How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Terrorism is not a very promising vocation. The research detailed here demonstrates that the average life-span of a group is only about eight years, and the vast majority of campaigns fail. Only a small minority, less than 5 percent, have by their own standards fully succeeded in achieving their aims. Killing civilians in terrorist attacks is not a promising means of achieving political ends. Terrorist attacks are as often retrogressive and undermining of a political cause as they are a successful means of achieving it. Rarely do terrorist assaults guide the world along the novel path the terrorists seek—be it the surrender of control over territory, the establishment of a new form of government, or the institution of a new social or religious system. They are most often successful when their cause comports with what is happening anyway in the broader international context. Terrorist leaders seldom choose to conclude a campaign on the grounds that their fundamental long-term political objectives have been achieved, because they very rarely are. Yet sometimes terrorist attacks do play a role in bringing about political change. This is particularly the case when terrorist campaigns are in the service of very well-defined aims and complement the broader flow of history. Even then, however, groups that kill noncombatants must either transition to other more legitimate forms of violence, such as insurgency or conventional war, or acquire state sponsors, who often have their own...