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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Sometimes the hardest course for a democratic state is to demonstrate tactical restraint: there may be situations where it is best to leave a leader in place. He may be losing legitimacy within the group, a leadership struggle may be under way that will lead to the undermining of the group, or the leader may already have decided to end the campaign by pursuing negotiations or making other conciliatory gestures. He thus may be as needed by the counterterrorist forces as by his followers. Is there a chance that internal rivals will remove him themselves, leading to the fracturing of the group and the bringing of chaos to the campaign? If not, who or what will his replacement be? How will the evolution of the group change as a result of his demise? And what are the opportunity costs of devoting a large percentage of a state’s military and intelligence resources to tracking him down? As argued here, unless second- and third-order effects are considered in a wise and dispassionate way, the dynamic of terrorism and counterterrorism may drive events just as easily toward escalation as de-escalation. Human nature is such that, when a cause is well established and has built a significant following, killing its mouthpiece and organizer will not end its viability. Terrorist campaigns do not end through the targeting of the leader unless the state has an accurate and sophisticated understanding of the nature of the group and the narrative that drives it, in addition to a well-thought-...