David Tucker Terrorism and Political Violence
Naval Postgraduate School 13(Autumn, 2001), pp. 1­14
What's New About the New Terrorism and How Dangerous Is It?
The `new terrorism' is said to be more networked, ad hoc, lethal and
dangerous than the old. This assessment of these claims concludes that
terrorism currently differs little from its previous manifestations, except
for the somewhat increased likelihood that a chemical, biological,
nuclear or radiological weapon might be used by terrorists. This does
not necessarily mean that terrorism is more dangerous than it was. The
critical factor in assessing the threat posed by terrorism is whether it is
used strategically.
Over the past decade, the belief has grown among some who study terrorism that
it is changing, that it has become `the new terrorism'.1
This terrorism is reputedly
distinguished from the old by a new structure, a new kind of personnel, and a new
attitude toward violence. The new structure is a network, facilitated by information
technology, the new personnel are amateurs, who often come together in ad hoc or
transitory groupings, and the new attitude an increased willingness to cause mass
casualties, perhaps by using chemical, biological, nuclear or radiological (CBNR)
weapons. Taken together, network organization and amateur participation suggest that
the `new terrorists' no longer need state sponsorship as much as their predecessors did.
The impression left by accounts of the new terrorism is that it is more dangerous or at
least more difficult to counter than its predecessor.
Now that this view has been well developed and ably presented, it is time to
assess it. Ultimately, we must ask whether what we see in terrorism today is really new
and in what ways and if it poses more of a threat than the old terrorism. On balance, we
will conclude that there is little that is new in the new terrorism and what is new is not
necessarily more dangerous or difficult to counter than the old.
The New Terrorism
A good place to begin an analysis of the new terrorism is its networked structure.
Terrorists are now able and willing to develop network forms of organization for the
same reason that businesses are. The information revolution, by lowering the cost of
communication, allows organizations to push functions outside a controlling hierarchical
structure. Organizations can thus flatten out their pyramids of authority and control and
approach a network form, a group of more or less autonomous, dispersed entities, linked
by advanced communications and perhaps nothing more than a common purpose.
Motivating or compelling the move from hierarchy to network are the advantages that an
organization acquires as it transforms itself. It becomes more flexible, adaptive and
resilient because each of its units senses and reacts on its own in loose coordination with
the others. This multiplies the opportunities for the organization to learn, making it more
flexible and adaptive. The organization becomes more resilient because if one or even
several of its constituent entities are destroyed, the others carry on. A network, unlike a
hierarchy, cannot be destroyed by decapitation.
In the case of terrorists, the loosely linked autonomous entities that make up a
network might be individuals, such as Ramzi Yousef, who organized the World Trade
Center bombing, or cells such as those involved in the leaderless resistance of the
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Christian Patriot movement in the United States. Leaderless resistance is `a system of
organization that is based upon the cell organization, but does not have any central
control or direction. . . . [A]ll individuals and groups operate independently of each
other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or
instruction, as would those who belong to a typical pyramid organization'.2
The entities
making up terrorist networks might also be large, more formal, even hierarchical
organizations that work together without any common hierarchy or central commanding
authority between them. Whatever the components of the network, what makes it a
network is the absence of this central authority or control.3
It is this feature that gives
networks their flexibility, adaptiveness and resilience, allowing them advantages over
organizations like the U.S. government, which appear more and more to be hierarchical
industrial-age dinosaurs.
One manifestation of this networking is the proliferation of the amateur terrorist
and the ad hoc terrorist group. Amateurs come together with the like-minded to conduct
a terrorist attack and then disband. They do not receive training or other logistical
support from state-sponsors but rely on networks of supporters, learning what they need
to know from publications or the world-wide web or demobilized soldiers. Because they
have only an informal organizational structure and no permanent existence, it is difficult
to spot such groups and take steps to counteract them. As transitory groups operating as
and supported by networks, they have no infrastructure, and do not benefit from a state
sponsor's infrastructure, the sort of assets that conventional military power can place at
risk.
One reason amateurs and ad hoc groups can operate as they do is an often
unremarked upon aspect of the communication revolution. In addition to facilitating
networks, the communication revolution also facilitates fundraising or, more generally,
the mobilizing of resources--political and individual support, and knowledge, as well as
money--that all terrorist organizations must do. The declining cost and increasing ease
of communicating over great distances means that terrorist groups have greatly increased
the potential pool of resources they can draw on. They can now more easily appeal to an
ethnic or religious Diaspora or to political sympathizers around the world. They can also
more easily get their message to a world-wide audience or to the people of the country or
countries they deem most important in their struggle. Through the world-wide web, they
have access to important sources of information.
