Why is terrorism so prevalent now?

If we exclude terrorism inflicted by a state on its own population, the balance of non-state inflicted terrorism seems to need a method for inflicting terrorist attacks, a grievance worth killing and/or dying for, and a belief that fear will create change.

Methods are readily available, and don't require Cold War weapons. Anyone who has access to petrol can be a terrorist. I think that modern ICT is probably the biggest enabler for terrorism. It allows better coordination and bigger attacks.

Strong grievances are plentiful and diverse -- ethnic grievances, religious grievances, economic grievances... historically, the grievances underpinning terrorism tend to be prolonged and one-sided. It seems to me that where it's possible, the most effective way to prevent terrorism is to understand and address the grievances before they're seen as worth dying for.

A belief that fear will create change... it seems to me that Western nations may be playing 'let's pretend' here. A showy fear campaign certainly gets attention these days. Does that attention create change?

Zoombie said:

I love how Don suggests that a government can't run a health care system, but totally can sow the seeds of a new enemy intentionally twenty years before the new enemy would ever be needed to scare the population.

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They're not that smart. They play the numbers game. Run around kicking enough bullies in the kneecaps, whack enough hornets' nests, and sooner or later you'll get punched or stung.

Zoombie said:

I love how Don suggests that a government can't run a health care system, but totally can sow the seeds of a new enemy intentionally twenty years before the new enemy would ever be needed to scare the population.

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It's a matter of motivation. The politicians want us scared so that we'll continue to obey them. They don't give a damn if we drop dead of preventable diseases for lack of access to cheap healthcare. And, yet again, Zoombie:

Or they could just be so incompetent that they create an enemy to fight another enemy, without realizing that they had just made something worse than what we had before.

Zoombie said:

Or they could just be so incompetent that they create an enemy to fight another enemy, without realizing that they had just made something worse than what we had before.

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And then, instead of trying to fix the situation, some of them say, "Hey, we can use this for our own benefit."

Of course. But you can't have petty incompetent bureaucrats that can barely see beyond their own noses also planning ahead 20 to 30 years into the future...specially because our administration keeps cycling in and out new people and old people.

Seriously, sometimes I wonder if its not my cynicism but my common fucking sense you find so disturbing.

William Haskins said:

no. the number has grown.

the breakup of the soviet union, the rise of islamic militantism, more money, material, weapons and propaganda being pumped into gaza all have contributed.

please see here.

note the grid near the bottom with years 1970 and onward.

note how, once you get to 2000, the breakdown is often by month, instead of year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_attacks

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It's almost like terrorism started to gear up after the establishment of the UN...

But I'm sure that's just a weird coincidence. After all, the UN has brought us World Peace.

LOG said:

What's so different from the years previous to 2001 that terrorists weren't doing everything like 9/11?
Were we just always able to stop them, or did they gain a new edge at some point?

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From my perspective it's not that we've been so good at stopping terrorism. We've been very, very lucky.

In the past many of the acts of terrorism against the U.S. occured outside of our borders and was often directed at troops and diplomats as the list clearly indicates.

Prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, most acts of terrorism in the U.S. were perpertrated by domestic terrorists. But Ramzi Yousef brought the bloodshed to our own backyard and through his failure to bring the WTC down, provided the inspiration for his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and Osama bin Laden to finish the job eight years later.

I'm not going to argue the case the terrorists use to justify their crimes, but Yousef provided it at his trial when he said, "Yes, I am a terrorist, and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites."

From Africa to Afghanistan, to Great Britain to Minnesota, there are young men across the world whom are being radicialized into seeing America as what the Ayatollah Khomenini dubbed us, "The Great Satan" and bringing about the fall of The Great Satan is nothing less than a holy mission for some of them.

Despite the heinous acts of a Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in bombing the Murrah Federal Buidling in Oklahoma City, domestic terrorism does not present the same level of threat to the United States. American extremists remain a loose and unfocused association of radicals, religious fanatics and anarchists. There is no central philosophy that connects them.

