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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

It is true that terrorism is the tactic of desperation, but not for the reasons usually cited (e.g., poverty, humiliation, frustration, oppression). Instead, the desperation of terrorism results from the need to use this attention-getting violence to mobilize support for an idea or cause. Terrorism kills innocent civilians in a way that is repulsive to most people. Groups that have well-mobilized support generally do not have to resort to such a risky and potentially counterproductive tactic to gain attention to their cause. States are blind to this logic, because they are the status quo actors and generally do not concern themselves with establishing their fundamental legitimacy. Not so revolutionary organizations, which, if they had sufficient mobilized support, would not be likely to employ the tactic of terrorism. As we have seen, there are far more effective ways to use force. Of greatest importance in understanding the use of terrorism today— indeed, the use of force in any form in the twenty-first century—is the unique, revolutionary effects of globalized communications upon the ability to animate and legitimate violence. Terrorism, like other forms of political violence, arises out of the beliefs and aspirations of communities and must be analyzed within a social and political context. The strategic dynamic is not between states and “nonstate actors”—an anachronistic phrase that is a negation, not a concept. The core of the relationship is between states and commun...