could go from watching the group's videos to action relatively quickly without setting off alarms.

"It was clear too that there were going to be attacks we just couldn't stop. Things that went from left of boom to right of boom very quickly. People were more discreet, the thing we used to refer to as lone wolves," Rosenberg said. "A lot of bad things could happen, maybe on a smaller scale, but a lot of bad things could happen more quickly."

Bad things did happen

Europe was hit by a series of deadly one-off attacks. In the U.S., a gunman killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. A year later, a man used a truck to plow through a group of cyclists and pedestrians in Manhattan, killing eight people. Both men had been watching ISIS propaganda.

A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. Matt Rourke/AP hide caption

A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018.

The group's allure waned after a global coalition led by the U.S. managed to retake all the territory that ISIS once claimed.

By then, America's most lethal terror threat already stemmed not from foreign terror groups, but from the country's own domestic extremists.

For nearly two decades, the FBI had prioritized the fight against international terrorists. But in early 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that had changed.

"We elevated to the top-level priority racially motivated violent extremism so it's on the same footing in terms of our national threat banding as ISISI and homegrown violent extremism," he testified before Congress.

The move came in the wake of a series of high-profile attacks by people espousing white supremacist views in Charlottesville, Va., Pittsburgh, Pa., Poway, Calif., and El Paso, Texas.

At the same time, anti-government extremist groups and conspiracy theories like QAnon were attracting more adherents.

Those various movements converged in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, in the storming of the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden's presidential win.

Rioters climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

Rioters climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.

The FBI has since launched a massive investigation into the assault, and Wray has bluntly described the Capitol riot as "domestic terrorism."

McCord, who is now the executive director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center, says domestic extremist groups are using many of the same tools that foreign groups have for years.

"You see that in the use of social media for the same kind of things: to recruit, to propagandize, to plot, and to fundraise," she said.

The Capitol riot has put a spotlight on far-right extremism in a way the issue has never received in the past two decades, including in the media and the highest levels of the U.S. government.

President Biden, for one, has called political extremism and domestic terrorism a looming threat to the country that must be defeated, and he has made combating the threat a priority for his administration.

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The Military, Police, and the Rise of Terrorism in the United States

Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images

Table of Contents

Brief by Seth G. Jones , Catrina Doxsee , Grace Hwang, and Jared Thompson

Published April 12, 2021

Available Downloads

• Download the CSIS Brief 1513kb
• Download the Methodology 94kb

U.S. active-duty military personnel and reservists have participated in a growing number of domestic terrorist plots and attacks, according to new data from CSIS. The percentage of all domestic terrorist incidents linked to active-duty and reserve personnel rose in 2020 to 6.4 percent, up from 1.5 percent in 2019 and none in 2018. Similarly, a growing number of current and former law enforcement officers have been involved in domestic terrorism in recent years. But domestic terrorism is a double-edged sword. In 2020, extremists from all sides of the ideological spectrum increasingly targeted the military, law enforcement, and other government actors—putting U.S. security agencies in the crosshairs of domestic terrorists.

Introduction

There is growing concern about the extent to which U.S. military and law enforcement personnel have perpetrated—and been victims of—domestic terrorism. 1 In March 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) sent a report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees which concluded: “DoD is facing a threat from domestic extremists (DE), particularly those who espouse white supremacy or white nationalist ideologies.” It continued that some domestic extremist networks “(a) actively attempt to recruit military personnel into their group or cause, (b) encourage their members to join the military, or (c) join, themselves, for the purpose of acquiring combat and tactical experience.” 2 In 2020, the FBI alerted the DoD that it had opened 143 criminal investigations involving current or former service members—of which nearly half (68) were related to domestic extremism. Most investigations apparently involved veterans, some of whom had unfavorable discharge records. 3 The January 6, 2021, events at the U.S. Capitol raised additional concerns, since one reservist, one National Guard member, and at least 31 veterans were charged with conspiracy or other crimes. 4 In addition, at least four police officers and three former officers faced federal charges for their involvement in storming the Capitol. 5

In response to these developments, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III pledged to intensify the DoD’s effort to combat extremism in the military, remarking, “It concerns me to think that anyone wearing the uniform of a soldier, or a sailor, an airman, Marine, or Guardian or Coast Guardsman would espouse these [extremist] sorts of beliefs, let alone act on them. But they do. Some of them still do.” 6 Secretary Austin also signed a memo directing commanding officers and supervisors to conduct a one-day “stand-down” to discuss extremism in the ranks with their personnel. 7 In addition, the DoD launched an investigation in January 2021 to determine the extent to which the department and military have implemented policies and procedures that prohibit advocacy and participation related to white supremacist, extremist, and criminal gang activity by active-duty personnel. 8

Numerous police agencies also conducted investigations into extremism within their departments. As Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City remarked, “Anyone who expresses racist views shouldn’t be a police officer, anyone who expresses white supremacist views shouldn’t be a police officer, anyone who encourages violence against our democratic institutions shouldn’t be a police officer.” 9

While these steps are an important start, there has been little publicly available data about military or law enforcement involvement in domestic terrorism—as well as attacks against troops and police. In addition, some research is plagued by selection bias because it focuses on a single incident, such as the January 6 event at the U.S. Capitol. 10 Without more systematic data, it is hard to gauge the severity of the problem and to make useful recommendations. To help fill the gap, this analysis utilizes CSIS’s data set of domestic terrorist plots and attacks since January 1, 1994, which was updated through the end of January 2021.

The data indicate that U.S. military personnel have been involved in a growing number of domestic terrorist plots and attacks. The percentage of attacks and plots committed by active-duty and reserve personnel rose in 2020 to 6.4 percent of all attacks and plots (7 of 110 total), up from 1.5 percent in 2019 (1 of 65 total) and none in 2018. Active-duty personnel perpetrated 4.5 percent of the attacks in 2020 (five incidents), and reservists conducted 1.8 percent (two incidents). While these individuals represent a tiny percentage of all current active-duty and reserve personnel, the increased number of incidents is still concerning. 11 The data also indicate a rise in law enforcement involvement in attacks. The growth is notable since individuals with a military or law enforcement background have skills that extremists want—such as proficiency in firing weapons, building explosive devices, conducting surveillance and reconnaissance, training personnel, practicing operational security, and performing other types of activities. The data should serve as a cautionary tale. While the numbers are relatively low, they are growing—and the military and law enforcement agencies need to take preventive action now.

There are several other notable findings from the data set. First, domestic extremists increasingly targeted the military, police, and other government agencies—putting security agencies in the crosshairs of domestic extremists. In 2020, government, military, and especially police personnel and facilities were the target of 38 percent of attacks, the most of any category. Second, there was a rise in the number of terrorist plots and attacks in 2020, despite a relatively low number of fatalities. This trend indicates that terrorism is a growing problem in the United States; there were more terrorist plots and attacks in 2020 than in any year  since the CSIS data set started in 1994. Third, the motivations for terrorism have shifted dramatically over the past two decades, from religious extremists inspired by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State after September 11, 2001, to white supremacists, anarchists, and others today. White supremacists, extremist militia supporters, and other like-minded individuals were involved in two-thirds of the attacks and plots in 2020. Anarchists, anti-fascists, and other like-minded individuals perpetrated roughly 23 percent of the plots and attacks in 2020, a notable increase from recent years. And Salafi-jihadists were involved in a mere 5 percent—their lowest share of incidents since 2008.

The rest of this brief is divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of terrorism and outlines the data set. The second section assesses the main findings on military personnel and law enforcement, both as perpetrators and targets. The third outlines other findings from the CSIS data set. The fourth section offers brief implications.

Domestic extremists increasingly targeted the military, police, and other government agencies—putting security agencies in the crosshairs of domestic extremists.

This brief focuses on terrorism, which involves the deliberate use—or threat—of violence by non-state actors in order to achieve political goals and create a broad psychological impact. 12 Violence and the threat of violence are important components of terrorism. As Professor Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University argues, terrorism is “the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change.” 13 U.S. Code, which is the official compilation of general and permanent laws of the United States, defines domestic terrorism under 18 U.S. Code § 2331 as “violent acts or acts dangerous to human life” that occur primarily within U.S. territory. It organizes terrorism acts into three components: the act is intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” it aims to “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” and it involves “mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” 14

In focusing on terrorism, this brief does not cover the broader categories of hate speech or hate crimes. There is some overlap between terrorism and hate crimes, since some hate crimes include the use or threat of violence. 15 But hate crimes can also include non-violent incidents, such as graffiti and verbal abuse. Hate crimes and hate speech are obviously concerning and a threat to society, but this analysis concentrates only on terrorism and the use—or threat—of violence to achieve political objectives. In addition, this analysis does not focus on protests, riots, looting, and broader civil disturbances—unless they meet the definition of terrorism. While these incidents are important to analyze, most are not terrorism. Some are not violent, while others lack a political motivation or the intention to create a broad psychological impact. 16

Finally, while there is often a desire among government officials and academics to focus on terrorist groups and organizations , the terrorism landscape in the United States remains highly decentralized. Many are inspired by the concept of “leaderless resistance,” which rejects a centralized, hierarchical organization in favor of decentralized networks or individual activity. 17 The decentralized nature of terrorism is particularly noteworthy regarding the use of violence, which CSIS data suggest is often planned and orchestrated by a single individual or small network. 18

Based on this definition, the data set includes 980 cases of terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January 1, 1994, and January 31, 2021. The data set includes such categories as the incident date, perpetrator, location, motivation, number of individuals wounded or killed, target, weapons used, and perpetrators’ current or former affiliations with law enforcement and the military. The data set—including the codebook, definitions, and limitations—is explained in more detail in a methodology supplement linked at the end of this analysis.

Military and Law Enforcement: Perpetrators and Targets

This section begins with a historical overview of military and law enforcement personnel involved in terrorism. It then examines more recent data about military and law enforcement personnel as both perpetrators and targets of terrorism. To be clear, this analysis does not focus on the broader question of extremism in the military, including its pervasiveness and causes. Nor does it offer a systematic analysis of why these numbers have increased, though it does offer some hypotheses. While these are important issues, the data set focuses on terrorist incidents.

In addition, there are important distinctions between the types of military personnel. While active-duty members serve full time in the military, reservists serve only part time and cannot be charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) when they are off duty. The military has less authority to respond to veterans who become involved in extremist behavior, but if their conduct violates the UCMJ, the military may be able to respond with retroactive demotions and reduced pensions. 19

Historical Trends: A small number of military and law enforcement personnel have been involved in domestic extremism over the years. In her study of the white power movement, for example, Professor Kathleen Belew of the University of Chicago argues that the Vietnam War and other political, economic, and social factors led to a consolidation and expansion of white power activists, who attempted to recruit active-duty soldiers, reservists, and veterans involved in the Vietnam War. 20 In 1970 alone, the U.S. Marine Corps recorded over 1,000 incidents of racial violence at installations in the United States and Vietnam, including violent altercations between black and white Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. 21 While most of these were not acts of terrorism, they still contributed to an enabling environment for extremist acts.

In addition, several influential extremists in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s served in the U.S. military or law enforcement agencies. One of the most prominent white supremacist figures was Louis Beam, who enlisted in the Army when he was 19 years old and fought in the Vietnam War. 22 In his speeches and writings—including his influential Essays of a Klansman —Beam argued that activists needed to continue waging the war on U.S. territory using guerrilla warfare. 23 Beam was not alone. Randy Duey, a member of the white supremacist group The Order, was an Air Force veteran and instructor at the survival school at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. 24 Randy Weaver—a Christian Identity adherent who held white supremacist and anti-government views, and who was involved in the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff near Naples, Idaho—was a former U.S. Army engineer. 25 Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1988 and fought in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. There were also other veterans involved in extremism, such as William Potter Gale, Richard Butler, Bo Gritz, Frazier Glenn Miller, and Eric Rudolph. 26

In addition, some former law enforcement officers were involved in domestic terrorism, including those that were members or sympathizers of the Ku Klux Klan. 27 Among the most prominent was Gerald “Jack” McLamb, a retired Phoenix police officer who urged resistance to those who supported a one-world government and wrote a 75-page manifesto titled, Operation Vampire Killer 2000: American Police Action Plan for Stopping World Government Rule . 28 White supremacist groups also attempted to infiltrate and recruit from law enforcement agencies, according to FBI assessments. 29

Among the most prominent white power books during this period was The  Turner Diaries , a dystopian novel that drew heavily on the concept of military and law enforcement personnel as white power soldiers. Written by William Pierce and published under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, The  Turner Diaries depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and a race war that results in the extermination of non-whites. In a reference to the U.S. military’s experience fighting communist governments and insurgent groups across the globe, the protagonist, Earl Turner, notes, “We have had the example of decades of guerrilla warfare in Africa, Asia, and Latin American to instruct us.” 30 William Pierce and his National Alliance, a white supremacist and neo-Nazi political organization, attempted to recruit military and law enforcement personnel. 31

According to FBI data, 37 percent of lone offender terrorists in the United States between 1972 and 2015 served in the military. 32 But in the decade after September 11, 2001, there were few attacks by active-duty, reservist, or law enforcement personnel, though extremist groups attempted to infiltrate the military and law enforcement. 33 In June 2006, for example, Shayne Allyn Ziska, a state correctional officer in California, was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for aiding a white supremacist prison gang called the Nazi Low Riders. 34 But the trends began to change over the past several years.

Military: As Figure 1 shows, there was an increase in the percentage of domestic terrorist plots and attacks perpetrated by active-duty and reserve personnel in recent years. 35 In 2020, 6.4 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks and plots (7 of 110 total) were committed by one or more active-duty or reserve members—an increase from 1.5 percent in 2019 (1 of 65 total) and none in 2018. While the attacks in 2021 account for only one month, the numbers in January 2021 showed another increase: 17.6 percent of domestic terrorism plots and attacks (3 of 17 total) were committed by active-duty or reserve personnel.

On January 19, 2021, for example, the FBI and U.S. Army Counterintelligence Coordinating Authority arrested a U.S. Army soldier, Cole James Bridges, at Fort Stewart after he conspired to blow up the 9/11 Memorial in New York and attempted to provide support to the Islamic State. 36 On May 30, 2020, authorities in Las Vegas, Nevada, arrested Andrew Lynam, an Army reservist, alongside Navy veteran Stephen T. Parshall and Air Force veteran William L. Loomis—all self-identified Boogaloo Bois—for conspiring to firebomb a U.S. Forest Service building and a power substation to sow chaos during the protests held in response to the murder of George Floyd. 37 On June 10, 2020, the FBI arrested Army Private Ethan Melzer, who sent sensitive U.S. military information to the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), an occult-based neo-Nazi and white supremacist group, in an attempt to facilitate a mass-casualty attack on Melzer’s Army unit. 38 On May 29, 2020, Air Force Staff Sergeant Steven Carrillo, a supporter of the Boogaloo Bois who wanted to ignite a civil war, shot and killed Pat Underwood, a protective security officer, and wounded his partner in Oakland, California. Carrillo also killed a Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy in Ben Lomond, California, with an assault rifle on June 6, 2020. 39

In addition, the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol included veterans, reservists, a member of the National Guard, members of several militias and extremist organizations (such as the Sons of Liberty New Jersey, Groyper Army, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, and Three Percenters), supporters of the extremist conspiracy QAnon, and other groups and networks. No participants have been identified as active-duty military personnel. On January 13, the FBI arrested Jacob Fracker, a U.S. Army National Guardsman, for his involvement in the Capitol attack. 40 As Fracker explained in an Instagram post, “Sorry I hate freedom? Sorry I fought for it and lost friends for it? . . . I can protest for what I believe in and still support your protest for what you believe in. Just saying . . . after all, I fought for your right to do it.” 41

Veterans have also been involved in domestic terrorist attacks and plots. 42 In October 2020, for example, the FBI arrested Adam Fox, Barry Croft, and several other accomplices in a plot to kidnap and potentially execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Members of this network, which had ties to militias in Michigan and other states, referred to Governor Whitmer as a “tyrant” and claimed that she had “uncontrolled power right now.” 43 Paul Edward Bellar, a U.S. Army veteran who had been honorably discharged roughly a year before his arrest, trained the group on the use of firearms, medical care, and other tactical skills. 44 Veterans consistently committed more attacks and plots than active-duty and reserve troops—including 10 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks and plots since 2015, according to CSIS data.