I think that is what makes Islamic extremists more dangerous and certainly more persistent. I don't believe in profiling everyone who worships Allah as a potential threat to the U.S. However, It would be a bit naive to suggest a middle-aged soccer mom from the suburbs pissed off about healthcare reform and Wall Street bailours requires increased scrutiny as much as an exchange student who learned what he knows about the West from a madrassa in Pakistan.

I doubt the number of 'terrorist attacks' is any greater per capita on a global scale then any time in the past.

I doubt human nature has changed that much. Sure, there are fluctuations - good years and bad (if such a thing can be called 'good')

I think there's an increase in LOOKING for incidents to label as 'terrorist attacks' - where before they were labled something else - if anyone bothered to note them at all.

(WHO is the 'final arbiter' on what gets to wear the label? The anthrax attacks were a 'terrorist attack' but hardly anyone calls them that. Ditto the DC Sniper attacks. Hell just about any mass shooting can be called an act of terrorism... but here in the US they are rarely labeled that.)

robeiae said:

After all, the UN has brought us World Peace.

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I thought they brought us whirrled peas. Guess I was wrong.

BradyH1861 said:

I thought they brought us whirrled peas. Guess I was wrong.

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That was UL. Making for safer blenders and such.

To the extent that terrorism is an attempt to destabilise civil power, the following may be of interest:

Wikipedia said:

In the 1990s, about twenty civil wars were occurring concurrently during an average year, a rate about ten times the historical average since the 19th century. However, the rate of new civil wars had not increased appreciably; the drastic rise in the number of ongoing wars after World War II was a result of the tripling of the average duration of civil wars to over four years.This increase was a result of the increased number of states, the fragility of states formed after 1945, the decline in interstate war, and the Cold War rivalry.

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Early this century, the World Bank funded a study of causes of civil war (pub. 2005), which surveyed civil wars since the 1960s and 78 five-year periods in which no civil war occurred. The resulting model is called the Collier-Hoeffler Model, and it found that the major factors contributing to the probability of civil war were:

• Availability of finance -- especially, nations with a lot of agriculture/natural resources offer avenues to fund rebellions
• Opportunity cost of rebellion -- the more young adult males in education and employment, the lower the likelihood of rebellion
• Military Advantage -- High levels of population dispersion and the presence of mountainous terrain increased the chance of conflict.
• Grievance -- Most tests for "grievance" - including economic equality, political rights, ethnic polarization and religious fractionalization were statistically insignificant. Only ethnic dominance, the case where the largest ethnic group comprises a majority of the population, increased the risk of civil war. In other words, opportunity rather than grievance drives civil conflict.
• Population size -- The risk of a civil war rises approximately proportionately with the size of a country's population
• Time: The more time that has elapsed since the last civil war, the less likely it is that a conflict will recur.

Bearing in mind that terrorism is not civil war, but rather a fear-campaign toward a change in social order or social policy, I don't think that all the above analysis applies directly.

However, a lot of terrorism may follow social instabilities in other nations. For instance, many developed nations believe that the social instability in nations like Afghanistan directly contributes to terrorism in their own countries. Certainly, in the case of the IRA or the Basque separatists, the connection is obvious.

So, perhaps the increased presence of fragile states in the world, coupled with global travel/ICT opportunities, is a major factor in the terrorism we see.

From Max Abrahm's What Terrorists Really Want, pub. International Security, MIT Press 2008. At time of publication, Max was a political science doctoral candidate at UCLA, and formerly a Research Associate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

The most common strategies are to mitigate terrorism by decreasing its political benefits via a strict no concessions policy; decreasing its prospective politicla benefits via appeasement; or decreasing its political benefits relative to nonviolence via democracy promotion.

Are any of these counterterrorism strategeies likely to work? [...] The answer depends on whether [...] terrorists are in fact rational people who attack civilians for political gain. [...]