An established government's disadvantages when confronting amateur networked
terrorists are all the more sobering because of the apparent increased willingness of `new
terrorists' to inflict mass casualties. Analysts explain this trend by pointing to a number
of factors, such as the diffusion of lethal technologies; the erosion of taboos against the
use of weapons of mass destruction; the absence of restraint on amateur terrorists who,
having no organization or sponsor to protect, see no reason to limit extreme violence that
might generate a backlash; and the continuing need of terrorists to find new ways of
attracting attention. In addition to these factors, analysts have tended to emphasize the
importance of religion. Religiously motivated terrorists are thought more likely to
conduct mass casualty attacks because, unlike politically motivated terrorists, they are not
constrained by the fear that excessive violence will offend some constituency, since they
care only about a small circle of the elect. Nor, for this reason, unlike politically
motivated terrorists, is their intent to pressure or persuade their opponents. For religious
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terrorists, the world is divided into `us' and `them', the saved and the damned, and the
damned are to be destroyed. This is especially so if the religious impulse takes on a
millennial character and the desire for a new order makes plausible the destruction of the
old. This has led some to speculate that religiously motivated terrorists might even be
willing to use weapons of mass destruction in their attacks, as might others whose
purpose is not to intimidate or persuade but rather simply to destroy. Such urges, coupled
with the increased availability of more potent weapons, suggests that terrorists arrayed in
a network or as a network of networks have apparently become opponents whose ability
to dance circles around governments is surpassed only by the increased lethality of their
punch.
The new terrorists appear to be formidable enemies. But are the disadvantages
governments labor under with regard to them quite as severe as this brief sketch
suggests? For that matter, is the new terrorism new? To answer both of these questions,
we may start where our sketch of the new terrorism started, with the question of network
structure.
Is the New Terrorism New?
The striking thing about the networked structure of the new terrorism is that it
differs little from the structure of the old terrorism. The Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), for example, was itself an umbrella group, like Hizballah,4
whose
dominant faction, Fatah, did not have a monopoly of power and whose constituent parts
have had different relations with each other, splintering and adhering and developing
different policies and strategies. One analyst of the PLO has spoken of it as a `network of
relationships.'5
Furthermore, the PLO was networked externally, by some reports, with
up to 21 different organizations that the PLO had previously trained or supplied with
weapons and other logistical support.6
Marxist or left-wing revolutionary groups also
became network-like as ideological differentiation lead to structural complexity. Many
of these groups, such as the Red Army Faction (RAF), were, despite the hierarchical
connotation of the word `army', not very hierarchical at all. The RAF spawned second
and third generations haphazardly and remained more a collection of terrorists sharing a
common purpose than a hierarchical organization. And these collectivities, too, were
parts of a larger network, getting support, for example, from Warsaw Pact members and
training from Middle Eastern terrorist groups.7
The role of Osama Bin Laden as a
wealthy patron of loosely affiliated terrorists connected by a common purpose rather than
a hierarchical or well-developed organizational structure has a precedent in the work of
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in the 1960s and early 1970s.8
We can find evidence of what is now called network structure even further back
in the history of terrorist organizations. One existed in Iran in the 1940s, for example. In
fact there is a very long tradition of these kinds of networks in the Middle East.9
They
are identical in structure and character to the networks associated with bin Laden. The
similarity arises, presumably, from a common source in the informal networked character
of Sunni Islam. In this light, the emergence in the Middle East of organizations less
hierarchical than those that operated in the 1970s and 1980s is a return to a more
traditional model as the distorting effect of an alien pattern of thought (MarxismLeninism)
dissipates.
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Terrorists may be increasing their use of information technology10
and modern
communications may facilitate networks but networks as a structure for terrorist or
violent non-state groups are not new. Indeed, in 1983, reflecting on 30 years study of
`extralegal violent organizations', and five years experience in the Polish underground
during Word War II, one analyst concluded that these `extralegal violent organizations'
had possessed during this period a network structure, a structure similar to that
considered new by analysts in the late 1990s.11
If the non-hierarchical, networked character of terrorism is not new, what about
the claims that terrorism now relies more on amateurs and less on state support? All
terrorists are amateurs when they begin. If their mistakes are not fatal, they may learn
and survive long enough to become professionals. If we have seen amateurs and ad hoc
groups among Islamist terrorists, it may be because the international Islamic movement
(as opposed to nationalist movements like Hamas and Hizballah) is relatively young. As
the principle of the survival of the proficient operates, we are likely to see the number of
professionals increase. Similarly, we are likely to see, indeed, we are already seeing,
fewer ad hoc groups. As the pressure brought to bear against these groups increases and
they come to appreciate the costs of operating as terrorists, we are also likely to see state
sponsorship or support become more important to them. In fact, this has already
happened to bin Laden. He has found state support necessary, as have most terrorists. In
short, the amateur and ad hoc character of the new terrorism is not so much new as
another manifestation of the life cycle of terrorism.