Domestic extremist groups and networks have also attempted to recruit veterans, active-duty personnel, and reservists. To be clear, this analysis is not suggesting that individuals serving in the military or who are veterans are more inclined to embrace extremism than the general population or are attracted to extremist ideologies. Nevertheless, violent far-right and far-left networks have solicited military personnel because of their skill sets. According to one estimate, veterans and active-duty members of the military currently make up roughly 25 percent of active militia members. 45 Such organizations as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters include active-duty personnel, reservists, veterans, and law enforcement personnel. 46 The Boogaloo Bois, anti-fascists, and extremists with other motivations have also included active-duty personnel, reservists, and veterans.

Law Enforcement: CSIS data identified six incidents since 1994 in which current or former law enforcement personnel committed domestic terrorist plots and attacks—though all six cases occurred since 2017. As with active-duty and reserve military personnel, this is an increase, despite representing a small fraction of all law enforcement professionals in the United States. Between October 2020 and January 2021, three domestic terrorist attacks or plots involved current law enforcement officers. For example, Joseph Wayne Fischer, an off-duty patrolman from Pennsylvania, participated in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack and was reportedly in the front wave of rioters pushing back police officers. Fischer was charged with multiple criminal offenses, including obstruction of law enforcement and violent entry. 47 At least four current police officers and three former officers were allegedly involved in the January 6 incident at the Capitol. 48

Former law enforcement officers were involved in two incidents in 2017 and one in 2020. On October 19, 2020, former Houston police captain Mark Anthony Aguirre ran a repairman off the road, pinned him to the ground, and threatened him at gunpoint, claiming that the man was transporting 750,000 false ballots as part of an election fraud scheme—a conspiracy theory pushed by the group Liberty Center for God and Country. 49

Terrorist Targeting of Military and Law Enforcement: CSIS data also show that the U.S. government, military, and law enforcement were increasingly targeted by domestic terrorists. As shown in Figure 2, government, military, and police personnel and facilities were the targets of 34 of 89 attacks in 2020 from perpetrators of varying ideologies, making them the most frequent targets. 50 Of these 34 attacks, 19 targeted the government, 15 targeted law enforcement, and 1 targeted the military. 51 The attacks were led by perpetrators of various ideologies, including violent far-right, violent far-left, religious, and the Boogaloo Bois—who were responsible for all attacks coded as “other” in the 2020 data.

In addition, the percentage of domestic terrorist attacks against government, military, and police agencies increased over the past five years. In 2020, 38 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks targeted these institutions. This was the second-highest percentage since at least 1994—exceeded only in 2013, when attacks against government, military, and police targets comprised 46 percent of all attacks. The frequency of attacks against military and—in particular—law enforcement targets may be due, in part, to a growing belief by extremists that security agencies are the most visible arm of an illegitimate and oppressive government.

For some anti-fascists, the police are quintessential symbols of a repressive state—including against minority populations. 52 “As for the police . . . the historical record shows that along with the military they have also been among the most eager for a ‘return to order,’” wrote Mark Bray in Antifa: The Anti-fascist Handbook . 53 This explains why some anti-fascists and anarchists conducted attacks against police stations and police vehicles during the protests in the summer of 2020. As highlighted by the events on January 6, 2021, however, some on the violent far-right also consider law enforcement the main security arm of a government they believe is illegitimate. “Traitors! Traitors! Traitors!” chanted some individuals on the Capitol steps on January 6. “The blue does not back you,” read a message from a pro-Proud Boys group on the social networking service Parler, “They back the men who pay them.” 54

While this analysis does not conduct a comprehensive analysis of why there was a rise in the number and percentage of active-duty and reserve personnel involved in domestic terrorist attacks and plots, there are several hypotheses worth considering. For example, it would be worth examining whether the deployment of soldiers to controversial battlefields such as Iraq and Afghanistan triggered a backlash against U.S. society and the government (much like with the Vietnam War); whether military personnel have been increasingly influenced by the political polarization prevalent in the United States; or whether military personnel have been more active on the internet and social media platforms, which has contributed to radicalization. In addition, there may be other social, economic, educational, or cultural variables at play, along with the possible proliferation of charismatic individuals that have spread propaganda in the military.

Other Findings

CSIS also examined trends in the number and characteristics of attacks and plots. This section analyzes the data in two parts: number of incidents and fatalities, and perpetrator ideology.

Incidents and Fatalities: In 2020, the number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots increased to its highest level since at least 1994, though fatalities were relatively low. Across all perpetrator ideologies, there were 110 domestic terrorist attacks and plots in 2020—an increase of 45 incidents since 2019 and 40 more incidents than in 2017, the year which previously had the most terrorist attacks and plots since the beginning of the data set. Despite this sharp increase in terrorist activity, the number of fatalities from domestic terrorist attacks was at its lowest level since 2013. Five people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2020—an 86 percent decrease from 2019, when 35 individuals died in terrorist attacks.

There are several possible explanations for this drop in lethality. First, there were 21 terrorist plots recorded in 2020 which were disrupted before an attack could take place. Some decrease in fatalities, then, may be attributed to the effective work of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in preventing attacks.

Second, there were no mass-casualty terrorist attacks in 2020. All five victims were killed with firearms in five separate attacks. In comparison, there were seven fatal attacks each in 2018 and 2019, resulting in 19 and 35 fatalities, respectively. Though the number of fatal attacks was similar, each of these previous years included a mass-casualty attack that significantly raised the total. In 2018, Robert Bowers murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in 2019, Patrick Crusius murdered 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. This alone does not explain the reduction, however, because there was ample opportunity for similar mass-casualty events in 2020. As highlighted in Figure 2, soft targets such as demonstrators and private individuals were frequent targets of terrorist attacks and plots. Furthermore, previous CSIS analysis found that vehicles were increasingly common weapons in terrorist attacks in 2020, joining firearms, explosives, and incendiaries as some of the most commonly used weapons—all of which have high potential lethality. 55

Third, the restraint shown in those attacks may point to perpetrators prioritizing sending a message through fear rather than fatalities. Though there has been substantial rhetoric about bringing about a second civil war—such as from the Boogaloo Bois and some white supremacists—many extremists may wait for their ideological adversaries to act first, whether through violent action or policy change that is perceived as an existential threat. This is consistent with the philosophy put forward by militia leaders such as the Three Percenters’ co-founder Mike Vanderboegh, who in 2008 advised his followers not to “fire first” and instead to wait and act under the justification of the common defense so as to “not cede the moral high ground.” 56

Perpetrator Ideology: CSIS also coded the ideology of perpetrators into one of five categories: ethnonationalist, religious, violent far-left, violent far-right, and other. (The link to the methodology, which includes definitions of these categories, can be found at the end of this brief.) All religious attacks and plots in the CSIS data set were committed by terrorists motivated by a Salafi-jihadist ideology.

White supremacists, extremist militia members, and other violent far-right extremists were responsible for 66 percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in 2020—roughly consistent with their share in other recent years. 57 For example, on June 7, Harry H. Rogers—a self-proclaimed leader of the Ku Klux Klan—intentionally drove his pick-up truck into a crowd of Black Lives Matter demonstrators in Henrico, Virginia. One protester was injured, and Rogers received a six-year prison sentence. 58 In addition, anarchists, anti-fascists, violent environmentalists, and other violent far-left extremists conducted 23 percent of terrorist attacks and plots in 2020—an increase from the previous three years, in which violent far-left incidents comprised between 5 and 11 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks and plots. For example, on August 29 in Portland, Oregon, Michael Reinoehl—an Antifa extremist—followed two members of the far-right group Patriot Prayer and then shot and killed one of them, Aaron “Jay” Danielson. 59

Meanwhile, the portion of attacks and plots inspired by a Salafi-jihadist ideology fell to 5 percent in 2020—a sharp decline compared to recent years such as 2019, in which they comprised 29 percent of incidents. For example, on May 21, Adam Aalim Alsahli—a Syrian-born U.S. citizen inspired by jihadist figures such as Ibrahim al-Rabaysh—drove his vehicle into the gate of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas and then opened fire on a guard. 60 The proportion of attacks and plots by ideology in January 2021 remained roughly consistent with the 2020 data.

Policy Implications

U.S. military and law enforcement agencies need to better understand the scope of the problem through better data collection and analysis. The U.S. military has already taken steps along these lines in such areas as sexual assault and suicides. At the moment, the number of active-duty military personnel, reservists, and police involved in domestic terrorism is relatively small, though it is rising. 61

These challenges will persist since extremist networks seek to embed their members in the military and law enforcement agencies and to actively recruit current and retired personnel. 62 The Russian government has also recognized that these groups may be vulnerable to extremist ideologies and has targeted active-duty personnel, reservists, veterans, and police through an aggressive cyber and disinformation campaign on digital platforms. 63 Military and law enforcement personnel have valuable skills that extremist networks want, such as small unit tactics, communications, logistics, reconnaissance, and surveillance. They may also have access to weapons and explosives. In January 2021, for example, several pounds of C-4 explosives went missing from a Marine Corps base in Twentynine Palms, California. 64

Any effort to disrupt extremism in the military must address all stages of service. In vetting new recruits and renewing existing security clearances, for example, revisions to the SF-86 process should help identify individuals associated with extremist networks. At least one reservist who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack held a security clearance and was well known among his colleagues for harboring extremist views. 65 An FBI database of lone offender terrorism in the United States indicated that 10 percent of offenders between 1972 and 2015 took steps to join the military but were either disqualified during the application process or dropped out after realizing they might not meet the qualifications. 66 Deterrence is critical. The DoD should publicly announce any changes to its vetting processes to deter those with extremist views from even attempting to join the military.

U.S. military and law enforcement agencies need to better understand the scope of the problem through better data collection and analysis.

The military and police should also increase their focus on counterextremism education as well as offer clear reporting and oversight processes for current service members and police officers. This may include training personnel on identity signaling within extremist networks, including symbols displayed in tattoos and on apparel. On the law enforcement side, organizations such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) should increase efforts to better understand and counter extremism within police forces. Finally, there should be a focus on veterans and individuals exiting the services, who are at an increased risk of recruitment. 67

A data-driven understanding of the nature of extremist behavior among military and law enforcement personnel could help inform and prioritize these efforts. For example, CSIS analysis found that while there was an increase in active-duty and reserve personnel involvement in terrorist attacks and plots, the majority of perpetrators affiliated with the military in recent years were veterans. Though the military does not have as much influence over the behavior of veterans once they separate from the military, the DoD could pull service records for all military-affiliated perpetrators and gather information to better understand the causes. Such patterns could inform efforts to disrupt radicalization pathways before individuals leave the military. Congressionally directed or agency-initiated efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) could also help identify and counter extremist activity among veterans, and data-sharing agreements between the DoD and VA could strengthen deradicalization efforts.

Simultaneously, the U.S. government should prepare for the military, law enforcement, and other government agencies to continue to be frequent targets of domestic terrorism. Attacks against these institutions are increasing from extremists of diverse ideologies. This risk may be exacerbated by such issues as gun control, immigration, and Covid-19 policies. The DoD and law enforcement agencies should conceptualize efforts to counter domestic extremism as an issue of self-defense and support for their personnel. This concern may shape strategies to eliminate extremist ideology among service members. For example, individual commanders could work to build a trusting environment to report and address these problems framed in terms of unit defense and cohesion, rather than levying blame.

Furthermore, concerns about extremism in the military and law enforcement are not confined to the United States. 68 Germany has faced significant problems, from which the United States may be able to draw some lessons. In November 2020, a German government investigation identified 26 soldiers and 9 police officers who organized and participated in online chat groups that shared far-right, anti-Semitic, and neo-Nazi content. 69 The investigations came on the heels of an October 2020 report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, or BfV), which documented more than 1,400 cases of far-right extremism in the police and intelligence services over the previous four years. 70 In 2020, Germany’s Defense Ministry identified 20 far-right extremists within a company of the country’s elite special forces, the Kommando Spezialkräfte. The German military disbanded the 2nd Company, though 48,000 rounds of ammunition and more than 135 pounds of explosives went missing from the unit’s stockpiles. 71 More broadly, the European police agency Europol warned in a confidential report that extremist groups in Europe attempted to bolster their “combat skills” by recruiting military and police members. 72

Of broader concern, the U.S. government does not publicly release data on terrorist attacks and plots, nor on the characteristics of perpetrators. However, if a centralized data collection effort were established, data analysis could offer an objective mechanism for apportioning counterterrorism resources and efforts relative to actual threats. For example, CSIS data show that domestic terrorist attacks and plots from violent far-right and far-left actors are on the rise, while Salafi-jihadist-inspired terrorism is declining. This presents a clear case for continuing to redirect resources away from Salafi-jihadist to other types of extremism.

Despite these challenges, one reason for hope is the low number of deaths from domestic terrorism. Terrorism from violent far-right and far-left extremists has not killed many Americans—at least not recently. This could change, of course, as Timothy McVeigh illustrated in 1995. Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins once wrote that “terrorism is theater” and “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.” 73 These aphorisms may not have been true of al-Qaeda and Islamic State adherents, as Jenkins recognized. 74 But the data certainly raise questions about how far most domestic terrorists are willing to go today.

Seth G. Jones is senior vice president and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C, and author most recently of Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran, and the Rise of Irregular Warfare (W.W. Norton). Catrina Doxsee is a program manager and research associate with the Transnational Threats Project at CSIS. Grace Hwang is a research assistant with the Burke Chair in Strategy and Transnational Threats Project at CSIS. Jared Thompson is a research assistant with the Transnational Threats Project at CSIS.

The authors give special thanks to Bruce Hoffman, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Colin Clarke, and David Brannan for their review of the document—including the data set—and their helpful critiques. Thanks also to Jerry Bennett, Mark Cancian, James Cheney, Eric McQueen, Joseph Moye, and Jacob Ware for their comments. Finally, thanks to Nicholas Harrington for his help in updating the data set.

For an overview of the methodology used in compiling the data set, please see  here .

This brief is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this brief.

CSIS Briefs   are produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s). 

© 2021 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.

Please consult the PDF for references.

Seth G. Jones

Catrina Doxsee

Grace hwang, jared thompson, programs & projects.

• Harold Brown Chair

Terrorism and the threat to democracy

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Daniel l. byman daniel l. byman director and professor, security studies program - georgetown university, senior fellow - foreign policy , center for middle east policy.