The strategic model rests on three core assumptions: (1) terrorists are motivated by [....] stable and consistent political prefrences; (2) terrorists evaluate the [...] payoffs of their [...] options; and (3) terrorism is adopted when the expected [...] return is superior [...]

Does the terrorist's decisionmaking process conform to the strategic model? The answer appears to be no. The record of terrorist behaviour does not adhere to the model's three core assumptions. Seven common tendencies of terrorist organisations flatly contradict them. [...]

Terrorist organizations:

1. do not achieve their [...] political goals by attacking civilians;
2. never use terrorism as a last resort;
3. reflextively reject compromises
4. have protean political platforms
5. generally carry out anonymous attacks; precluding target countries from making policy concessions;
6. with identical political plaforms routinely attack each other more than their [... mutual] enemy;
7. resist disbanding when they [...] fail to achieve their [...] platforms or when their [...] grievances have been resolved [...]

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Abrahm's view is that terrorists are 'social solidarity maximisers' -- their primary goal is to be terrorists together. In other words, terrorism follows a demand to socialise, and an opportunity to inflict terror on someone else.

In Abrahm's view, the 'demand side' comes from the socially dislocated, not the politically downtrodden. To the extent that our globalised world is much more socially dislocated, the 'demand side' may be growing.

Similarly, the 'supply side' comes from terrorist social networks and the resources they command. Just as civil war largely follows opportunity (see my post above on finance, free time, ease of striking from advantage, population size, and instabilities from recent conflicts), so perhaps the supply-side of terrorism works in a similar way.

Arguably with our large populations and their vulnerable infrastructure, enormous access to communications and information technology and international social networks, the supply side has burgeoned in recent years. Again -- there are echoes of the Collier-Hoeffler Model's findings on Civil War -- big populations are more vulnerable -- perhaps there's simply more opportunity?

What to do about it?

Abrahms proposes dealing with both supply and demand sides, especially: targeting the dislocated, Social Network Analysis, cutting social bonds between terrorist groups, establishing different social bonds... I pick up his conclusions with respect to Islamist terrorism below...

To lessen Muslims' sense of alienation from democratic societies, these societies must improve their records of cracking down on bigotry, supporting hate-crime legislation, and most crucially, encouraging moderate places of worship -- an important alternative for dislocated yout to develop strong affective ties with [...] moderate peers and mentors. In authoritarian countries, an abrupt transition to democracy risks empowering extremists [see my previous post about civil war following fragility]. These regimse must, however, permit the development of civil society to provide opportunities for the socially disenfranchised to bond in peaceful voluntary associations. Counterterrorism operations must also redouble their efforts to minimize collateral damage, which invariably creates dislocation, social isolation, and calls for revenge.

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Seems pretty sensible to me.

Ruv Draba said:

From Max Abrahm's What Terrorists Really Want, pub. International Security, MIT Press 2008.

...

Abrahm's view is that terrorists are 'social solidarity maximisers' -- their primary goal is to be terrorists together. In other words, terrorism follows a demand to socialise, and an opportunity to inflict terror on someone else.

In Abrahm's view, the 'demand side' comes from the socially dislocated, not the politically downtrodden. To the extent that our globalised world is much more socially dislocated, the 'demand side' may be growing.

...

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Bingo! That's exactly what I meant. Is it any surprise we see well-off White American dudes converting to Islam and moving to the Middle East to try to join training camps?

And there are many stories of terrorists where it sounds like they wanted to be part of a gang, maybe... or a rock star.

Westerners shoot up schools and malls, but I bet those type folks become suicide bombers in certain cultures. That's not the totality of it, of course, but I find it interesting that it includes these kinds of situations.

Ruv Draba said:

So, perhaps the increased presence of fragile states in the world, coupled with global travel/ICT opportunities, is a major factor in the terrorism we see.

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And why, exactly, can "fragile states" maintain their existence, despite their fragile nature? It's that big building in New York with all the flags...