Although the networked, ad hoc character of contemporary terrorism is not new,
the terrorism we experience today, at least the international terrorism we experience, is
probably more lethal than it was when it first emerged three decades ago and more likely
to produce mass casualties. We can construct what we might call a lethality index for
international terrorism (Table 1)12
by dividing the number of casualties and fatalities in
any given period by the total number of incidents in the same period.
Table 1. Terrorism Lethality Index
FATALITIES
INDEX
PER CENT
CHANGE
FATALITIES &
CASUALTIES
INDEX
PER CENT
CHANGE
Twelve-year
increments
1969-1980 .55 1.61
1987-1999 .73 33 5.25 226
Five year
increments
1969-1973 .24 .99
1976-1980 .72 200 1.84 (1.52) 86 (53)
1986-1990 .75 4 2.63 43
1995-1999 .98 (.75) 31 (0) 10.68 (3.70) 306 (41)
Source: U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism. Data refer to international terrorism
only.
This table shows that international terrorism has literally become more lethal,
whether measured over twelve year periods during the earliest and latest phases of
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modern international terrorism or in selected five year increments over the last 31 years.
The largest per centage increase in lethality occurred, however, in the late 1970s. Since
then, lethality has rested at a higher plateau rather than surged ahead. Combining
casualties with fatalities produces evidence that should be of greater concern because it
indicates a tendency toward mass casualty attacks, especially over the last five years.
Indices such as these must be treated with caution. One particularly lethal year
can strongly affect statistics for lethality and casualties but a particularly lethal year may
not be a trend or even the beginning of a trend. Furthermore, the number of international
terrorist attacks in a given period `is strongly correlated to wars, major regional crises,
and other divisive world events' and so may reflect not underlying trends in terrorism but
`fluctuations in inter-state tensions'.13
Indeed, since calculations about lethality and
tendencies toward mass casualties, such as those in Table 1, are based on data for
international terrorism, the only aspect of terrorism for which data have been kept
systematically, they do not allow us to make generalizations about terrorism at all. The
lethality of contemporary international terrorism might appear in a different, more benign
light, if we could compare it accurately, for example, with the lethality of anti-colonial
terrorism in the immediate post-Word War II years or with other manifestations of
terrorism prior to Word War II. Finally, this index is not the only way to measure the
lethality of terrorism or a tendency toward mass casualties. With these limitations in
mind, we may conclude only that the lethality index in Table 1 suggests that international
terrorism has become more lethal and more likely to produce mass casualties.
It is worth looking more closely, however, at the rise in mass casualties over the
last five years. If we remove from the statistics Aum Shinrikyo's sarin attack in the
Tokyo Subway (1995, 12 killed; 5,500 casualties), the Tamil Tiger truck bombing of the
Central Bank in Colombo (1996, 90 killed; 1400 casualties) and the truck bombing of the
U.S. Embassy in Nairobi (1998, 291 killed; 5000 casualties) the tendency toward mass
casualty attacks becomes less pronounced. With these three events removed from the
calculations, the per centage increase in casualties in 1995-1999 (shown in parentheses in
Table 1) becomes lower than the increase in 1976-1980, when fatalities also increased the
most. The per centage increase in 1995-1999 is higher than in 1976- 1980 even if we
remove from the statistics (shown in parentheses in Table 1) three of the international
terrorist incidents that caused the most casualties between 1976 and 1980.14
Again,
without these three attacks, the casualty profile over the last decade or so appears to be a
plateau rather than a forward surge. In other words, 0.17 per cent of international
terrorist attacks in 1995-1999 caused 67 per cent of the casualties. The vast majority of
such attacks continue to produce a few casualties. The claim that there is a tendency
toward mass casualty attacks rests, then, on a very few cases compared to the total
number of international terrorist attacks. Does this prove that there is a new trend toward
mass casualties? At the moment, it is not possible to be certain. In 1999 and 2000, for
example, no mass casualty attack occurred.