February 2019

Executive Summary

Terrorism does more than kill the innocent: It undermines democratic governments, even in mature democracies like those in the United States and much of Europe. The fear terrorism generates can distort public debates, discredit moderates, empower political extremes, and polarize societies. An array of actors, including governments, international institutions, and civil society can decrease the scale and scope of terrorist violence and mitigate its most dangerous political effects. 1

To mitigate the danger terrorism poses to democracies, the United States and its allies should continue to emphasize intelligence-sharing and expand such efforts when possible. This is true even though in 2018 the number of successful jihadist attacks fell dramatically in the United States and Europe. Although the Islamic State continued to plot terrorist attacks, aggressive law enforcement and the disruption of the Islamic State’s safe haven account for much of the decline. 2 U.S. and European governments should step up efforts to penetrate right-wing terrorist movements, arrest their members, and devote more resources to this problem. Given the recent decline in jihadist violence, transferring some resources is appropriate. In the United States, Congress should authorize more resources for this problem. Improving social services to Muslim communities is vital, especially in new areas with many recent refugees. This involves governments, civil society organizations, and the international aid community. The United States and Europe should cooperate on standards for internet companies, and the companies should also work together to create standards for right-wing hate groups. In foreign policy, U.S. and European diplomats should try to decrease the intensity of wars in the Middle East by pressing outside powers like Saudi Arabia and Iran to end their interventions, and in general, try to prevent and resolve wars in the region. Finally, political leaders should emphasize societal resilience in order to decrease the psychological impact of terrorism.

Related Content

Daniel L. Byman

October 29, 2018

October 5, 2018

• This paper focused on terrorism linked to the Salafi-jihadist cause that groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida champion. It does not examine the pressing problem of right-wing terrorism in the United States and Europe or terrorism from left-wing, ethnonationalist, and other groups.
• Rukmini Callimachi, “Why a ‘Dramatic Dip’ in ISIS Attacks in the West Is Scarce Comfort,” The New York Times, September 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/world/middleeast/isis-attacks.html .

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Terrorism as a global wave phenomenon: an overview.

• David C. Rapoport David C. Rapoport Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.299
• Published online: 26 September 2017

Global terror began in the 1880s, but it took a century before a few scholars began to understand its peculiar dynamic. One reason for the difficulty was that many scholars and government officials had “historical amnesia.” When they saw it disappear, they assumed it had become part of history and no longer had contemporary relevance. But global terror disappears and then reappears. Another reason they failed to understand the pattern is that the concept of generation was rarely used to describe politics, a concept that requires one to recognize the importance of life cycles. Modern global terror comes in the form of waves precipitated by major political events that have important global significance. A wave consists of a variety of groups with similar tactics and purposes that alter the domestic and international scenes. Four very different waves have materialized: the Anarchist, the Anti-Colonial, the New Left, and the Religious. The first three have been completed and lasted around 40 years; the fourth is now in its third decade, and if it follows the rhythm of its predecessors, it should be over in the mid-2020s, but a fifth wave may emerge thereafter.

• historical amnesia
• empirical international relations theory
• Paris commune
• global organizations
• over-reactions
• First Wave Anarchist
• Second Wave Anticolonial
• Third Wave New Left
• Fourth Wave Religious

Introduction

Terrorism is violence for political purposes that goes beyond the legal rules established to regulate violence. Consequently, governments have difficulty treating captured terrorists as prisoners of war or criminals, a problem that affects different governments in various ways. 1 Terrorism confined to particular states has been an intermittent feature of history for a very long time. At times, terror took an international dimension that included only two states. Irish immigrants in the United States, for example, created the Fenians who, after the American Civil War, struck Canadian targets hoping to create a war between the United States and the United Kingdom, which would enable efforts in Ireland to create an independent state. When that failed, the American Fenians bombed targets in England with the same purpose and futile end (Steward & McGowan, 2013 ). Only Irish groups participated. The global international form of terrorism developed later. It involves efforts to change the entire world or transform regions involving more than two states. These activities generate cooperation between foreign terrorists and populations in a variety of states.

Although global terror began in the 1880s, a century elapsed before a few scholars began to understand its peculiar dynamic. One reason for the difficulty was that many scholars and government officials had “historical amnesia.” When they saw terrorism begin to disappear, they assumed it had become part of history and no longer had contemporary relevance. But global terror disappears and then reappears. Another reason they failed to understand the pattern is that the concept of generation was rarely used to describe politics, a concept that requires one to recognize the importance of life cycles. Global terror comes in the form of waves that are precipitated by major political events that have important global significance. A wave consists of a variety of groups with similar tactics and purposes that alter the domestic and international scenes. Four very different waves have materialized: the Anarchist, Anti colonial, New Left, and Religious. The first three have been completed and lasted around 40 years; the fourth is now in its third decade. If it follows the rhythm of its predecessors it should be over in the mid-2020s, and a fifth wave may emerge thereafter.

Historical Amnesia

It took considerable time to understand that global terrorism appeared first in the 1880s and has remained since (Rapoport & Alexander, 1989 ). One reason for the problem was that global terrorism has a special rhythm that makes it seem to disappear often. Note how the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences treated the subject. In the first edition ( 1930 ), J.B.S. Hardman’s interesting terrorism article argued that “revolutionary terrorism” began in the 1880s and reached its high point two decades later. No group ever attained success, and terrorism would soon disappear completely because modern technology made the world so complex that only classes and masses mattered! The second edition ( 1966 ) had no terrorism article. Did the Hardman article persuade the new editors one was not needed even though some successful campaigns materialized after World War II in overseas European empires, or did the editors believe that because those empires had disappeared, terrorism did, too?

Other differences between the two editions suggest that another matter may have shaped the decision. The first edition contained interesting pieces on violence, assassination, and praetorianism that were eliminated in the second edition. 2 The election and succession articles in the first edition emphasized that the processes often produced violence. But the second edition’s election article ignores the fact elections sometimes breed violence (Rapoport & Weinberg, 2001 ). There was no article on succession, perhaps because one could not be written without emphasizing that in some systems violence frequently determines who the successor will be. Why did the “best social scientists” in successive generations understand violence so differently?

For the long span from about 1938 to the mid-1960s . . . the internal life of the country was unusually free of violent episodes. The 1930s generation found it easy to forget how violent “their forebears had been and so it is not simply that historians have found a way of shrugging off the unhappy memories of our past; our amnesia is also a response to the experience of a whole generation.” (Hofstadter, 1970 , pp. 3–4)

The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence established after the 1968 assassinations of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert Kennedy also emphasized the idea that the United States suffered from “historical amnesia.”

Ironically, while the first edition of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences stated that terrorism had disappeared, when the second edition was published, terrorist activity had become an important element in the Cold War, dominating the international scene, an upsurge that ended in the 1990s after the Soviet Union’s dramatic, unexpected collapse. Historical amnesia then reappeared; this time it was reflected in the U.S. government’s belief that global terrorism no longer existed. The government never seemed to understand that it had been very significant decades before the Soviet Union was even established. Just as Hardman ignored the fact that a new kind of terrorism emerged after World War I, the U.S. government seemed oblivious to the conspicuous fact that various religions in the 1980s produced terrorist groups without Soviet aid that were still functioning. Believing that “terrorism was over, the State Department abolished my office,” wrote Scott Stewart, a Security Service Special Agent (Stewart, 2012 , p. 2). Government subsidies for the Rand Corporation’s useful terrorism research program evaporated and the program disappeared. In 1999 , the Crowe Commission Report Confronting Terrorist Threats examined attacks on U.S. embassies and blamed the government for greatly reducing its intelligence resources. Then the disastrous attacks of September 11, 2011 , occurred. Ironically, the 9/11 Commission Report found that the same indifference made 9/11 easier to perpetrate.

Terrorism studies generally ignore history, an odd fact when we remember how much history obsessed Clausewitz, who founded the “science” of war:

Examples from history make everything clear, and furnish the best description of proof in the empirical sciences. This applies with more force to the Art of War than to any other. If we wish to learn from history we must realize that what happened once can happen again.” (Clausewitz, 1991 , p. 231) 3

Clausewitz’s view of the pertinence of military history still resonates because states retain their armies even though there may be long periods between wars. But many still regard terrorism differently.

After 9/11, President George W. Bush’s “Address to the Joint Session of Congress and the American People” declared that terrorism would be eliminated. “Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government which supports them. Our war . . . will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated” (Bush, 2001 , p. 68).

Although 9/11 was unique, President Bush’s declaration had a largely forgotten predecessor a century before. On September 6, 1901 , after an anarchist assassinated President William McKinley, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, called for all states to participate in a “crusade” to exterminate anarchist terrorism everywhere, and Congress passed the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to reduce immigrant numbers who came from countries where many Anarchists lived (Jensen, 2001 ). But four years later, the United States withdrew from the first and only other global counterterrorist campaign.

Generations

Our historical amnesia is partly due to the inadequacy of our analytical tools. Using the concept of generation as a key analytic concept compels one to recognize that as a generation gets older, its energy dissipates. Generation is very different from the more commonly used concepts like class, interest, ethnic identity, etc. Energies inspiring those entities may dissipate in time, too, but that process is not associated with specified short periods. Because very few analysts use the idea of generation to explain important social scenes, it is not surprising that when the activity they are describing dissipates, they believe it has disappeared. 4

The striking differences between generations in the 1960s finally stimulated some academics to use generation to explain change (Rapoport, 1970 ). 5 In 1986 , Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published the first systematic detailed study of generations in his illuminating The Cycles of American History . He used Alexis de Tocqueville’s argument that in democracies “each generation is a new people” to analyze American politics from the 18th century to the present day as a process of successive 40-year cycles. The initial generation was consumed with “political activism and social egalitarianism,” which was then followed by a 40-year period of “quiet conservatism and personal acquisition.” 6

Each new phase flows out of the conditions and contradictions of the phase before and then itself prepares the way for the next recurrence. A true cycle . . . is self-generating. It cannot be determined short of catastrophe by external events. Wars, depressions, inflations may heighten or complicate moods, but the cycle itself rolls on, self-contained, self-sufficient and autonomous. (Schlesinger, 1986 , p. 27) 7

Wave Concept

While linking generations to cycles is useful for studying democratic politics, global terrorism must be viewed differently. Profound, dramatic, unexpected international political events stimulated global terror, inspiring new generations with hope that the world could be transformed. But one cannot assume precipitating events of the same magnitude will always recur and at the same time. While a period lasted roughly 40 years, the rhythm or development process of each period, was different. Wave, rather than cycle, clearly is the appropriate term to describe those periods.

A wave consists of organizations with similar tactics and objectives. Organizations normally do not survive as long as the wave that gave them birth does, though a few organizations are likely to be active when their wave disappears. In those special cases, the organization sometimes incorporates features of the new wave. Surprise attacks are essential because small groups must find ways to publicize their actions to get attention and generate recruits. Surprise attacks sometimes produce overreaction, which terrorists know they can profit from. Each wave has experienced some dramatic overreactions with enormous international consequences. In the First Wave, World War I was precipitated when the Austrian-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated and their government claimed without evidence that Serbia was involved. The anxiety produced by 9/11 made the U.S. government think that Al-Qaeda would use weapons of mass destruction if they could get them, and the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 to prevent that from happening. But no evidence was available that Iraq had those weapons, and the invasion intensified Islamic hostility to the United States and also alienated many U.S. allies. Several other important overreactions in global terror history are discussed below.

The need to secure information to prevent surprise leads governments to employ unusual interrogation techniques that are not used to deal with criminals. Thus, in the First Wave, torture, which had disappeared in Europe, became common everywhere and it has remained a feature of every subsequent wave. Government agents frequently infiltrate groups, a process that induces those agents sometimes to provoke terrorist actions that may not occur otherwise. Another problem in dealing with terrorists comes from the fact that there are no accepted rules for dealing with them. On the one hand, governments generally claim they should be treated as criminals, but rules that designate appropriate responses to criminal deeds are never found to be fully appropriate. Terrorists, on the other hand, usually claim they should be treated as enemy soldiers, but they do not follow the accepted rules of war.

Each wave is driven by a distinctive purpose. The First or Anarchist Wave was committed to equality. Nationalism or the self-determination principle inspired the Second or Anticolonial Wave after World War I; then in the 1960s, more radical aspirations become conspicuous again in the Third or New Left Wave. In 1979 , religion replaced secular principles of legitimacy, and the Fourth or Religious Wave began, which should dissipate in the 21st-century ’s third decade. If history repeats itself, a Fifth Wave will appear with a new purpose, one unlikely to be known ahead of time. In each wave, groups often emerge dedicated to single issue like the Earth Liberation Front, or to support the government, like the Ulster Volunteer Force. Because those groups do not aim to transform the domestic and/or international systems, they are not examined here as part of the wave.

Important unanticipated political events were crucial in generating each wave. The Paris Commune catastrophe ( 1871 ) inspired the belief that a new method of insurrection was necessary and helped ignite the First Wave. The Anticolonial Wave was linked to the Versailles Treaty after World War I, which demonstrated how much the international world had become committed to the principle of self-determination. In Europe, the empires of the defeated powers like Austro-Hungary were divided into sovereign nation states. The overseas empires of defeated states largely became League of Nations mandates administered by one of the victorious states until the mandate’s population was deemed able to govern itself. But terrorist uprisings occurred in those territories against the mandate governments and uprisings also occurred in the victors’ overseas empires. The New Left Wave was fueled by Castro’s revolution in Cuba and the U.S. disaster in Vietnam. The Religious Wave was the outcome of four events in 1979 . The Iranian Revolution was the first and most important; it transformed a secular state into a religious one, a state that promoted religious terror. Other events demonstrated the weakness of secular elements in pushing popular international political agendas within the Middle East, such as the Soviet Union's military efforts in Afghanistan to protect a Marxist government.

While waves survive for similar periods, the rhythms of each may be very different. It took some time for the Paris Commune to have its effect. While the end of World War I produced several uprisings quickly, only one was successful. A second major political event, the Atlantic Charter in 1941 , defined the intentions of the Allies toward all imperial territories, making it much easier to generate successful terrorist campaigns after World War II. Indeed, the end of the Second Wave occurred when the energy of governments to resist, not the energy of terrorists to keep fighting, dissipated. The principal event producing Third Wave was the Vietnam War but it lasted 9 years, and not until its fourth year, in 1968 , did the wave get going. The Fourth Wave emerged immediately in 1979 .

Some tactics are used in every wave, but each wave introduces and emphasizes different ones. The First Wave was committed to assassination; the Second Wave aimed to eliminate the police; the Third Wave was consumed with hostage taking; and the Fourth Wave introduced self-martyrdom or suicide bombing. Although the geographic center of each wave is different, Western states have always been a principal target, and they were a major source for terror in the First and Third waves.

A wave contains many individual groups, but the number varies in each wave. Each wave has groups with different purposes. In the First Wave, the populists claimed to represent the masses alienated from a government controlled by an out-of-touch closed elite; the populists had socialist aspirations. Anarchists were the second group aiming to eliminate the state and all forms of inequality. The Anarchist Wave is so named because anarchists seemed to be active everywhere and to produce the most provocative acts, which led the public influenced by the media to make the terms terrorist and Anarchist interchangeable (Jaszi, 1930 ). The third type were the Nationalists, who aimed to create separate states. Nationalists remained present in every wave, though their tactics and rationale varied depending on the wave they were associated with. All Second Wave groups were nationalist, but they had either right-wing or left-wing programs for the states they intended to establish.

The Third or New Left Wave produced two major forms: revolutionaries and separatists. There were two kinds of revolutionaries, the transnational and the national. The transnationals were very small groups that emerged in the developed world of Western Europe and North America and saw themselves as Third World agents. Their internationalism was reflected in their targets and in their commitment to cooperate with foreign groups. But they were the wave’s least durable groups. The priorities of both the national revolutionaries and the separatists were to remake their own states immediately. National revolutionaries sought a state based on radical equality, while the separatists wanted to create a new state from an ethnic base that often transcended state boundaries and thus could create serious tensions with neighboring states. Separatists were present everywhere except Latin America, where all groups were national revolutionaries, a unique quality that is discussed in the analysis of the Third Wave.

