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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

in increased leverage for the nonstate actor and an undercutting of the legitimacy of the nation-state, well beyond the outcome of individual engagements. Thus, during this time of transition, as the traditional structure of the modern nation-state begins to seem less clear, even less legitimate, other types of human organization have been asserting themselves. Tribal groups, sects, crime syndicates, families, social networks all existed long before, but were generally subsumed in the overarching identity and purpose of the nation-state, and their ways of using force were overshadowed or controlled by the industrial nation-state’s unprecedented ability to mobilize its people and monopolize power at home and abroad.83 But this is changing. While the state retains unprecedented power, it is losing its capacity to mobilize as it once did. With the aid of globalized communications, other actors are gaining a competitive edge not just in how they use force, but much more importantly in how they mobilize and inspire people to support, participate in, and legitimate their use of force. Nonstate groups that use terrorism are emerging from these age-old human networks and connections to use twenty-first-century means that empower them in unprecedented ways to mobilize and inspire others. Whatever we name them or however we respond to them, their ability to inspire and mobilize popular movements is the real source of their threat to the current order. Until we realize this, we will ...