Living History

Michael Burleigh notes '‘The most successful terrorist organisations are like judo black belts who know how to leverage an opponent’s strength against them," in this review of How Terrorism Ends published in Standpoint in March 2010.

How can terrorist movements be defeated or at least rendered harmless? Two insightful new works point the way forward.

Audrey Cronin, a Professor of Strategy at the US National War College, has just published How Terrorism Ends (Princeton), while the former US Treasury counter-terrorism expert Michael Jacobson has suggested ways to increase the number of terrorist dropouts.

How might our Age of Terror end?

Philip J. Palin writes this review for the National Institute for Strategic Preparedness, published in Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Volume 6, Issue 1 2009 Article 80.

How might our Age of Terror end? Or – if not the Age – at least the season we have known since September 11, 2001? Audrey Kurth Cronin offers six horsemen for our end times, instead of the traditional four:

1. Decapitation: Catching or Killing the Leader
2. Negotiations: Transition Toward a Legitimate Political Process
3. Success: Achieving the (Terrorist) Objective
4. Failure: Imploding, Provoking a Backlash, or Becoming Marginalized
5. Repression: Crushing Terrorism with Force
6. Reorientation: Transitioning to Another Modus Operandi

After examining a wide sample of modern terrorist movements, Dr. Cronin argues that these six categories are comprehensive (and they are her chapter titles). Alone, or in combination, these are the predictable means – or at least presenting causes – for the close of terrorist campaigns. But the author reaches beyond description to prescription. She explains, “The challenge is to understand why, when, and how these pathways affect a campaign’s end.” (p.8) Dr. Cronin hopes “to inoculate ourselves against the psychological manipulation of terrorist violence.” (p.1) Even better, she argues, is to act so as to advance the natural demise of terrorism. Most of the book is committed to a close examination of several endstates, diagnosing the early symptoms, successful anti-terrorist therapies, and final paroxysms of the Red Brigades, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), and many more. The diagnostic method is more psychological than medical. The author is sensitive to the key role of intentionality in terrorism.

Appetite for destruction

Audrey Kurth Cronin’s sober analysis of terrorism and its undoings, Justin Vogt writes, is a welcome change from the sweeping apocalyptic visions that pass for insight in the post-September 11 world.

In August, Barack Obama dispatched one of his national-security advisers, John Brennan, to deliver the first detailed public explanation of his administration’s approach to counterterrorism. In his speech, Brennan explained why Obama had retired the term “Global War on Terrorism”, which during the Bush years had come to define an all-encompassing, near-mystical national narrative of conflict without end. Terrorism is but a tactic, Brennan said, and “you can never fully defeat a tactic”. Obama, Brennan continued, hoped to restore counterterrorism “to its right and proper place: no longer defining – indeed, distorting – our entire national security and foreign policy”.