Secular causes inspired the first three waves, but religious ingredients were sometimes important because they were connected with ethnic and national identities, as the Irish, Armenian, Macedonian, Cypriot, Quebec, Israeli, and Palestinian examples illustrate (Tololyan, 1992 ). But these earlier groups did not seek to eliminate secular influences by recreating religious regimes within their original boundaries, a process that would uproot the existing international system, an aim that would be a crucial feature for the Fourth Wave.

Fourth or Religious Wave groups are classified by the respective religions that inspired them. Islam initiated the wave. Iran was a secular state that became a religious one; it committed the first terrorist act and was deeply involved throughout the wave in supporting global terrorist activity, a pattern not seen before. Iran originally aimed to bring the Shia and Sunni, the two principal Islamic sects, together, but instead it produced a variety of serious deadly conflicts between those sects that had not been experienced for centuries. One of the conflicts was the Iran–Iraq War ( 1980–1988 ), the 20th century ’s longest conventional war. 8 The wave’s most important durable groups were Islamic, and they devised the wave’s distinctive tactic, self-martyrdom (i.e., “suicide bombing”), which made the wave the most indiscriminate and destructive one. The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest and most spectacular suicide bombing events in history, killing 2,996 people and injuring more than 6,000 others, thus producing more casualties than the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.

A few Islamic groups like Hamas aim to create a national religious state. But many want to transform the international world by eliminating the system of independent states where each has sovereignty over its territory and equal standing in international law, an arrangement the Treaty of Westphalia created in 1648 . Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) aim to establish a caliphate that all Muslims, no matter where they live in the world, are obliged to obey. The Islamic diaspora intensified the wave’s global character; immigrants occasionally made attacks in their new homes and some went back to join groups in Islamic territories. The First Wave also produced a similar pattern, though the two waves seem very different otherwise.

Other Fourth Wave religions have produced groups with more limited territorial aspirations and therefore pose no threat to the international system as a whole. Sikhs aimed to secede from India and re-establish the religious state of Khalistan (Land of the Pure), which the British made part of India in 1849 . The Tamils of Sri Lanka also aimed to secede. Although it was not a religious group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) used the tactic of suicide bombing to fight against Buddhist efforts to make Sri Lanka a religious state. Sikh and Tamil diasporas in the West were significant supporters and provided much of the finances needed. Religious Jews in Israel want to transform the country into a religious state that would regain all its ancient Biblical territories. Some Christian groups in the United States fought to make it a religious state. Jews and Christians produced far fewer casualties than other groups in the wave, but the apocalypse is a theme in Jewish and Christian groups and could under certain circumstances produce catastrophic experiences.

The number of groups varies in each wave, and that number dissipates when no new ones emerge to replace those destroyed. Waves overlap each other in time and space. A few Second Wave groups in Africa were still alive in the 1970s, and some Third Wave groups aided them in their struggles for independence. The Fourth Wave emerged in the middle of the Third Wave. That induced some Third and Fourth Wave groups to fight each other bitterly, especially in the Middle East, something that never happened before.

Creation of the Global Political and Technological Contexts

The wave phenomenon cannot be understood fully without seeing it as a byproduct of the French Revolution. The first three waves embraced some key aspirations of the Revolution, while the Fourth explicitly rejected the Revolution’s ideals altogether, especially its hostility to religion.

After Napoleon was crushed, the relationship between domestic and international politics in Europe became transformed. Many insurrections occurred, inspired by desires to achieve the French Revolution’s unfulfilled promises, particularly with respect to new state boundaries, republicanism, secularism, and egalitarianism. In 1820 , 1830 , 1848 , and 1871 , uprisings in one European state generated comparable ones elsewhere. Europeans crossed borders easily (as no passports were needed) and became deeply involved in revolts elsewhere. The French Revolution abolished the practice of extraditing individuals for political reasons, and most European states continued this practice afterwards, intensifying the uprisings’ international character (Bassiouni, 1974 ). A new type of person emerged, described by de Tocqueville as the “professional revolutionary” (Richter, 1967 ), an intellectual devoting all his time to revolutions, moving from one country to another to foster them (e.g., Filippo Buonarroti, Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Peter Kropotkin). 9

Uprisings created Belgium, and helped produce Italy and Germany, but there were so many failures that many after 1848 sought a more radical revolutionary model. In 1864 , the First Internationale, claiming 8 million members, emerged to unite socialist, communist, and anarchist groups with trade unions for the impending class struggle. When France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War ( 1871 ), radicals established the Paris Commune, abolishing private property. The French response was devastating. Some 20,000 communards and sympathizers were killed, more than the Franco-Prussian War casualty numbers, and more than 7,500 were either jailed or deported to distant places overseas. Thousands fled to Belgium, England, Italy, Spain, and the United States. Radicals became convinced that the support of standing armies for their governments made mass uprisings unrealistic. A new method was necessary—small groups employing terror.

Important technological changes contributed to terrorism’s global character. In the First Wave, the telegraph enabled one to transmit information immediately across the world, enabling daily mass newspapers to describe incidents and plans quickly to very large numbers of people. The railroad and the steamship made international travel easy, quick, and inexpensive. Each successive wave was associated with communication and transportation innovations that intensified its global dimension, making it possible to bring global elements even closer together. The telephone and the radio were important in the Second Wave, television and airplanes were crucial in the Third, and the Internet shapes the Fourth.

In 1867 , Alfred Nobel patented dynamite for mining purposes. But soon it was used to make a new type of bomb, much easier to construct, conceal, and move than previous bombs; it could be detonated by a timer, enabling attackers to escape before the explosion. The bomb became the major weapon for terrorists, a major reason Nobel gave his fortune to establish the annual Nobel Prizes, especially the one devoted to peace! 10 The bomb is still the terrorist’s principal weapon, and it is likely to remain so, though many analysts have argued that terrorists will soon use weapons of mass destruction.

Before the 1880s, terrorism was confined to group activities in a particular territory, activity that had no specific impact elsewhere, lasted for different time periods, and therefore had no relationship to the concept of generations. The Zealots and Siccari who led the Jewish uprising against Rome in the 1st century were active for 25 years (Rapoport, 1984 ), the Assassins of the late 11th century survived for three centuries in the Muslim world, the Sons of Liberty who helped stimulate the American Revolution were active for a decade, and the Ku Klux Klan fought a successful 5-year campaign uprooting Reconstruction policies after the American Civil War (Rapoport, 2008 ). But global terror groups interact with each other, states, foreign social entities, and international organizations, and in a generation, the wave appears in most or all inhabited continents and then dissipates.

The First Wave began in Russia and quickly spread throughout Europe. Within a decade, it appeared in North and South America, and in the 20th century , in Asia, Australia, and Africa. Foreign personalities sometimes founded domestic groups (e.g., the Russian Mikhail Bakunin in Spain). Immigrants and diaspora communities became critical elements. Some states gave terrorists aid and sanctuaries. Events in one state often had significant impact elsewhere. Prominent nationalist struggles created serious potential threats to international peace. Armenians and Macedonian militants aimed to provoke major European states to invade the Ottoman Empire. Those European states knew intervention could produce a great war, putting major European powers on different sides, and avoided the situation several times. But somehow that lesson was forgotten in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire was not involved.

A century passed before a scholar recognized that one could not understand global terrorism without putting it in the context of international waves. In 1986 , Zeev Ivianski wrote

The terrorist wave is the work of a generation . . . as a result of some profound historical shock. . . . The generation of the terror destroys itself, has no direct continuation, yet the tradition renews itself in later waves of violence, (Ivianski, 1986 ) 11

The four global waves are discussed in detail in additional articles: the Anarchist, Anti-Colonial, New Left and Religious.

• Anderson, B. (2005). Under three flags: Anarchism and the anti-colonial imagination . New York: Verso.
• Bassiouni, M. (1974). International extradition law and world public order . Amsterdam: Luitingh-Sijthoff.
• Bush, George W. (2001). Available at https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord
• Clausewitz, C. (1991) On war . In A. Rapoport (Ed.), Clausewitz on war . Dorchester, U.K.:Dorset Press.
• Eppright, C. (1997). Counterterrorism and conventional military force: The relationship between political effect and utility. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism , 20 (4), 333–344.
• Hofstadter, R. (1970). Reflections on violence in the United States. In R. Hofstadter & M. Wallace (Eds.), American violence: A documentary history . New York: Alfred E. Knopf.
• Ivianski, I. (1986). Lechi’s share in the struggle for Israel’s liberation. In E. Tavin & Y. Alexander (Eds.), Terrorists or freedom fighters . Fairfax, VA: Hero Books.
• Jaszi, O. (1930). Anarchism. Encyclopaedia of the social sciences . New York: Macmillan.
• Jensen, R. (1981). The International Anti-Anarchist Conference of 1898 and the origins of Interpol. Journal of Contemporary History , 6 (2), 323–347.
• Jensen, R. B. (2001). The United States, international policing, and the war against anarchist terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence , 13 (1), 15–46.
• Passell, P. (1996, September 5). Economic scene. New York Times .
• Pennock, R. (1967). Revolution . New York: Atherton.
• Rapoport, D. C. (1970). Generations in America. In B. Crick & W. Robinson (Eds.), Protest and discontent . London: Penguin.
• Rapoport, D. C. (1982). The moral issue: Some aspects of individual terror. In D. C. Rapoport & Y. Alexander (Eds.), The morality of terrorism: Religious and secular justifications . Oxford: Pergamon.
• Rapoport, D. C. (1984). Fear and trembling: Terrorism in three religious traditions. American Political Science Review , 78 (3), 658–677.
• Rapoport, D. C. (2008). Before the bombs there were the mobs: American experiences with terror. Terrorism and Political Violence , 20 (2), 167–194.
• Rapoport, D. C. , & Alexander, Y. (1989). The orality of terrorism (2d ed., revised). New York: Columbia University Press.
• Rapoport, D. C. , & Weinberg, L. (2001). Elections and violence. In D. C. Rapoport & L. Weinberg (Eds.), The democratic experience and violence . Portland, OR: Frank Cass.
• Richter, M. (1967). Tocqueville’s contribution to the theory of revolution. In C. J. Friedrich & R. Pennock (Eds.), Revolution . New York: Atherton Press.
• Schlesinger, R., Jr. (1986). The cycles of American history . New York: Houghton Mifflin.
• Steward, P. , & McGowan, B. (2013). The Fenians: Irish rebellion in the North Atlantic World, 1858–1876 . Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
• Stewart, S. (2012). The myth of the end of terrorism. Stratford Security Weekly , February 23.
• Tololyan, K. (1992). Terrorism in modern Armenian culture. Terrorism and Political Violence , 4 (2).
• Strauss, W. , & Howe, N. (1991). Generations: The history of America’s future, 1584 to 2069 . New York: Morrow.
• Strauss, W. , & Howe, N. (1997). The fourth turning . New York: Three Rivers Press.

1. In the French Revolution, the government created the Reign of Terror, in which the rules governing criminal acts were ignored; individuals were punished not for their acts but because their character was deemed inappropriate for the new world being created. Our subject in this essay is rebel terror. State terror is discussed briefly in the essay on the First or Anarchist Wave.

2. The absence of assassination is odd. Three years before the 2nd edition was published, President Kennedy became the fourth American president assassinated. Six other presidents were attacked before Kennedy’s tragedy. No major state had as many heads of states and/or prime ministers killed in that 100 year period. Many more efforts were made after the 2nd edition was published; eight presidents were targeted, and Ronald Reagan was wounded.

3. For an interesting discussion of the relevance of Clausewitz for terrorist studies, see Eppright ( 1997 ).

4. The importance of generation has an unusual and often forgotten history. Plato discussed the transformation of governments from one political form to another as a generational process. But his successors thought social status, class, and ethnicity were much more useful to explain change. The concept of generation as essential for understanding political change was revived in the 19th century when democracy became a significant feature of political life. Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic study of American politics stated major changes occurred only when a new generation emerg1ed. “Among democratic nations each generation is a new people” that provokes a “struggle between public and private concerns.” Two other prominent figures in Tocqueville’s generation made similar points. Auguste Comte emphasized that generations had an important role in determining “the velocity of human evolution,” and John Stuart Mill refined Comte’s concept, arguing that in each successive age the “principal phenomena” of society are different only when a “new set” of individuals reaches maturity and takes possession of society. Important early 20th-century scholars also became committed to the notion. Karl Mannheim published his “The Problem of Generations” in 1927 and his contemporary Ortega y Gasset contended that generation is “the pivot responsible for the movements of historical evolution”.

5. In popular U.S. discourse, references to generations appeared before the 1960s and were linked to political events. “Baby Boomers” were born after World War II and became wealthy and “optimistic and produced a striking increase in birth rates. The “Lost Generation” fought in World War I and the “Greatest Generation” fought in World War II!

6. Schlesinger developed the concept of generation in Chapter 2. The Oxford English Dictionary indicates that generation usually means 30 years, but sometimes it can mean 40 years.

7. Generation as a tool for analyzing American political history was also employed in two books by Strauss and Howe ( 1991 and 1997 ). They use the term cycle , too.

8. Iran did not start the war, but Iraq was fearful that it would make great inroads in Iraq’s Shia population and decided to attack when Iran had hardly completed its own revolution.

9. Bakunin and Kropotkin were Russian anarchists, Buonarroti was an Italian utopian socialist, and Proudhon a French anarchist.

10. In 1888, Alfred’s Nobel’s brother Ludvig died while visiting France and a French newspaper erroneously thought Alfred had died and published Alfred’s obituary! “The merchant of death is dead . . . who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.” Furious with this description, Alfred became very concerned with how he would be remembered. He had no wife or children, and gave his fortune to establish the annual Nobel Prizes. See Lallanilla, M. , The Dark Side of the Nobel Prizes (2013). Four persons described as terrorists received the Nobel Peace Prize when they made significant efforts to create peaceful solutions: Menachem Begin (1978), Anwar Sadat (1978), Nelson Mandela (1993), and Yasser Arafat (1994). Ironically, four American presidents also got the prize: Theodore Roosevelt (1905), Woodrow Wilson (1919), Jimmy Carter (2002), and Barak Obama (2009).

11. In this article, Ivianski discussed only the First Wave, but in a later piece, he discussed the Second Wave, in which he participated.

Related Articles

• Waves of Political Terrorism
• Military Defection and the Arab Spring
• Women and Terrorism
• Civil War and Terrorism: A Call for Further Theory Building
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: Anarchist Wave
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: Anticolonial Wave
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: New Left Wave
• Terrorism as a Global Wave Phenomenon: Religious Wave
• Suicide Terrorism Theories

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Terrorism High School Questions

Help students understand domestic and international terrorism through these essay and discussion questions.

Introduction

• What makes terrorism different from other forms of violence?  
• Why is cutting off funding for terrorism so important? Why is it so difficult?  
• What factors contribute to radicalization and violent extremism in the United States and other parts of the world?  
• How are domestic terrorism and international terrorism defined differently in U.S. law?  
• Has the threat from terrorism increased, decreased, or remained steady? Why do you say so? 
• How is media coverage part of terrorists’ strategy? Should the media cover terrorists as much as they do—or, indeed, at all? Why or why not?
• To what extent is terrorism an effective means for groups or individuals to achieve political objectives, and why?  
• Do you agree that counterterrorism policies that infringe on civil liberties are necessary and justifiable? Why or why not?  
• Evaluate the definitions of terrorism put forward by various departments of the U.S. government. Is there one that you think is better than the others? Why or why not? 

Confronting Terror

• What is the difference between counterterrorism tactics and counterterrorism strategy?  
• How successful has the United States been at combating terrorism since 9/11?  