Ruv Draba said:

.. their primary goal is to be terrorists together. In other words, terrorism follows a demand to socialise, and an opportunity to inflict terror on someone else.

In Abrahm's view, the 'demand side' comes from the socially dislocated, not the politically downtrodden. To the extent that our globalised world is much more socially dislocated, the 'demand side' may be growing.

Similarly, the 'supply side' comes from terrorist social networks and the resources they command. Just as civil war largely follows opportunity (see my post above on finance, free time, ease of striking from advantage, population size, and instabilities from recent conflicts), so perhaps the supply-side of terrorism works in a similar way.

Arguably with our large populations and their vulnerable infrastructure, enormous access to communications and information technology and international social networks, the supply side has burgeoned in recent years. Again -- there are echoes of the Collier-Hoeffler Model's findings on Civil War -- big populations are more vulnerable -- perhaps there's simply more opportunity?

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Btw, this is very much consistent with Hannah Arendt's ideas on the origins of totalitarianism (as given in her book: The Origins of Totalitarianism). I very much agree...but don't tell Fukuyama!

robeiae said:

And why, exactly, can "fragile states" maintain their existence, despite their fragile nature? It's that big building in New York with all the flags...

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Actually, I think it's a bit more complex.

WWII marked the end of European colonialism. Many of the 'fragile states' were ex-colonial states. Following the end of the Cold War, more fragile states emerged -- especially in the former Soviet bloc, but also in response to the US ceasing to prop up fragile governments. So the collapse of empire is often followed by civil war as declining empires fail to prepare their former vassals for self-governance.

But the stats show that the number of civil wars isn't increasing; what's increasing is their duration, in comparison to the more imperially-driven 19th century. Old civil wars would take around 18 months to end. Newer civil wars are lasting for years. This is attributable to several causes:

• In the 19th century, the big ideological divide was democracy vs monarchism. Alarmed monarchist states held most of the power, and would often gang up to put down democratic uprisings. This tended to make the rebellions short.
• By the same token, it was much easier to gain recognised power as a state -- you just needed a few cities and a standing army and/or navy. So the Pirates of the Barbary coast were considered a de facto state. They didn't have to rebel from the Ottomans to gain that status. In the US, states like Virginia and Massacheusetts didn't have sovreignty, but had weak federal controls and a lot of local power -- which also reduced incentive to secede.
• Civil wars were generally localised and fought for the capital, so they were easy to put down. One reason that the US civil war took so long was that it wasn't fought over control of a capital -- it was fought by attrition.

So, because the context of civil war is changing, wars are getting longer. But also, the amount of interstate war has dropped thanks to the establishment of interstate law and international enforcement. Because of this, fragile states which would normally have been eaten by expansionist neighbours, aren't being eaten. Moreover, international aid and a seat at the UN may maintain a facade of statehood that isn't actually the case on the ground.

Lastly, the intervention by regional powers and neighbours playing one side or the other is known to prolong civil wars.

Wikipedia said:

Superpowers, such as the European Great Powers, had always felt no compunction in intervening in civil wars that affected their interests, while distant regional powers such as the United States could declare the interventionist Monroe Doctrine of 1821 for events in its Central American "backyard". However, the large population of weak states after 1945 allowed intervention by former colonial powers, regional powers and neighboring states who themselves often had scarce resources. On average, a civil war with interstate intervention was 300% longer than those without. When disaggregated, a civil war with intervention on only one side is 156% longer, while intervention on both sides lengthens the average civil war by an addition 92%. If one of the intervening states was a superpower, a civil war is extended a further 72%; a conflict such as the Angolan Civil War, in which there is two-sided foreign intervention, including by a superpower (actually, two superpowers in the case of Angola), would be 538% longer on average than a civil war without any international intervention.

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So the worst we could say of the UN in this respect is that it's a mask of civility and compassion in which fragile states, neglected by their former imperial overlords struggle for effective statehood as neighbours, regional powers and superpowers prolong their civil wars to further self-interest, while being unable to eat the state directly.