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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

These concepts—terrorism, crime, insurgency, war—have different emphases and purposes. They have always been ambiguous in relation to one another and are only becoming more confused in the twenty-first century. The haziness in terminology reflects the changing nature of the nation-state as it interacts with emerging state and nonstate variants in mission, structure, and organization, as well as a mix of new and old ways of using force. Projecting a false clarity between them only lays bare the limitations in the language we use. Yet how we use these terms does matter, because the language has practical effects upon what governments do and the subsequent evolution of the violence. When we declare a “war on terrorism,” for example, or label the al-Qaeda movement an “insurgency,” we tap into language that is evocative. The phrase affects the way we frame conflicts, how we fight them, the narratives that emerge out of them, and, most important of all, the degree to which the parties involved are able to mobilize support for or opposition to the campaigns at the heart of them—all of which affect a group’s viability.