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war on terrorism

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• Middle East Policy Council - What exactly is the "War on Terror?"
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war on terrorism , term used to describe the American-led global counterterrorism campaign launched in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 . In its scope, expenditure, and impact on international relations , the war on terrorism was comparable to the Cold War ; it was intended to represent a new phase in global political relations and has had important consequences for security, human rights , international law , cooperation, and governance .

The war on terrorism was a multidimensional campaign of almost limitless scope. Its military dimension involved major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , covert operations in Yemen and elsewhere, large-scale military-assistance programs for cooperative regimes, and major increases in military spending. Its intelligence dimension comprised institutional reorganization and considerable increases in the funding of America’s intelligence -gathering capabilities, a global program of capturing terrorist suspects and interning them at Guantánamo Bay , expanded cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies, and the tracking and interception of terrorist financing. Its diplomatic dimension included continuing efforts to construct and maintain a global coalition of partner states and organizations and an extensive public diplomacy campaign to counter anti-Americanism in the Middle East . The domestic dimension of the U.S. war on terrorism entailed new antiterrorism legislation, such as the USA PATRIOT Act ; new security institutions, such as the Department of Homeland Security ; the preventive detainment of thousands of suspects; surveillance and intelligence-gathering programs by the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and local authorities; the strengthening of emergency-response procedures; and increased security measures for airports, borders, and public events.

The successes of the first years of the war on terrorism included the arrest of hundreds of terrorist suspects around the world, the prevention of further large-scale terrorist attacks on the American mainland, the toppling of the Taliban regime and subsequent closure of terrorist-training camps in Afghanistan , the capture or elimination of many of al-Qaeda ’s senior members, and increased levels of international cooperation in global counterterrorism efforts.

However, critics argued that the failures of America’s counterterrorism campaign outweighed its successes. They contended that the war in Afghanistan had effectively scattered the al-Qaeda network, thereby making it even harder to counteract, and that the attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq had increased anti-Americanism among the world’s Muslims, thereby amplifying the message of militant Islam and uniting disparate groups in a common cause. Other critics alleged that the war on terrorism was a contrived smokescreen for the pursuit of a larger U.S. geopolitical agenda that included controlling global oil reserves, increasing defense spending, expanding the country’s international military presence, and countering the strategic challenge posed by various regional powers.

By the time of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush ’s reelection in 2004, the drawbacks of the war on terrorism were becoming apparent. In Iraq , U.S. forces had overthrown the government of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and U.S. war planners had underestimated the difficulties of building a functioning government from scratch and neglected to consider how this effort could be complicated by Iraq’s sectarian tensions, which had been held in check by Saddam’s repressive regime but were unleashed by his removal. By late 2004 it was clear that Iraq was sinking into chaos and civil war; estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the period of maximum violence—roughly 2004 to 2007—vary widely but generally exceed 200,000. U.S. casualties during this period far outnumbered those suffered during the initial 2003 invasion. Afghanistan, which for several years had seemed to be under control, soon followed a similar trajectory, and by 2006 the U.S. was facing a full-blown insurgency there led by a reconstituted Taliban.

The Bush administration faced domestic and international criticism for actions that it deemed necessary to fight terrorism but which critics considered to be immoral, illegal, or both. These included the detention of accused enemy combatants without trial at Guantánamo Bay and at several secret prisons outside the United States, the use of torture against these detainees in an effort to extract intelligence, and the use of unmanned combat drones to kill suspected enemies in countries far beyond the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

By the last years of Bush’s presidency, public opinion had turned strongly negative concerning his handling of the Iraq War and other national security matters. This discontent helped Barack Obama , an outspoken critic of Bush’s foreign policy , win the presidency in 2008. Under the new administration, the expression war on terrorism —still closely associated with Bush policies—quickly disappeared from official communications. Obama made the rejection explicit in a 2013 speech in which he stated that the United States would eschew a boundless, vaguely defined “global war on terrorism” in favour of more focused actions against specific hostile groups. Under Obama, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were gradually wound down, although at the end of Obama’s presidency in 2016 there were still U.S. troops in both countries.

It is worth noting that beneath Obama’s rejection of the war on terrorism as a rhetorical device and as a conceptual framework for national security there were important continuities with the policies of his predecessor. The Obama administration, for example, greatly expanded the campaign of targeted killings carried out with drones, even eliminating several U.S. citizens abroad whom it deemed threatening. Special operations forces were greatly expanded and increasingly deployed to conduct low-profile military interventions in countries outside of acknowledged war zones. And U.S. security agencies continued to exercise the wide-ranging surveillance powers that they had accumulated during the Bush administration despite protests from civil liberties groups.

A Department of Homeland Security Emeritus Center of Excellence led by the University of Maryland

A consortium of researchers dedicated to improving the understanding of the human causes and consequences of terrorism

The future of terrorism research: a review essay.

This essay sets forth a research agenda to begin filling some key gaps in terrorism studies. Since the September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon that claimed over 3000 lives, interest in terrorism research has increased. After these attacks, the United States and other governments prioritized the scientific study of the causes of and responses to terrorism. Importantly though, our review of the terrorism literature demonstrates that despite this progress, intriguing questions remain underexplored or altogether unexplored. This essay identifies four gaps in terrorism studies: (1) employing non-terrorist comparison groups, (2) broadening the dependent variable (focus of study), (3) exploring exceptions/anomalies to “established” findings, and (4) engaging measurement issues. We discuss these issues and outline a research agenda that could begin to fill these gaps.

Publication Information

Chermak, Steven, Jeff Gruenewald, Joshua Freilich. "The Future of Terrorism Research: A Review Essay." International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice (May 2014).  http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01924036.2014.922321#.U9-SJONdUZl

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Before the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, the subject of terrorism did not loom large in philosophical discussion. Philosophical literature in English amounted to a few monographs and a single collection of papers devoted solely, or largely, to questions to do with terrorism. Articles on the subject in philosophy journals were few and far between; neither of the two major philosophy encyclopedias had an entry. The attacks of September 11 and their aftermath put terrorism on the philosophical agenda: it is now the topic of numerous books, journal articles, special journal issues, and conferences.

While social sciences study the causes, main varieties, and consequences of terrorism and history traces and attempts to explain the way terrorism has evolved over time, philosophy focuses on two fundamental—and related—questions. The first is conceptual: What is terrorism? The second is moral: Can terrorism ever be morally justified?

Philosophers have offered a range of positions on both questions. With regard to the problem of defining terrorism, the dominant approach seeks to acknowledge the core meaning “terrorism” has in common use. Terrorism is understood as a type of violence. Many definitions highlight the experience of terror or fear as the proximate aim of that violence. Neither violence nor terror is inflicted for its own sake, but rather for the sake of a further aim such as coercion, or some more specific political objective. But there are also definitions that sever the conceptual connection of terrorism with violence or with terror. With regard to the moral standing of terrorism, philosophers differ both on how that is to be determined and what the determination is. Consequentialists propose to judge terrorism, like everything else, in light of its consequences. Nonconsequentialists argue that its moral status is not simply a matter of what consequences, on balance, terrorism has, but is rather determined, whether solely or largely, by what it is. Positions on the morality of terrorism range from justification when its consequences on balance are good, or when some deontological moral requirements are satisfied, to its absolute, or almost absolute, rejection.

Philosophers working in applied philosophy have also sought to complement the discussions of terrorism in general with case studies—studies of the role and rights and wrongs of terrorism in particular conflicts, such as “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland (George 2000; Simpson 2004; Shanahan 2009), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Ashmore 1997; Gordon and Lopez 2000; Primoratz 2006; Kapitan 2008; Law (ed.) 2008), and the bombing of German cities in World War II (Grayling 2006; Primoratz 2010).

1.1.1 The reign of terror

1.1.2 propaganda by the deed, 1.1.3 the state as terrorist, 1.1.4 terrorists and freedom fighters, 1.2.1 violence and terror, 1.2.2 wide and narrow definitions, 1.2.3 some idiosyncratic definitions, 2.1 complicity of the victims, 2.2.1 terrorism justified, 2.2.2 terrorism unjustified, 2.3.1 basic human rights and distributive justice, 2.3.2 supreme emergency and moral disaster, 2.3.3 terrorism absolutely wrong, books, book chapters, and articles, special journal issues, other internet resources, related entries, 1. the conceptual issue.

The history of terrorism is probably coextensive with the history of political violence. The term “terrorism”, however, is relatively recent: it has been in use since late 18th century. Its use has repeatedly shifted in some significant respects. Moreover, in contemporary political discourse the word is often employed as a polemical term whose strong emotional charge occludes its somewhat vague descriptive meaning. All this tends to get in the way of sustained rational discussion of the nature and moral standing of terrorism and the best ways of coping with it.

1.1 “Terrorism” from the French Revolution to the early 21st century

When it first entered public discourse in the West, the word “terrorism” meant the reign of terror the Jacobins imposed in France from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794. Its ultimate aim was the reshaping of both society and human nature. That was to be achieved by destroying the old regime, suppressing all enemies of the revolutionary government, and inculcating and enforcing civic virtue. A central role in attaining these objectives was accorded to revolutionary tribunals which had wide authority, were constrained by very few rules of procedure, and saw their task as carrying out revolutionary policy rather than meting out legal justice of the more conventional sort. They went after “enemies of the people”, actual or potential, proven or suspected; the law on the basis of which they were operating “enumerated just who the enemies of the people might be in terms so ambiguous as to exclude no one” (Carter 1989: 142). The standard punishment was death. Trials and executions were meant to strike terror in the hearts of all who lacked civic virtue; the Jacobins believed that was a necessary means of consolidating the new regime. This necessity provided both the rationale of the reign of terror and its moral justification. As Robespierre put it, terror was but “an emanation of virtue”; without it, virtue remained impotent. Accordingly, the Jacobins applied the term to their own actions and policies quite unabashedly, without any negative connotations.

Yet the term “terrorism” and its cognates soon took on very strong negative connotations. Critics of the excesses of the French Revolution had watched its reign with horror from the start. Terrorism came to be associated with drastic abuse of power and related to the notion of tyranny as rule based on fear, a recurring theme in political philosophy.

In the second half of the 19th century, there was a shift in both descriptive and evaluative meaning of the term. Disillusioned with other methods of political struggle, some anarchist and other revolutionary organizations, and subsequently some nationalist groups too, took to political violence. They had come to the conclusion that words were not enough, and what was called for were deeds: extreme, dramatic deeds that would strike at the heart of the unjust, oppressive social and political order, generate fear and despair among its supporters, demonstrate its vulnerability to the oppressed, and ultimately force political and social change. This was “propaganda by the deed”, and the deed was for the most part assassination of royalty or highly placed government officials. Unlike the Jacobins’ reign of terror, which operated in a virtually indiscriminate way, this type of terrorism—as both advocates and critics called it—was largely employed in a highly discriminate manner. This was especially true of Russian revolutionary organizations such as People’s Will or Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR): they held that it was morally justified to assassinate a government official only if his complicity in the oppressive regime was significant enough for him to deserve to die, and the assassination would make an important contribution to the struggle. Their violence steered clear of other, uninvolved or insufficiently involved persons. Some instances of “propaganda by the deed” carried out by French and Spanish anarchists in the 1880s and 1890s were indiscriminate killings of common citizens; but that was an exception, rather than the rule. The perpetrators and some of those sympathetic to their cause claimed those acts were nevertheless morally legitimate, whether as retribution (exacted on the assumption that no member of the ruling class was innocent) or as a means necessary for the overthrow of the unjust order. Accordingly, in their parlance, too, the term “terrorism” implied no censure. When used by others, it conveyed a strong condemnation of the practice.

The terrorism employed by both sides in the Russian Revolution and Civil War was in important respects a throwback to that of the Jacobins. The government set up in Russia by the victorious Bolsheviks was totalitarian. So was the Nazi rule in Germany. Both sought to impose total political control on society. Such a radical aim could only be pursued by a similarly radical method: by terrorism directed by an extremely powerful political police at an atomized and defenseless population. Its success was due largely to its arbitrary character—to the unpredictability of its choice of victims. In both countries, the regime first suppressed all opposition; when it no longer had any opposition to speak of, political police took to persecuting “potential” and “objective opponents”. In the Soviet Union, it was eventually unleashed on victims chosen at random. Totalitarian terrorism is the most extreme and sustained type of state terrorism. As Hannah Arendt put it, “terror is the essence of totalitarian domination”, and the concentration camp is “the true central institution of totalitarian organizational power” (Arendt 1958: 464, 438). While students of totalitarianism talked of terrorism as its method of rule, representatives of totalitarian regimes, sensitive to the pejorative connotation of the word, portrayed the practice as defense of the state from internal enemies.

However, state terrorism is not the preserve of totalitarian regimes. Some non-totalitarian states have resorted to terrorism against enemy civilians as a method of warfare, most notably when the RAF and USAAF bombed German and Japanese cities in World War II (see Lackey 2004). Those who designed and oversaw these campaigns never publicly described them as “terror bombing”, but that was how they often referred to them in internal communications.

After the heyday of totalitarian terrorism in the 1930s and 1940s, internal state terrorism continued to be practiced by military dictatorships in many parts of the world, albeit in a less sustained and pervasive way. But the type of terrorism that came to the fore in the second half of the 20th century and in early 21st century is that employed by insurgent organizations. Many movements for national liberation from colonial rule resorted to it, either as the main method of struggle or as a tactic complementing guerrilla warfare. So did some separatist movements. Some organizations driven by extreme ideologies, in particular on the left, took to terrorism as the way of trying to destroy what they considered an unjust, oppressive economic, social and political system. This type of terrorism is, by and large, indiscriminate in its choice of target: it attacks men and women of whatever political (or apolitical) views, social class, and walk of life; young and old, adults and children. It shoots at people, or blows them up by planting bombs, in office buildings, markets, cafes, cinemas, places of religious worship, on buses or planes, or in other vulnerable public places. It also takes people hostage, by hijacking planes and in other ways.

As “terrorism” has by now acquired a very strong pejorative meaning, no-one applies the word to their own actions or to actions and campaigns of those they sympathize with. Insurgents practicing terrorism portray their actions as struggle for liberation and seek to be considered and treated as soldiers rather than terrorists or criminals. They often depict their enemy—the alien government, or the agencies of the social, political and economic system—as the “true terrorists”. For them, the test of terrorism is not what is done , but rather what the ultimate aim of doing it is. If the ultimate aim is liberation or justice, the violence used in order to attain it is not terrorism, whereas the violence aiming at maintaining oppression or injustice, or some of the “structural violence” embodying it, is. On the other hand, governments tend to paint all insurgent violence with the brush of “terrorism”. Government spokespersons and pro-government media typically assume that terrorism is by definition something done by non-state agents, and that a state can never be guilty of terrorism (although it can sponsor terrorist organizations). For them, the test of terrorism is not what is done , but who does it. When a state agency uses violence, it is an act of war, or reprisal, or defense of the security of the state and its citizens; when an insurgent group does the same, it is terrorism. Under these circumstances, one person’s terrorist is indeed another’s freedom fighter, and public debate about terrorism is largely conducted at cross purposes and to little effect. Attempts of the United Nations to propose a definition of “terrorism” that could be accepted by all states and embedded in international law so far have been frustrated by the same sort of relativism. Islamic countries would accept no definition that allowed national liberation movements in the Middle East and Kashmir to be portrayed as terrorist, whereas Western countries would accept no definition that allowed for state agencies to be guilty of terrorism.