If the issue of whether there is a new trend toward mass casualty attacks remains
at least somewhat open, then we may also wonder about the connection between
religiously motivated terrorism and the willingness to kill indiscriminately and even use
weapons of mass destruction, which features so prominently in discussions of the new
terrorism. First, we must note that historical evidence does not necessarily support the
notion that religious groups are more likely to use chemical or biological agents. For
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example, one analysis of a database of contamination incidents from 1968-1987 found
that only 0.5 per cent had a religious connection. A survey of bioterrorism and biocrimes
since 1900 found that only 2 of 54 confirmed or probable or possible uses of bioagents,
or 3.7 per cent, had a religious connection. (60 per cent of the events were criminal, 15
per cent terrorist, including the two with a religious connection, and 22 per cent were
carried out by a state.) 15
Religion may appear infrequently in these databases because an argument made
about the old terrorism applies to the new variant, even when religion is involved. To the
extent that terrorists with religious motivations also have political and social agendas--
for example, the establishment of an Islamic state--they will labor under the same kinds
of constraints that terrorists with political motivations labor under as they struggle to
achieve their political goals. They will have to worry about the popular reaction to their
violence. This does not mean that a religious group or a political group would never
commit mass casualty attacks. It means only that such groups have reasons not to do so.
Even if religiously inspired terrorists do not have political goals, politics will not leave
them alone. Whether or not they had political objectives or thought about them, Islamic
fundamentalists in Egypt and Algeria were undone in part by the political problems that
arose from their extreme violence.16
Their own supporters and sympathizers turned
against them. Over time, even militant Islamist groups will learn a lesson about the use
of extreme violence--there are good reasons to avoid it--or suffer a decline in life
expectancy.
This logic of action and reaction applies even to the international Islamists who
support jihad around the world and who have been responsible for several mass casualty
attacks. Their violent rhetoric and practice has made them the principal terrorist target of
the United States and other countries and increased the cooperation and resources brought
to bear against them and those who provide them haven. These measures have been
effective. Again, this does not mean that international Islamists will not use extreme
violence, only that they pay a price for doing so and, therefore, have reasons to think
about the utility of mass casualty attacks. This means that the new terrorists face the
same constraint as the old.
Another way to approach the role of religion in the new terrorism is to look at
recent examples of mass casualty attacks (an attack in which over 200 were injured).
During the 1990s, such attacks have been committed by Hizballah (two); Hamas; the
group associated with Ramzi Yousef; Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese sect; the Tamil
Tigers; Kach, a Jewish extremist group; and terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden
(two, Khobar Towers and the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.) Religiously motivated terrorists
figure prominently but not exclusively in this list (seven of nine). (The Tamil Tigers are
a traditional national liberation movement and the case of Ramzi Yousef apparently tells
us more about his peculiar psychology than about religious motivation.)17
In five of the
seven cases where religious motivation was present (Kach, Hamas, Hizballah (two), and
Khobar Towers) the methods used (bombing, shooting) and results obtained (around 200
casualties) were similar to attacks carried out in the past by groups that did not have a
religious motivation. In the two remaining cases with a religious motivation (the U.S.
Embassy bombing in Nairobi and Aum Shinrikyo's attack in the Tokyo subway), where
truly mass casualties occurred, only one involved a true weapon of mass destruction
(Aum Shinrikyo's attack).
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What may we conclude from this brief review of these cases? First, mass casualty
attacks, like another unusual form of terrorism, suicide attacks,18
are not exclusively a
religious phenomenon. Indeed, most terrorist groups with religious motivations today
conduct their operations with methods and results (in numbers wounded) that do not
differ from their secular predecessors. On the other hand, the Tamil Tigers, a nonreligious
terrorist organization, have conducted an attack that resulted in truly mass
casualties. Finally, sects like Aum, unlike other religiously motivated groups, may be
sufficiently divorced from this world and so intent on another that it makes sense to them
to create casualties more massive than any we have seen, and thus to use weapons of
mass destruction. This may be the only case in which religious motivation and such
terrible weapons go together without any countervailing argument or motivation.
Fortunately, in this case, precisely the psychology that makes the use of weapons of mass
destruction plausible to such a group--alienation, paranoia, delusions, inflexible devotion
to the rulings of a leader--may make it less capable of the engineering and planning
necessary to use them.19
More generally, this review of these cases of mass casualty
attacks suggests that "it is not religion per se, but the type of religion that is most
critical"20
in assessing the connection between religious motivation and mass casualty
attacks. Indeed, given the variety and complexity of religious motivation, the term
`religiously motivated terrorism' is not analytically useful.
