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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

As we have seen, national or international periods of transition are uniquely vulnerable to the catalytic use of force that terrorism represents. Especially in the context of twenty-first-century globalized communications, terrorist groups are nonstate actors that target the most vulnerable members of society as a means of provoking outrage, garnering attention, and, most importantly, gaining adherents to their cause—as a means of mobilizing a popular movement. Guerrillas and insurgents are actors who have successfully mobilized enough popular support, in both physical and ideological terms, to be strong enough to take on the power of the state by targeting its representatives and seeking military gains for the cause. Both of these tactics are distinctive and defined only in relation to the mass movements they aim to catalyze. Insurgencies are larger, more mobilized groups that have the strength and popular constituency to take on the military forces of the state using irregular warfare tactics. They primarily target military or government forces instead of ordinary civilians because they realize the risk of backlash and implosion in targeting illegitimates (see chapter 4). Both terrorism and insurgency are more dangerous now than they have been in the past because, again in the context of proliferating globalized communications, their means of popular mobilization have multiplied, while those of the state have comparatively diminished, resulting