1.2 Two core traits of terrorism and two types of definition

The evaluative meaning of “terrorism” has shifted considerably more than once. So has its descriptive meaning, but to a lesser degree. Whatever else the word may have meant, its ordinary use over more than two centuries has typically indicated two things: violence and intimidation (the causing of great fear or terror, terrorizing). The dominant approach to the conceptual question in philosophical literature reflects this. Terrorism is usually understood as a type of violence. This violence is not blind or sadistic, but rather aims at intimidation and at some further political, social, or religious goal or, more broadly, at coercion.

That is how (political) “terrorism” is defined by Per Bauhn in the first philosophical book-length study in English:

The performance of violent acts, directed against one or more persons, intended by the performing agent to intimidate one or more persons and thereby to bring about one or more of the agent’s political goals (Bauhn 1989: 28).

Another good example of a mainstream definition is provided in C.A.J. Coady’s article on terrorism in the Encyclopedia of Ethics :

The tactic of intentionally targeting non-combatants [or non-combatant property, when significantly related to life and security] with lethal or severe violence … meant to produce political results via the creation of fear (Coady 2001: 1697).

Yet another example is the definition proposed by Igor Primoratz:

The deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating some other people into a course of action they otherwise would not take (Primoratz 2013: 24).

These definitions put aside both the question of who the actor is and the question of what their ultimate objectives are, and focus on what is done and what the proximate aim of doing it is. They present terrorism as a way of acting that could be adopted by different agents and serve various ultimate objectives (most, but perhaps not all of them, political). It can be employed by states or by non-state agents, and may promote national liberation or oppression, revolutionary or conservative causes (and possibly pursue some nonpolitical aims as well). One can be a terrorist and a freedom fighter; terrorism is not the monopoly of enemies of freedom. One can hold high government or military office and design or implement a terrorist campaign; terrorism is not the preserve of insurgents. In this way much of the relativism concerning who is and who is not a terrorist that has plagued contemporary public debate (see 1.1.4 above) can be overcome.

Beyond concurring that violence and intimidation constitute the core of terrorism, the definitions quoted above differ in several respects. Does only actual violence count, or do threats of violence also qualify? Must terrorist violence be directed against life and limb, or does violence against (some) property also count? Does terrorism always seek to attain some political goal, or can there be non-political (e.g. criminal) terrorism? All these points are minor. There is also one major difference: while Coady and Primoratz define terrorism as violence against non-combatants or innocent people, respectively, Bauhn’s definition includes no such restriction. Definitions of the former type can be termed “narrow”, and those of the latter sort “wide”. Philosophical literature on terrorism abounds in instances of both types.

Should we adopt a wide or a narrow definition? A wide definition encompasses the entire history of “terrorism” from the Jacobins to the present, and is more in accord with current ordinary use. A narrow definition departs from much ordinary use by restricting terrorist violence to that directed at non-combatants or innocent persons. Thus it leaves out most of 19th century “propaganda by the deed” and political violence perpetrated by Russian revolutionaries which they themselves and the public called terrorist.

For these reasons, historians of terrorism normally work with a wide definition, and social scientists do so much of the time. But philosophers may well prefer a narrow definition. They focus on the moral standing of terrorism and need a definition that is particularly helpful in moral discourse. Morally speaking, surely there is a difference—for some, a world of difference—between planting a bomb in a government building and killing a number of highly placed officials of (what one considers) an unjust and oppressive government, and planting a bomb in a tea shop and killing a random collection of common citizens, including children. While both acts raise serious moral issues, these issues are not identical, and running them together under the same heading of “terrorism” will likely hamper, rather than help, discerning moral assessment.

Narrow definitions are revisionary, but (unlike those discussed in the next section) not implausibly so. They focus on the traits of terrorism that cause most of us to view the practice with deep moral repugnance: (i) violence (ii) against non-combatants (or, alternatively, against innocent people) for the sake of (iii) intimidation (and, on some definitions, (iv) coercion). In highlighting (ii), they relate the issue of terrorism to the ethics of war and one of the fundamental principles of just war theory, that of non-combatant immunity. They help distinguish terrorism from acts of war proper and political assassination, which do not target non-combatants or common citizens. It does not matter very much whether the victims of terrorism are described as “non-combatants” or “innocent people”, as each term is used in a technical sense, and both refer to those who have not lost their immunity against lethal or other extreme violence by being directly involved in, or highly responsible for, (what terrorists consider) insufferable injustice or oppression. In war, these are innocent civilians; in a violent conflict that falls short of war, these are common citizens.

Talk of involvement of individuals and groups in injustice or oppression raises the question: is the injustice or oppression at issue, and thus the standing of those implicated in it, to be determined by some objective criteria, or from the point of view of those who resort to violence? Coady chooses the former option. He approaches terrorism from the standpoint of just war theory and its principle of noncombatant immunity. “Combatants” is a technical term designating agents of aggression or, more broadly, “dangerous wrongdoers” or “agents of harm”; they are legitimate targets of potentially lethal violence. All others are noncombatants, and enjoy immunity from such violence (Coady 2004). This approach may not be difficult to apply in war, where the wrong or harm at issue is either aggression that needs to be repelled, or systematic and large-scale violations of human rights that provide the ground for humanitarian intervention. Issues of injustice or oppression that arise in an internal conflict that falls short of war, however, tend to be highly contentious: what some consider an imperfect, but basically morally legitimate political and social order, others may see as the epitome of injustice and oppression that must be overthrown, if need be by violence. Under such circumstances, when a highly placed political official is killed by insurgents, that may be characterized (and condemned) by many as an act of terrorism, while the insurgents and those sympathetic to their struggle may reject this characterization and portray (and justify) the killing as political assassination.

In order to avoid this kind of relativism, Primoratz puts forward a view that in one important respect takes on board the standpoint of the terrorist. The direct victims of terrorism are innocent in the sense of not being responsible, on any credible understanding of responsibility and liability, for the injustice or oppression the terrorists fight against—not responsible at all, or at least not responsible to the degree that makes them liable to be killed or maimed on that account. The injustice or oppression at issue need not be real; it may be merely alleged (by the terrorists). Being responsible for a merely alleged great injustice or oppression is enough for losing one’s immunity against violence, as far as the type of immunity and innocence relevant to defining terrorism is concerned. According to the traditional version of just war theory one does not lose immunity against acts of war only by fighting in an unjust war, but by fighting in any war. Similarly, one does not lose immunity against political violence only by holding office in or implementing policies of a gravely unjust government, but by holding office in or implementing policies of any government: as King Umberto I of Italy said after surviving an assassination attempt, such risk comes with the job. Members of these two classes are not considered innocent and morally protected against violence by those attacking them; the latter view their acts as acts of war proper or of political assassination, respectively. If the terrorists subscribe to a credible view of responsibility and liability, then, when they attack common citizens, they attack people innocent from their own point of view, i.e., innocent even if we grant the terrorists their assessment of the policies at issue. (This is not to say that those who consider a government to be gravely unjust have a moral license to kill its officials, but only that if they do so, that will not be terrorism, but rather political assassination. We can still condemn their actions if we reject their judgment of the policies at issue, or if we accept that judgment, but believe that they should have opposed those policies by nonviolent means. But we will not be condemning their actions qua terrorism.)

On this account, not only real, but also merely alleged injustice or oppression counts in determining the innocence of the victims and deciding which acts are acts of terrorism; thus such decisions are not hostage to endless debates about the moral status of contested policies. Nevertheless, a residue of relativity remains. The account presupposes a certain understanding of responsibility and liability: a person is responsible for a state of affairs only by virtue of that person’s voluntary, i.e., informed and free, act or omission that has a sufficiently strong connection with that state of affairs, and thereby becomes liable to some proportionately unfavorable response. Provided the terrorists accept some such understanding of responsibility and liability, they kill and maim people they themselves must admit to be innocent. To be sure, some militant organizations resort to violence which we perceive as terrorist, yet object to the label. They profess a view of responsibility and liability based on extremely far-fetched connections between states of affairs and human choices and actions, and argue that entire social classes or nations are responsible for certain policies and practices and all their members are liable to be attacked by deadly violence (for more on this, see 2.1 below). Such arguments can only be regarded as preposterous. We should insist on viewing their actions as terrorist, although they reject this description. It is not clear how this residue of relativity could be removed (Primoratz 2013: 16–21).

Some object to defining “terrorism” as violence against non-combatants or innocent persons. They argue that doing so runs together the question of the nature of terrorism and that of its moral status, and begs the moral issue by making terrorism unjustified by definition. We should rather keep these questions separate, and take care not to prejudge the latter by giving a wrong answer to the former. What is needed is a morally neutral definition of terrorism, and that means a wide one (Corlett 2003: 114–20, 134–35; Young 2004: 57). But it is doubtful that “terrorism” can be defined in some morally untainted way. The wide definitions these philosophers adopt contain the word “violence”, which is itself morally loaded. A narrow definition is not completely morally neutral, as violence against the innocent is clearly morally wrong. But what is clear is that such violence is prima facie wrong. The definition implies a general presumption against terrorism, not its sweeping moral condemnation in each and every instance, whatever the circumstances and whatever the consequences of desisting from it. The definition does not rule out that in certain circumstances it might not be wrong, all things considered. Ethical investigation is not preempted: a particular case of terrorism still needs to be judged on its merits.

Another way of settling the issue of wide vs. narrow definition is offered by Georg Meggle. He adopts a wide definition of terrorism, and goes on to distinguish two different types: terrorism in the strong sense, which deliberately, recklessly, or negligently harms innocent people, and terrorism in the weak sense, which does not. Obviously, the moral assessment of the two types of terrorism is going to be significantly different (Meggle 2005).

The vast majority of cases almost anyone without an ax to grind would want to classify as “terrorism” exhibit the two traits implied in ordinary use and highlighted by mainstream philosophical definitions such as those quoted above: violence and intimidation. But philosophical literature also offers definitions that leave out one or the other core component.

Some seek to sever the connection between terrorism and violence. Carl Wellman defines terrorism as “the use or attempted use of terror as a means of coercion”. Terrorism is often associated with violence, but that is because violence is a very effective means of intimidation. Yet “violence is not essential to terrorism and, in fact, most acts of terrorism are nonviolent” (Wellman 1979: 250–51). The last claim seems false on any non-circular interpretation. There may be many acts generally considered terrorist that do not involve actual violence, but are meant to intimidate by threatening it; but that is not enough to support the notion of “non-violent terrorism”, which seems odd. So does Wellman’s example of “classroom terrorism”: a professor threatens to fail students who submit their essays after the due date, causes panic in class, and thereby engages in terrorism.

Robert E. Goodin offers a similar account, emphasizing the political role of terrorism: terrorism is “a political tactic, involving the deliberate frightening of people for political advantage” (Goodin 2006: 49). This, he claims, is the distinctive wrong terrorists commit. Whereas on Wellman’s account one can commit an act of terrorism without either engaging in or threatening violence, merely by making a threat in order to intimidate, on Goodin’s account one need not even make a threat: one acts as a terrorist by merely issuing a warning about the acts of others that is meant to intimidate. This, too, seems arbitrary, although it makes sense as a step in an argument meant to show that “ if (or insofar as ) Western political leaders are intending to frighten people for their own political advantage, then (to that extent ) they are committing the same core wrong that is distinctively associated with terrorism” (Goodin 2006: 2).

It has also been suggested that terrorism need not be understood as inducing terror or fear. According to Ted Honderich, terrorism is best defined as “violence, short of war, political, illegal and prima facie wrong” (Honderich 2006: 88). This definition might be thought problematic on several counts, but the idea of “terrorism” without “terror” seems especially odd. The two are connected etymologically and historically, and this connection is deeply entrenched in current ordinary use. Intimidation is not the morally salient trait of terrorism ( pace Goodin), but it is one of its core traits that cause most of us to condemn the practice. We might consider severing the connection if Honderich offered a good reason for doing so. But he supports his highly revisionary definition by the puzzling claim that to define terrorism as violence meant to intimidate is to imply that terrorism is particularly abhorrent and thereby “in effect … invite a kind of prima facie approval or tolerance of war” (Honderich 2006: 93).

2. The moral issue

Can terrorism be morally justified? There is no single answer to this question, as there is no single conception of what terrorism is. If we put aside definitions that depart too much, and for no compelling reason, from the core meaning of “terrorism” (such as those cited in 1.2.3), we still need to decide whether the question assumes a wide or a narrow understanding of terrorism. A narrow conception of terrorism seems to be better suited to ethical investigation (1.2.2). Moreover, philosophers who work with a wide definition typically hold that terrorism that targets non-combatants or innocent persons is much more difficult to justify than “selective” terrorism which attacks only those who cannot plausibly claim innocence of the injustice or oppression at issue (and which accordingly does not count as “terrorism” on a narrow definition of the term). The present discussion therefore focuses on terrorism understood as violence against innocent civilians or common citizens, intended to intimidate and thereby to achieve some further (political) objective or, more broadly, to coerce.

One might try to justify some acts or campaigns of violence of this kind in two ways. One could argue that the victims may be non-combatants or common citizens, but nevertheless are not innocent of the wrongs the terrorists are fighting against. Alternatively, one could concede the innocence of the victims and argue that attacks on them are nevertheless justified, either by their consequences on balance, or by some deontological considerations.

If the former line of argument is successful, will it prove too much? In showing that an instance of violence was justified because those targeted were not really innocent, we will have shown that the act or campaign of violence at issue was actually not a case of terrorism. This may be merely a matter of semantics. There is a much more damaging objection. A terrorist act is characteristically the killing or injuring of a random collection of people who happen to be in a certain place at a certain time. Arguments to the effect that those people are not innocent of the wrongs the terrorist fights against will therefore have a very wide reach, and accordingly will be based on some simplistic conception of collective responsibility. These arguments will be of the sort offered, for example, by the 19th century anarchist Emile Henry. He planted a bomb at the office of a mining company which, if it had exploded, would have killed or injured a number of people who did not work for the company, but lived in the same building. He also planted a bomb in a café that did go off, injuring twenty people, one of whom later died of his injuries. At his trial, Henry explained: “What about the innocent victims? […] The building where the Carmeaux Company had its offices was inhabited only by the bourgeois; hence there would be no innocent victims. The whole of the bourgeoisie lives by the exploitation of the unfortunate, and should expiate its crimes together” (Henry 1977: 193). When commenting on the second attack, he said:

Those good bourgeois who hold no office but who reap their dividends and live idly on the profits of the workers’ toil, they also must take their share in the reprisals. And not only they, but all those who are satisfied with the existing order, who applaud the acts of the government and so become its accomplices … in other words, the daily clientele of Terminus and other great cafés! (Henry 1977: 195)

This is an utterly implausible view of responsibility and liability. It claims that all members of a social class—men and women, young and old, adults and children—are liable to be killed or maimed: some for operating the system of exploitation, others for supporting it, and still others for benefiting from it. Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the anarchist’s harsh moral condemnation of capitalist society, not every type and degree of involvement with it can justify the use of extreme violence. Giving the system political support, or benefiting from it, may be morally objectionable, but is surely not enough to make one liable to be blown to pieces.

Another, more recent example, is provided by Osama Bin Laden. In an interview in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001 he said:

The American people should remember that they pay taxes to their government and that they voted for their president. Their government makes weapons and provides them to Israel, which they use to kill Palestinian Muslims. Given that the American Congress is a committee that represents the people, the fact that it agrees with the actions of the American government proves that America in its entirety is responsible for the atrocities that it is committing against Muslims (Bin Laden 2005: 140–141).

This, too, is a preposterous understanding of responsibility and liability. For it claims that all Americans are eligible to be killed or maimed: some for devising and implementing America’s policies, others for participating in the political process, still others for paying taxes. Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant Bin Laden’s severe condemnation of those policies, not every type and degree of involvement with them can justify the use of lethal violence. Surely voting in elections or paying taxes is not enough to make one fair game.