More tightly framing the possible association of a religious impulse to mass
casualty attacks and to violence with weapons of mass destruction should not be
understood as a denial that a CBNR terrorist attack might occur. The other reasons cited
by analysts to explain why such an attack might happen remain valid. In addition, since
conventional war has become more lethal,21
we might suspect that unconventional war
will as well. It may be that 1998, the most lethal year for terrorism on record, is the
beginning of a long-term trend that will see unconventional means of political violence
follow the trail blazed by conventional means. Even if it is not, it remains true that the
likelihood of CBNR weapon use has probably increased.
In sum, the one thing new about the new terrorism is the increased likelihood of
the use of CBNR weapons. Terrorists have always been networked and, initially,
amateurish. They may now be no more or only a little more lethal or prone to commit
mass casualty attacks than they were 20 years ago. Indeed, if bin Laden's organization is
different from most other terrorist organizations, it is not because it is amateurish and
networked but because its personnel are more professional (or at least experienced--from
conflict in Afghanistan and elsewhere) and better organized, not to mention better
financed, than many of its predecessors.
How Dangerous is the New Terrorism?
Our review of the new terrorism generates an interesting question. If networks
are such powerful tools, and terrorists have been networked for thirty years or more, why
have governments not been more threatened by terrorists? There are a number of
reasons, of course, from the superior resources of governments to the international
cooperation that they have managed to achieve. Restricting ourselves to the effect of
networks in the struggle between governments and terrorists, we can see that there are
two reasons why terrorists have not posed a more serious threat to governments. First, a
network can be understood `as an informal community of individuals who share common
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norms or values. . . . Understood in this fashion, networks are not an alternative to
hierarchies but rather are typically overlaid on top of formal organizations, and are
frequently critical to the latter's proper functioning.'22
Thus, despite its hierarchical
structure, the U.S. government, for example, can be seen as a network. Of Hizballah it
has been said that `the formal structure is highly bureaucratic [but] interactions among
members are volatile and do not form rigid lines of control.'23
The very same could be
said of the structure of the federal government's Executive branch, not to mention
relations between this branch and its legislative counterpart or those between the federal
and state governments. In the Executive branch, no one is in charge except the President
and he is too busy to exert his authority over more than a handful of issues. Thus, often
autonomous agencies pursue their objectives without the benefit of `rigid lines of
control'.
True to its networked character, the U.S. government has shown a notable ability
to adapt when dealing with terrorism. Until recently without any formal central direction,
coordinated only by a committee of equals, united by shared norms and values, its
constituent agencies have developed a series of new ways to combat terrorism, from
international conventions against highjacking, to a hostage rescue capability, to economic
sanctions, to military retaliation, and then renditions, as terrorism changed and old
capabilities appeared to lose effectiveness.24
Moreover, to counter terrorism, this
network called the U.S. government has linked itself bilaterally and multilaterally in
networks with other governments and international organizations through treaties and
agreements. Again, in keeping with network characteristics, such arrangements have
worked best when norms were shared.
The successes of the United States in its confrontation with terrorism thus validate
the notion that it takes a network to fight a network.25
But we should not think of such
fights as struggles of invincible titans. Networks have weaknesses; this is the second
reason that terrorists have not posed a greater threat. At least one of the theorists of
leaderless resistance recognizes this. `While it is true that much could be said against this
kind of structure [leaderless resistance] as a method of resistance, it must be kept in mind
that leaderless resistance is a child of necessity. The alternatives to it have been shown to
be unworkable or impractical'26
because of the successes of law enforcement and the
U. S. Justice Department against the so-called Patriots.
Adopting a network structure is not, therefore, necessarily a sign that a movement
or organization is at the cutting edge in the art of conflict. It may, rather, be a sign of
distress. Nor should we think that adopting a network structure will necessarily provide
relief. For, like most things, the virtues of a network are, from another perspective, its
vices. As autonomous units, network members can sense and respond independently,
which increases adaptability. At the same time, however, this autonomy diminishes
control and coordination. Diminished control and coordination, in turn, can increase the
difficulty of accomplishing complex tasks and the likelihood that an ill-judged action will
undermine the entire network. For example, Patriot groups and militias with whom the
bomber of the Federal building in Oklahoma City had had contact scrambled to dissociate
themselves from him as police investigations of his contacts intensified in the aftermath
of the bombing. Martha Crenshaw argues that the entire Front for the Liberation of
Quebec (FLQ) suffered a serious setback in 1970 when one of its independent cells
kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, the Quebec Minister of Labor. Divisions within
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the PLO network have caused similar problems for Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian
cause.27
Perhaps even more important than control over tactical and strategic decisions for
the success or failure of a terrorist organization is control over communications.28
As it
increases the autonomy of its members, a network structure leads to diminished control
over the number and kinds of communications that take place in the network. This
increases discovery and entry opportunities for those outside the network, including its
enemies. This characteristic of network organization imposes a high cost on terrorist
groups who adopt such a structure, since communicating is the greatest vulnerability of a
clandestine organization. Being part of a network or building one, therefore, will be very
risky for terrorists. Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the attack on the World Trade Center
and the very model of a new terrorist, was undone by a new component of his network
who turned him in. Even the more hierarchically structured terrorist groups are likely to
be networked with concentric circles of supporters and then sympathizers, with whom
they must communicate. Good tradecraft and encryption can limit the risks of such
communication but cannot completely remove them. For any organization with
something to hide, an organizational form that diminishes control over communication
increases risk. If terrorist networking is looser now than it was in the past, then terrorists
are increasing their operational risks. The quick arrests following the embassy bombings
in Africa in 1998 resulted from luck but also, apparently, from the fact that the loose,
networked structure of bin Laden's organization allowed outsiders a number of different
opportunities to gather information about it.29
Like the networked terrorism to which it is related, amateur or ad hoc terrorism
provides advantages that from another perspective become disadvantages. Amateurs are
hard to spot and hard to threaten because they have no permanent organization and
infrastructure; but because they have no permanent organization and infrastructure, they
have a limited ability to train, learn lessons, or develop counterintelligence and other
skills. They are, therefore, easier to penetrate, once discovered, than professionals and
liable to make shocking blunders, as the history of the group that bombed the World
Trade Center indicates. It is true that if they are not assisted by a state, amateur terrorists
will have more freedom to operate because they will not be constrained by that state's
political agenda. It is also true, however, that lacking state support, amateurs are likely to
lack the resources to exploit this freedom, even if they take advantage of the
opportunities for resource mobilization supplied by modern means of communication.
Usama bin Laden may be an exception in this regard. Ramzi Yousef, on the other hand,
claimed that he was not able to use a chemical agent in his attack on the World Trade
Center because he did not have enough money to buy the required amount of cyanide.30
Given the weaknesses of amateurs, it may well be to our advantage if terrorists are now
more amateurish than they were, although as we have noted, this unfortunately is
probably not the case or will not be for long.
The first two characteristics of the supposedly new terrorism--a network structure
and amateur participants--would not necessarily make terrorism more dangerous than it
was, even if they were truly new characteristics of terrorism. What about mass casualty
attacks or the possible use of CBNR? Do these make the new terrorism more dangerous?
To answer this question we must consider what we mean by `more dangerous'. If we
mean by this term hurting more people, then by definition a tendency to more mass
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casualty attacks would mean that terrorism had become more dangerous. But if we mean
by `more dangerous' that terrorism is more likely to achieve its goals, goals that are
inimical to the interests of the countries and people it targets, then more mass casualty
attacks are not necessarily more dangerous. Terrorists have scored several mass casualty
attacks in the Middle East, but these have not gotten the terrorists closer to their
objective. Neither have the mass casualty attacks in the United States gotten the
perpetrators of these attacks closer to theirs.
The use of a CBNR weapon to produce mass casualties, on the other hand, might
well be an exception to the claim that mass casualty attacks are not inherently more
dangerous than other kinds of terrorist attacks. Because of the psychological effect that
such an attack is likely to have, it might well do damage out of proportion to the number
killed. One such attack might move terrorists closer to achieving their objectives than
other kinds of mass casualty attacks. Even in this case, however, the danger posed by
such an attack would depend on the political preparations for and the technical response
to it.
The argument so far about the danger of mass casualty or CBNR attacks assumes
that they occur in isolation. A string of such attacks occurring in a coordinated fashion in
a relatively short period of time would certainly pose greater danger, by any definition,
than one or two unrelated incidents occurring several years apart. But such a string of
attacks, especially if intended to occur within one of the advanced industrial countries,
would be possible probably only with a planning, security and logistical capability that
would be beyond what the new terrorists would be capable of. In fact, such a string of
attacks would very likely be impossible without state support.