Attempts at justification of terrorism that concede that its victims are innocent seem more promising. They fall into two groups, depending on the type of ethical theory on which they are based.

2.2 Consequentialism

Adherents of consequentialism judge terrorism, like every other practice, solely by its consequences. Terrorism is not considered wrong in itself, but only if it has bad consequences on balance. The innocence of the victims does not change that. This is an instance of a general trait of consequentialism often highlighted by its critics, for example in the debate about the moral justification of legal punishment. A standard objection to the consequentialist approach to punishment has been that it implies that punishment of the innocent is justified, when its consequences are good on balance. This objection can only get off the ground because consequentialism denies that in such matters a person’s innocence is morally significant in itself.

Those who consider terrorism from a consequentialist point of view differ in their assessment of its morality. Their judgment on terrorism depends on their view of the good to be promoted by its use and on their assessment of the utility of terrorism as a means of promoting it. There is room for disagreement on both issues.

Kai Nielsen approaches questions to do with political violence in general and terrorism in particular as a consequentialist in ethics and a socialist in politics. The use of neither can be ruled out categorically; it all depends on their utility as a method for attaining morally and politically worthwhile objectives such as “a truly socialist society” or liberation from colonial rule. “When and where [either] should be employed is a tactical question that must be decided … on a case-by-case basis … like the choice of weapon in a war” (Nielsen 1981: 435). Nielsen has a wide definition of terrorism, but his examples show that the innocence of the victims of terrorism makes no difference to its justification—that is, that his conclusions apply to terrorism in both the wide and narrow sense. In his view,

terrorist acts must be justified by their political effects and their moral consequences. They are justified (1) when they are politically effective weapons in the revolutionary struggle and (2) when, everything considered, there are sound reasons for believing that, by the use of that type of violence rather than no violence at all or violence of some other type, there will be less injustice, suffering and degradation in the world than would otherwise have been the case (Nielsen 1981: 446).

Historical experience, in Nielsen’s view, tells us that terrorism on a small scale, used as the sole method of struggle in order to provoke the masses into revolutionary action, is ineffective and often counterproductive. On the other hand, terrorism employed in conjunction with guerrilla warfare in a protracted war of liberation may well prove useful and therefore also justified, as it did in Algeria and South Vietnam. (For an earlier statement of the same view, see Trotsky 1961: 48–59, 62–65.)

Nicholas Fotion also uses a wide definition of terrorism. He, too, is a consequentialist (although some of his remarks concerning the innocence of many victims of terrorism might be more at home in nonconsequentialist ethics). But he finds standard consequentialist assessments of terrorism such as Nielsen’s too permissive. If some types of terrorism are justifiable under certain circumstances, such circumstances will be extremely rare. Terrorists and their apologists do not perform the requisite calculations properly. One problem is the “higher good” to be promoted by terrorism: more often than not, it is defined in ideological terms, rather than derived from settled preferences or interests of actual people. But for the most part Fotion discusses the issue of means. If a terrorist act or campaign is to be justified instrumentally, it must be shown (1) that the end sought is good enough to justify the means, (2) that the end will indeed be achieved by means of terrorism, and (3) that the end cannot be achieved in any other way that is morally and otherwise less costly. Terrorists not only, as a matter of fact, fail to discharge this burden; Fotion argues that, with regard to terrorism that victimizes innocent people, it cannot be discharged. All direct victims of terrorism are treated as objects to be used—indeed, used up—by the terrorist. But

in being treated as an object, the innocent victim is worse off than the (alleged) guilty victim. Insofar as the latter is judged to have done a wrong, he is thought of as a human. […] For the terrorist the innocent victim is neither a human in this judgmental sense nor a human in the sense of simply having value as a human being. Of course the terrorist needs to pick a human being as a victim … because [that] brings about more terror … But this does not involve treating them as humans. Rather, they are victimized and thereby treated as objects because they are humans (Fotion 1981: 464).

In reply, terrorists can claim that they advisedly sacrifice valued human beings for a higher good. But for this claim to carry any conviction, they would have to show that they have no alternative. Yet, Fotion argues, they always have the alternative of taking on the opponent’s military establishment, and often also have the option of going after government officials responsible for the wrongs they object to, instead of attacking innocent persons. That kind of terrorism may sometimes be justified, whereas terrorism that targets innocent people never is.

2.3 Nonconsequentialism

Within a nonconsequentialist approach to morality, terrorism is considered wrong in itself, because of what it is, rather than only because (and insofar as) its consequences are bad on balance. But this is not to say that this approach leaves no room whatever for morally justifying certain acts or campaigns of terrorism. Indeed, nonconsequentialist discussions of terrorism also present a range of positions and arguments.

A nonconsequentialist might try to justify an act or campaign of terrorism in one of two ways. One might invoke some deontological considerations, such as justice or rights, in favor of resorting to terrorism under certain circumstances. Alternatively, one might argue that the obvious, and obviously very weighty, considerations of rights (of the victims of terrorism) and justice (which demands respect for those rights) may sometimes be overridden by extremely weighty considerations of consequences—an extremely high price that would be paid for not resorting to terrorism. For the rejection of consequentialism is of course not tantamount to denying that consequences of our actions, policies, and practices matter in their moral assessment; what is denied is the consequentialists’ claim that only consequences matter.

Virginia Held operates with a broad notion of terrorism, but her justification of terrorism is meant to apply to terrorism that targets common citizens. Her discussion of the subject focuses on the issue of rights. When rights of a person or group are not respected, what may we do in order to ensure that they are? On one view, known as consequentialism of rights, if the only way to ensure respect of a certain right of A and B is to infringe the same right of C , we shall be justified in doing so. Held does not hold that such trade-offs in rights with the aim of maximizing their respect in a society are appropriate. Yet rights sometimes come into conflict, whether directly or indirectly (as in the above example). When that happens, there is no way we can avoid comparing the rights involved as more or less stringent and making certain choices between them. That applies to the case of terrorism too. Terrorism obviously violates some human rights of its victims. But its advocates claim that in some circumstances a limited use of terrorism is the only way of bringing about a society where human rights of all will be respected.

Even when this claim is true, that is not enough to make resort to terrorism justified. But it will be justified if an additional condition is met: that of distributive justice. If there is a society where the human rights of a part of the population are respected, while the same rights of another part of the population are being violated; if the only way of changing that and ensuring that human rights of all are respected is a limited use of terrorism; finally, if terrorism is directed against members of the first group, which up to now has been privileged as far as respect of human rights is concerned—then terrorism will be morally justified. This is a justification in terms of distributive justice, applied to the problem of violations of human rights. It is more just to equalize the violations of human rights in a stage of transition to a society where the rights of all are respected, than to allow that the group which has already suffered large-scale violations of human rights suffer even more such violations (assuming that in both cases we are dealing with violations of the same, or equally stringent, human rights). The human rights of many are going to be violated in any case; it is more just, and therefore morally preferable, that their violations should be distributed in a more equitable way (Held 2008).

It might be objected that in calling for sacrificing such basic human rights as the right to life and to bodily security of individual victims of terrorism for the sake of a more just distribution of violations of the same rights within a group in the course of transition to a stage where these rights will be respected throughout that group, Held offends against the principles of separateness of persons and respect for persons (Primoratz 1997: 230–31). In response, Held argues that

to fail to achieve a more just distribution of violations of rights (through the use of terrorism if that is the only means available) is to fail to recognize that those whose rights are already not fairly respected are individuals in their own right, not merely members of a group … whose rights can be ignored.

An argument for achieving a just distribution of rights violations is not necessarily about groups; it can be an argument about the rights of individuals to fairness (Held 2008: 89–90). (For further objections to Held’s argument, see Steinhoff 2007: 125–30; Brooks 2010; Nath 2011.)

In Held’s justification of terrorism, it is justice that requires that inescapable violations of human rights be more evenly distributed. There is a different way of allowing for the use of terrorism under certain circumstances within a nonconsequentialist approach to the ethics of violence. It could be argued that, as far as justice and rights are concerned, terrorism (or, in Held’s terminology, the kind of terrorism that targets the innocent) is never justified. Furthermore, considerations of justice and rights carry much greater weight than considerations of good and bad consequences, and therefore normally trump the latter in cases of conflict. However, in exceptional circumstances considerations concerning consequences—the price of not resorting to terrorism—may be so extremely weighty as to override those of justice and rights.

Michael Walzer offers an argument along these lines in his discussion of “terror bombing” of German cities in World War II. In early 1942, it seemed that Britain would be defeated by Germany and that its military could not prevail while fighting in accordance with the rules of war. Britain was the only remaining obstacle to the subjugation of most of Europe by the Nazis. That was “an ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives, an ideology and a practice of domination so murderous, so degrading even to those who might survive, that the consequences of its final victory were literally beyond calculation, immeasurably awful” (Walzer 2000: 253). Thus Britain was facing a “supreme emergency”: an (a) imminent threat of (b) something utterly unthinkable from a moral point of view. In such an emergency—a case of the “dirty hands” predicament that so often plagues political action (see Walzer 1973)—one may breach a basic and weighty moral principle such as civilian immunity, if that is the only hope of fending off the threat. So for more than three years, the RAF, later joined by the USAAF, deliberately devastated many German cities, killed about 600,000 civilians and seriously injured another 800,000 in an attempt to terrorize the German people into forcing their leadership to halt the war and surrender unconditionally. By early 1943 it was clear that Germany was not going to win the war, and all subsequent terror bombing lacked moral justification. But in its first year, in Walzer’s view, the terror bombing of Germany was morally justified as a response to the supreme emergency Britain was facing. Walzer then expands the notion of supreme emergency to apply to a single political community facing the threat of extermination or enslavement, and eventually to a single political community whose “survival and freedom” are at stake. For “the survival and freedom of political communities—whose members share a way of life, developed by their ancestors, to be passed on to their children—are the highest values of international society” (Walzer 2000: 254).

Here we have two different conceptions of supreme emergency. The threat is imminent in both, but the nature of the threat differs: it is one thing to suffer the fate the Nazis had in store for peoples they considered racially inferior, and another to have one’s polity dismantled. By moving back and forth between these two types of supreme emergency under the ambiguous heading of threat to “the survival and freedom of a political community”, Walzer seeks to extend to the latter the moral response that might be appropriate to the former. Yet whereas genocide, expulsion, or enslavement of an entire people might be thought a moral disaster that may be fended off by any means, its loss of political independence is, at most, a political disaster. If a polity to be dismantled lacks moral legitimacy, its demise may well be a moral improvement. But even if a polity does have moral legitimacy, a threat to its “survival and freedom” falls short of “an ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives”. If so, its military cannot be justified in waging war on enemy civilians in order to defend it. (On supreme emergencies see, for instance, Statman 2006; Kaplan 2011.)

There is another, less permissive position constructed along similar lines, but based on a more austere view of what counts as a moral disaster that might justify resort to terrorism. Contrary to what many fighters against social or economic oppression, colonial rule, or foreign occupation believe, evils of such magnitude that they can justify indiscriminate killing and maiming of innocent people are extremely rare. Not every case of oppression, foreign rule, or occupation, however morally indefensible, amounts to a moral disaster in the relevant sense. Nor does every imminent threat to “the survival and freedom of a political community” qualify, contrary to what Walzer has argued. However, if an entire people is subjected to extermination, or to an attempt at “ethnically cleansing” it from its land, then it is facing a true moral disaster and may properly consider terrorism as a method of struggle against such a fate. In view of their enormity and finality, extermination and “ethnic cleansing” of an entire people constitute a category apart. To be sure, resorting to terrorism in such a case will be morally justified only if there are very good grounds for believing that terrorism will succeed where nothing else will: in preventing imminent extermination or “ethnic cleansing”, or stopping it if it is already under way. Cases where both conditions are met will be extremely rare. Indeed, history may not offer a single example. But that does not mean that no act or campaign of terrorism could ever satisfy these conditions and thus turn out to be justified. Accordingly, terrorism is almost absolutely wrong (Primoratz 2013: chapter 6).

Both the “supreme emergency” and the “moral disaster” view will justify a resort to terrorism only when that is the only way to deal with the emergency, or to prevent the disaster, respectively. Just how certain must we be that terrorism will indeed achieve the goal, while no other method will? One might argue that when in extremis , we cannot apply stringent epistemic standards in deciding how to cope—indeed, if we cannot really know what will work, we must take our chances with what might. This is Walzer’s view: in such a predicament, we must “wager” the crime of terrorism against the evil that is otherwise in store for us. “There is no option; the risk otherwise is too great” (Walzer 2000: 259–260). It may be objected that this position highlights the enormity of the threat, while failing to give due weight to the enormity of the means proposed for fending off the threat—the enormity of terrorism, of deliberately killing and maiming innocent people. When that is taken into account, the conclusion may rather be that even in extremis , if terrorism is to be justified, the reasons for believing that it will work and that nothing else will must be very strong indeed.

Some hold that terrorism is absolutely wrong. This position, too, comes in different versions. Some philosophers work with a wide definition of terrorism, and argue that under certain circumstances “selective” terrorism that targets only those seriously implicated in the wrongs at issue may be justified (Corlett 2003, Young 2004). This seems to suggest that terrorism which is not selective in this way—that is, terrorism in the narrow sense—is never justified. Yet this does not follow: there is still room for arguing that terrorism of the latter type can be justified by further considerations, such as those of “supreme emergency” or “moral disaster”.

Per Bauhn does not leave it at that. He attempts to show that terrorism that targets non-combatants or common citizens can never be justified by deploying a slightly amended version of Alan Gewirth’s ethical theory. Freedom and safety are fundamental prerequisites of action and therefore must be accorded paramount weight. The need to protect them generates a range of rights; the right pertinent here is “an absolute right not to be made the intended victims of a homicidal project” all innocent persons have (Gewirth 1981: 16). When the absolute status of this right is challenged by invoking supreme emergency or moral disaster, Bauhn argues that there is a moral difference between what we are positively and directly causally responsible for, and what we are causally responsible for only indirectly, by failing to prevent other persons from intentionally bringing it about. We are morally responsible for the former, but (except in certain special circumstances) not for the latter. If we refuse to resort to terrorism in order not to target innocent persons, and thus fail to prevent some other persons from perpetrating atrocities, it is only the perpetrators who will be morally responsible for those atrocities. Therefore we must refuse (Bauhn 1989: chapter 5).

Some philosophers base their absolute rejection of terrorism on the slippery slope argument, and argue that “the appeal to supreme emergency is too dangerous to be allowed as a publicly available vindication for terrorism, no matter how rare the circumstances are meant to be” (Coady 2021: 143–44).

Stephen Nathanson seeks to ground the absolute immunity of civilians or common citizens and the absolute prohibition of terrorism which it entails in a rule-consequentialist ethical theory (Nathanson 2010: 191–208). Adopting civilian immunity, rather than adopting any other rule regulating the matter or having no rule at all, is the best way to reduce the killing and destruction in armed conflict. Moreover, the best consequences will be achieved by adopting it as an absolute rule, rather than as a rule allowing for exceptions in supreme emergencies. The idea of supreme emergency is vague. The criteria for proffering supreme emergency exemptions are liable to be applied in arbitrary and subjective ways. Finally, there is the slippery slope argument: “permitting [departures from the rule of civilian immunity, including terrorism] even under the direst circumstances will lower the bar for justifying such acts … broadcast the message that such behavior may sometimes be justified and … thus lend its weight to increasing the use of such methods” (Nathanson 2010: 207).