What should we conclude finally about the threat posed by the supposedly new
terrorism? It is possible that terrorists could get hold of a CBNR weapon and devastate a
city. Without minimizing the damage this would do, especially the possible political
damage, we must conclude that this is not the greatest threat posed by terrorism. The
economies and societies of the industrial countries are wealthy enough and networked
enough and their political life, or so we must hope, principled and resilient enough to
survive such an attack. As far as terrorism is concerned, what has always posed the
greatest threat is the shrewd and ruthless use of terrorism in the service of a strategically
significant objective contrary to the interests of the target country or government,
especially when this kind of terrorism has had the backing of an equally clever and
ruthless state authority. From this perspective, the lethality of a group is not critical.
Neither is it critical whether a particular group is networked or hierarchical or composed
of amateurs or professionals. Networks and hierarchies have different strengths and
weaknesses and are thus suited for different environments and tasks.31
The critical issue
is whether terrorists and their sponsors can adapt their structure and strategy, including
their use of violence, to their environment and to the degree and kind of pressure that
governments can bring to bear against them. Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), for
example, `reorganized itself from a largely decentralized system' to a more centrally
controlled one in 1974 `to survive government repression and heavy attrition of
membership ranks'.32
Those terrorists and supporters that are adaptable in this way, that
have strategic sense, are shrewd and ruthless, toward themselves and their enemies, are
likely to survive the longest, become more professional, and over the long-term more
lethal. Above all, they will pose the greatest danger.
Tucker
Terrorism and Political Violence
13(Autumn, 2001), pp. 1­14
11
Notes
1
Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press 1998); Ian O. Lesser, Bruce
Hoffman, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, Michele Zanini, Countering the New Terrorism (Santa Monica:
RAND, 1999); Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism, Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (New
York: Oxford University Press 1999); Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, `America and the New
Terrorism', Survival 42(Spring, 2000) pp.59­75 and Olivier Roy, Bruce Hoffman, Reuven Paz, Steven
Simon and Daniel Benjamin, `America and the New Terrorism: An Exchange', Survival 42(Summer 2000)
pp.156­172 . Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass 2000), provides an
abundance of information useful in evaluating the newness of the new terrorism.
2
Louis Beam, `Leaderless Resistance', http://www.crusader.net/texts/bt/bt04.html, accessed March 16,
2001.
3
On the differences between networks and other forms of organization, see Francis Fukuyama and Abram
N. Shulsky, The `Virtual Corporation' and Army Organization (Santa Monica: RAND 1997) pp.4­24.
4
John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt and Michele Zanini, `Networks, Netwar, and Information-Age Terrorism',
in Zalmay M. Khalilzad and Jon P. White (eds.) The Changing Role of Information in Warfare (Santa
Monica: RAND 1999) p.95.
5
Helena Cobban, The Palestine Liberation Organisation, People, Power and Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1984) p.140.
6
Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (note 1) pp.84, 113.
7
Stefan Aust, The Baader-Meinhof Group, The Inside Story of a Phenomenon (London: The Bodley head
1987).
8
Compare Claire Sterling, The Terror Network, the Secret War of International Terrorism (New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1981) pp.25­48 and Tim Weiner, `Man with a Mission Takes on The U.S. at
Far Flung Sites', New York Times, 21 Aug. 1998, pp.A1 and 11. On Feltrinelli, see also, Marco Rimanelli,
`Foreign Comrades in Arms: Italian Terrorism and International Ties (1968­1991)', in Yonah Alexander
and Dennis A. Pluchinsky (eds.) European Terrorism, Today & Tomorrow (Washington D.C.: Brassey's
1992), pp.160­163.
9
Guilain Denoeux, Urban Unrest in the Middle East, A Comparative Study of Informal Networks in Egypt,
Iran and Lebanon (Albany: State University of New York Press 1993) pp.149­192; for Iran in the 1940s,
see pp.177­180.
10
Michele Zanini and Sean Edwards, The Informatization of Terrorist Groups (Center for the Study of
Terrorism and Irregular Warfare Monterey: California 2000).
11
Compare J. K. Zawodny, `Infrastructures of Terrorist Organizations', in Lawrence Zelic Freedman and
Yonah Alexander (eds), Perspectives on Terrorism (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc.