However, one can adopt rule-consequentialism as one’s ethical theory and yet view the immunity of civilians or common citizens and the attendant prohibition of terrorism as very stringent, but not absolute moral rules. Thus Richard B. Brandt and Brad Hooker do not view this immunity as absolute. They argue that a set of moral rules selected because of the good consequences of their adoption should include a rule that allows and indeed requires one to prevent disaster even if that means breaking some other moral rule. Even such a stringent moral rule as the prohibition of deliberate use of violence against innocent people may be overridden, if the disaster that cannot be prevented in any other way is grave enough. (See Brandt 1992: 87–88, 150–51, 156–57; Hooker 2000: 98–99, 127–36). There is thus some convergence at the level of practical conclusions between their understanding of the immunity of civilians or common citizens and the “moral disaster” position outlined above (2.3.2).

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Thanks to Andrew Alexandra, Tony Coady, and Thomas Pogge for helpful comments on a draft of this article.

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Terrorism Essay for Students and Teacher

500+ words essay on terrorism essay.

Terrorism is an act, which aims to create fear among ordinary people by illegal means. It is a threat to humanity. It includes person or group spreading violence, riots, burglaries, rapes, kidnappings, fighting, bombings, etc. Terrorism is an act of cowardice. Also, terrorism has nothing to do with religion. A terrorist is only a terrorist, not a Hindu or a Muslim.

Types of Terrorism

Terrorism is of two kinds, one is political terrorism which creates panic on a large scale and another one is criminal terrorism which deals in kidnapping to take ransom money. Political terrorism is much more crucial than criminal terrorism because it is done by well-trained persons. It thus becomes difficult for law enforcing agencies to arrest them in time.

Terrorism spread at the national level as well as at international level.  Regional terrorism is the most violent among all. Because the terrorists think that dying as a terrorist is sacred and holy, and thus they are willing to do anything. All these terrorist groups are made with different purposes.

Causes of Terrorism

There are some main causes of terrorism development  or production of large quantities of machine guns, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, nuclear weapons, missiles, etc. rapid population growth,  Politics, Social, Economic  problems, dissatisfaction of people with the country’s system, lack of education, corruption, racism, economic inequality, linguistic differences, all these are the major  elements of terrorism, and terrorism flourishes after them. People use terrorism as a weapon to prove and justify their point of view.  The riots among Hindus and Muslims are the most famous but there is a difference between caste and terrorism.

The Effects Of Terrorism

Terrorism spreads fear in people, people living in the country feel insecure because of terrorism. Due to terrorist attacks, millions of goods are destroyed, the lives of thousands of innocent people are lost, animals are also killed. Disbelief in humanity raises after seeing a terrorist activity, this gives birth to another terrorist. There exist different types of terrorism in different parts of the country and abroad.

Today, terrorism is not only the problem of India, but in our neighboring country also, and governments across the world are making a lot of effort to deal with it. Attack on world trade center on September 11, 2001, is considered the largest terrorist attack in the world. Osama bin Laden attacked the tallest building in the world’s most powerful country, causing millions of casualties and death of thousands of people.

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Terrorist Attacks in India

India has suffered several terrorist attacks which created fear among the public and caused huge destruction. Here are some of the major terrorist attacks that hit India in the last few years: 1991 – Punjab Killings, 1993 – Bombay Bomb Blasts, RSS Bombing in Chennai, 2000 – Church Bombing, Red Fort Terrorist Attack,2001- Indian Parliament Attack, 2002 – Mumbai Bus Bombing, Attack on Akshardham Temple, 2003 – Mumbai Bombing, 2004 – Dhemaji School Bombing in Assam,2005 – Delhi Bombings, Indian Institute of Science Shooting, 2006 – Varanasi Bombings, Mumbai Train Bombings, Malegaon Bombings, 2007 – Samjhauta Express Bombings, Mecca Masjid Bombing, Hyderabad Bombing, Ajmer Dargah Bombing, 2008 – Jaipur Bombings, Bangalore Serial Blasts, Ahmedabad Bombings, Delhi Bombings, Mumbai Attacks, 2010 – Pune Bombing, Varanasi Bombing.

The recent ones include 2011 – Mumbai Bombing, Delhi Bombing, 2012 – Pune Bombing, 2013 – Hyderabad Blasts, Srinagar Attack, Bodh Gaya Bombings, Patna Bombings, 2014 – Chhattisgarh Attack, Jharkhand Blast, Chennai Train Bombing, Assam Violence, Church Street Bomb Blast, Bangalore, 2015 –  Jammu Attack, Gurdaspur Attack, Pathankot Attack, 2016 – Uri Attack, Baramulla Attack, 2017 – Bhopal Ujjain Passenger Train Bombing, Amarnath Yatra Attack, 2018 Sukma Attack, 2019- Pulwama attack.

Agencies fighting Terrorism in India

Many police, intelligence and military organizations in India have formed special agencies to fight terrorism in the country. Major agencies which fight against terrorism in India are Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Terrorism has become a global threat which needs to be controlled from the initial level. Terrorism cannot be controlled by the law enforcing agencies alone. The people in the world will also have to unite in order to face this growing threat of terrorism.

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International Terrorism: The Challenge to Global Security Essay

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Introduction

International terrorism as a global challenge, discussion and conclusion.

The damaging effect of terrorism on modern society was brought to the world’s attention following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001. This acts by the Al-Qaeda terror network demonstrated that international terrorism has the power to disrupt social life even in the world’s super power.

Since then, a wide-ranging debate has developed about the level of threat that international terrorism poses to the global community. While some people regard international terrorism as a marginal threat, others see it as an existential threat to society.

This paper will argue that international terrorism is the main challenge facing the world in the context of international security and therefore, measures should be taken to address this issue and safeguard global security.

International terrorism has become the greatest danger to world security, overtaking the threats of military confrontations from rival great powers. Stewart (2006) observes that the international security threat posed by military confrontations between rival great powers has reduced dramatically since the Second World War.

Most Western nations have formed alliances such as NATO, which makes it almost impossible for them to engage in aggressive military confrontation against each other. The possession of nuclear weapons by the major powers such as Russia and China acts as a deterrence from any major confrontation (Lutz & Brenda 2004).

Nations are therefore more likely to resort to diplomacy instead of risk military confrontation with each other. However, international terrorists attack nations without fear of retaliation since they do not have a well established base or economic resources that they hope to protect.

The activities of international terrorist organization have made the world unsafe. Terror activities have not been limited to US targets and the rest of the world has suffered from the actions of terrorists. The international terror organization, Al Qaeda did not limit its attacks to US targets and on March 11, 2004, it carried out the Madrid train bombings.

London also experienced terrorist attacks in July 2005 when the London Underground was bombed by Islamist extremists (UK Defence and Security Report 2010). Indonesia experienced terrorist attacks in 2002 that killed 202 people while a hotel in Jakarta was bombed in 2003 killing 12 people.

Thieux (2004) asserts that these attacks prove that international terrorism is a serious and potential threat not only for the United States but also for EU member states and the rest of the world.

International terrorism presents the most significant risk to global nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Presently, all functioning Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) including nuclear weapons are in the hands of legitimate governments.

However, intelligence reports indicate that terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda have made efforts to obtain WMDs especially from weak states such as Pakistan. Bowen and Cottee (2012) state that if international terrorists obtain WMDs, they will be able to inflict major damages to targets all over the world.

International terrorism has increased the vulnerability of nations to attacks from their own citizens. Thieux (2004) documents that in addition to the Islamic radicals who joined the Al Qaeda network in the past, this terror organization now attracts members who are well integrated in the society.

International terrorist organizations are able to radicalize citizens of a country leading to the development of home-grown terrorists. For example, individuals can access jihadi websites and obtain information on suicide bombing (The UK Defence & Security Report 2010). Tackling this threat has proved to be a major challenge for most nations.

Thieux (2004) notes that international terrorism has led to a blurring between foreign and domestic affairs as nations have to deal with issues such as home-grown terrorists and sleeper cells. The difficulty of identifying terrorists increases the risk that these elements pose to the global community.

International terrorists are spread all over the world and it is difficult for law enforcement agencies to correctly identify all potential suspects. Stewart (2006) notes that unlike in a conventional war where the enemy combatants are easy to identify, the diverse pool of individuals involved in international terrorism makes the threat hard to identify.

International terrorism presents a major challenge since these actors do not follow any international laws of combat. There are well-established rules that can be used by nations when dealing with traditional security threats. These laws include rules of engagement that forbid soldiers from attacking unarmed civilians.

Diplomacy can also be used to resolve the differences between nations without resorting to armed confrontation. With international terrorism, there are no rules of engagement and terror organizations target civilians in order to spread fear (Engene 2004). The traditional tools of military deterrence and diplomacy are not effective in dealing with the threat of international terrorism.

International terrorism has led to the development of poor relationships between Western countries and the Arab world. Since most international terrorist organizations are operated by radical Islamists, the policies adopted by countries such as the US to counter them focus on these radical elements. The fight against terrorism has therefore focused on tackling the issue of Islamic extremism (Victoroff 2005).

This has proved to be problematic since terrorism organizations are not disparate and therefore cannot be handled using a uniform policy response. Hammond (2008) asserts that the overemphasis on Islamic extremism has led to the strengthening of the misperception especially in the Middle East that “the anti-terror campaign is actually a war on Islam” (p.220).

This situation has threatened to divide the world on religious basis. Hammond (2008) suggests that the division based on religious differences fostered by international terrorism is proving to be the greatest threat to international unity since the cold war.

International terrorism has contributed to the unpopularity of the US in many countries all over the world and the subsequent inclination of terrorists to attack US targets. Meyer (2009) states that terrorism threatens global security by disrupting the “peace of mind” of citizens and prompting aggressive retaliation by individual states.

Hammond (2008) reveals that following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration engaged in controversial security policies and effectively declared that America was at war with international terrorists. Due to the Bush policies, the US carried out military activities against terrorists and their affiliates and used economic means to influence the behaviours or interests of nations that harbour terrorists.

Terrorism threatens to disrupt international relations among traditional allies. Due to globalization, the movement of people from country to country has increased. Many international companies have established themselves in foreign countries and global trade is at a high level. International terrorists target Western citizens in foreign countries leading to immense political and psychological impact.

Tan (2007) documents that in 2002, the Al Qaeda affiliated network in South East Asia, Jemmah Islamiah, planned to carry out a terror attack against American targets in Singapore. If this attack had succeeded, it would have deteriorated the good relationship between the US and Singapore and greatly contributed to the growth of insecurity in the region.

The relationship between Pakistan and the UK has suffered due to international terrorism. The UK has accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent terrorism. In 2009, the UK arrested 12 Pakistani students in UK on suspicion of involvement in terrorism (UK Defence and Security Report 2010).

International terrorism undermines the good relationships between nations, and without this amicable relationship, global peace and security cannot be achieved.

The global community considers terrorism to be a significant threat to international peace. Following the events of 9/11, most nations, led by the US, have made a public declaration of war against international terrorism. The potential damages that international terrorists can cause, especially if they acquire WMD has led to arguments that terrorism is an “existential threat” for modern society (Meyer 2009).

With this realization, Western nations have tried to come up with a common and coordinated way of dealing with the threat of international terrorism. However, Thieux (2004) notes that the efforts have not been adequate and terrorism is still a major international threat.

This paper set out to demonstrate that international terrorism is the greatest threat to international security that the global community faces today. It begun by nothing that the global security threat posed by conventional military confrontations between nations is very low. However, the threat presented by international terrorism to global security is on the rise.

This threat has led to the deterioration of relationships especially between the West and Arab countries. The influence of terrorists has spread into many countries all over the world and various attacks have been carried out. For this reason, many countries view international terrorism as a threat to their security. Fighting global terrorism should therefore be a key priority for all nations.

Bowen, W & Cottee, M 2012, ‘Multilateral cooperation and the prevention of nuclear terrorism: pragmatism over idealism’, International Affairs , vol. 88, no. 2, pp. 349–368.

Engene, O 2004, Terrorism in Western Europe: Explaining The Trends Since 1950, Edward Elgar Publishing, NY.

Hammond, A 2008, ‘Two countries divided by a common threat? International perceptions of US and UK counter-terrorism and homeland security responses to the post-September 2001 threat environment’, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy , vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 218–239.

Lutz, J & Brenda, J 2004, Global Terrorism , Routledge, NY. Print.

Meyer, C 2009, ‘International terrorism as a force of homogenization? A constructivist approach to understanding cross-national threat perceptions and responses’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs , vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 647-666.

Stewart, P 2006, ‘Weak States and Global Threats: Fact or Fiction?’, Washington Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 27-53.

Tan, A 2007, ‘Singapore’s Cooperation with the Trilateral Security Dialogue Partners in the War Against Global Terrorism’, Defence Studies , vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 193-207.

Thieux, L 2004, ‘European Security and Global Terrorism: the Strategic Aftermath of the Madrid Bombing’, Central European Review of International Affairs , vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 59-74.

UK Defence and Security Report 2010, Domestic Security Overview , Business Monitor International Ltd, London.

Victoroff, J 2005, ‘The Mind of the Terrorist: A Review and Critique of Psychological Approaches’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution vol. 49, no.1, pp. 3-42.

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Bonded by loss: Women who lost dads in 9/11 and Oct. 7 terrorist attacks form sisterhood

Kristin Marino and Maya Peretz are two young women bonded by a profound loss.

Marino was just 3 years old when her father — Kenneth Joseph Marino, an firefighter for Rescue Company 1 in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen — was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. At least once a year, she goes to the World Trade Center reflecting pools to pay tribute to her father.

“I just feel like I’m with him when I’m here. This is where he still is, since they didn’t find him. I just have a peace that comes over me,” she told NBC New York.

Marino’s most recent visit took on added significance. As part of a new documentary, the 26-year-old Christian social media influencer met the 21-year-old Peretz, whose father was killed while trying to save her from the Oct. 7 terror attack at the Nova music festival in Israel.

Peretz told Marino in the documentary that she “was sure he was coming back home,” referring to her father. It was a feeling Marino could relate to.

“They never found my dad. For so long, because he wasn’t found, I had in the back of my mind, ‘Oh my dad’s going to come back.’ So it’s so beautiful to come back and visit his memorial,” she told Peretz in the documentary.

Until this past summer, the two were strangers on opposite sides of the world. Now they’ve come together to share the healing powers of friendship. But Marino didn’t expect there to be such an instant bond between them.

“Honestly I didn’t really know. I just knew that I just wanted to meet her… I didn’t know how it was going to go. I was a little nervous because we do have different beliefs, we live on different side of world, we talk in different languages,” Marino told NBC New York. “But I knew we were supposed to meet and it was going to go exactly how it was going to go.”

Peretz said there was a common understanding between the two girls that not many others have experienced.

“I felt like we both understood each other because we both have this trauma from terror. We got this instant connection because we both know how to lose someone to terrorism,” she said.

Their unlikely bond inspired Dan Luxemberg to share their moving story with the world.

“This documentary is really Kristin reaching out and saying, ‘My story happens around the world all the time. And I’m trying to bring everybody together and say, we have each other,’” Luxembourg said.

“It shouldn’t be like that, but it’s our job to stay strong and continue life in best way possible for them,” Peretz said in the documentary.

Marino lost her father, but not her faith. Now, she feels it’s her duty to lift up others dealing with trauma by reminding her millions of followers that they are not alone.

“No matter who loses their parent, their dad, their mom, it’s still not right. We’re still humans at end of the day, we can still come together and share that bond, is really special and really powerful in itself,” said Marino.

Adam Kuperstein is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who anchors NBC 4 New York’s 6 PM and 11 PM weekend newscasts.