1983), 62­63 and Arquilla, Ronfeldt and Zanini, (note 2) pp.90­97. For the networked structure of the
`old' terrorism, see also, for example, D. Anable, `Terrorism--Loose Net Links, Diverse Groups, No
Central Plot', in John D. Elliott and Leslie K. Gibson (eds) Contemporary Terrorism (Gaithersburg, MD:
Bureau of Operations and Research, International Association of Chiefs of Police 1978), cited in Zawodny
(note 11) and Ronald D. Crelinsten, `The Internal Dynamics of the FLQ During the October Crisis of
1970', in David C. Rapoport (ed.) Inside Terrorist Organizations (New York: Columbia University Press
1988) especially pp.59­61, 81­82.
12
In 1989, The Department of State decided not to count violence committed against Palestinians by other
Palestinians among incidents of international terrorism. It then retroactively adjusted its statistics for the
years 1984­89 to remove such incidents. The figures in Table 1 are drawn from Patterns of Global
Terrorism, 1980 and thus include instances of inter-Palestinian violence. This way of counting terrorist
incidents tends to lower the lethality index for these years, making terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s appear
more lethal than the earlier period. The State Department defines international terrorism as `terrorism
involving the citizens or the territory of more than one country'.
13
Richard A. Falkenrath, Robert D. Newman, and Bradley A. Thayer, America's Achille's Heel, Nuclear,
Biological and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (Cambridge: MIT Press 1998) p.180 fn. 24 and
pp.179­202 for a good discussion of the increased lethality of terrorism.
14
The terrorist incidents removed from the 1976­1980 figures are the Fatah raid on the Israeli coast 11
March 1978 (131 dead or wounded); ETA bombings in Spain 29 July 1979 (118 dead and wounded); and
Tucker
Terrorism and Political Violence
13(Autumn, 2001), pp. 1­14
12
the attack on the Grand Mosque at Mecca 20 November 1979 (850 dead and wounded). Information on
these events is drawn from Edward F. Mickolus, Transnational Terrorism, A Chronology of Events, 1968­
1979 (London: Aldwych Press 1980) pp.863, 887­89 and The Encyclopedia of Terrorism, John Pimlott and
Martha Crenshaw (eds) (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe Inc. 1997) pp.691­693.
15
Jessica Stern, `Will Terrorists Turn to Poison?', Orbis 37(Summer 1993) p.406; W. Seth Carus
`Bioterrorism and Biocrimes, The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 1900', Center for
Counterproliferation Research, National Defense University (Washington, D.C., 1998; February 2001
Revision) pp.181­185.
16
Fawaz A. Gerges, `The Decline of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria and Egypt,' Survival 41 (Spring 1999),
pp.113­125.
17
See, for example, Simon Reeve, The New Jackals, Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of
Terrorism (Boston: Northeastern University Press 1999) pp.125­130.
18
Ehud Sprinzak, `Rational Fanatics', Foreign Policy 120(Sep.-Oct. 2000) pp.166­73.
19
Falkenrath, Newman and Thayer (note 9) p.24.
20
David C. Rapoport, `Terrorism and Weapons of the Apocalypse', National Security Studies Quarterly
3(Summer 1999) p.58.
21
Joshua S. Goldstein, `Kondratieff Waves as War Cycles,' International Studies Quarterly 29(December
1985) pp.425­431 provides some data.
22
Fukuyama and Shulsky (note 3) pp.22­23.
23
Arquilla, Ronfeldt and Zanini (note 1) p.62.
24
This adaptiveness is traced and analyzed in David Tucker, Skirmishes at the End of Empire, the United
States and International Terrorism (Westport: Praeger 1997) pp.1­50 and 109­131.
25
Arquilla, Ronfeldt and Zanini (note 1) p.55.
26
Beam, (footnote 2).
27
Martha Crenshaw, `How Terrorism Declines', Terrorism and Political Violence 3(Spring 1991) pp.83­
84; Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1987) pp.219­221.
28
For a rigorous examination of this issue, see G. H. McCormick and G. Owen, `Security and Coordination
in a Clandestine Organization', Mathematical and Computer Modelling 31(2000) pp.175-192.
29
Gregory L. Vistica and Daniel Klaidman, `Tracking terror, inside the FBI and CIA's joint battle to roll up
Osama bin Laden's international network', Newsweek 19 Oct. 1998 p. 46.
30
Jonathan B. Tucker, `Lessons from the Case Studies,' in Jonathan B. Tucker (ed.) Toxic Terror,
Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000) p.252.
31
Fukuyama and Shulsky (note 3) pp.18­24 provide a good discussion of this point. See also, Arquilla,
Ronfeldt and Zanini (note 4) pp.84­86.
32
Martha Crenshaw, `An Organizational Approach to the Analysis of Political Terrorism,' Orbis, 29(Fall
1985) pp.467­468.