Waves of Modern terrorism

Rapoport (2001) has identified four separate but connected “waves” or periods of modern terrorism. These waves offer not only a brief history of terrorism, but also highlights the changing geography of terrorism, a change that has important implications for the contemporary politics of the “War on Terrorism.”

The goals and arena of the first two waves of terrorism were focused upon one particular geopolitical scale, the nation-state.

The Four Waves

1. First Wave of Terrorism (1880s and the beginning of World War I in 1914)

• The first wave occurred between, roughly, the 1880s and the beginning of World War I in 1914 and was motivated by the piecemeal political reforms of the Russian tsar hoping to preclude more radical and revolutionary change.
• The goal of the terrorists, loosely defined as “anarchists,” was to mobilize the citizens of Russia toward revolution as they feared the population would be placated by the reforms: In other words, the terrorists wanted to change the way that the Russian state was governed. These “anarchist” politics diffused, with limited success, to other parts of Europe.
• The geography of this first wave was framed by an understanding that the state was the source of political change and so bounded the scope of action.
• Though the ideology of the terrorists, and the way they conducted terrorism, diffused from Russia into parts of Europe, the geography of the first wave of terrorism was restricted to within state boundaries.
• To a lesser degree, the first wave of terrorism also reflected an increase in nationalist politics. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a nationalist sparked World War I, which in turn catalyzed many political and social changes. One of these changes was the explosion of demands for national self-determination, or the desire for people to create and belong to national communities synonymous with independent and sovereign states.

2. Second Wave of Terrorism (approximately 1920–60)

• The second wave of terrorism was dominated by the political geography of ending imperialism, or decolonization, and the establishment of nation-states.
• Terrorism was, in some cases, deemed a necessary and useful strategy to force colonial powers to leave and, in a related politics, define which social and ethnic groups would play the key roles in defining the new state. Examples of this type of terrorism include the Irgun in Israel angry toward the British government’s restrictions on Jewish in-migration, and the Mau-Mau in Kenya.
• The geography of this wave was similar to that of the first: the arena and goal of terrorism was the nation-state, in this case to establish a new one rather than change the politics of existing states.
• The US, as world leader, was promoting the dissolution of existing empires through the establishment of independent nation-states.

3. Third Wave of Terrorism (1960s–90s)

• The third wave of terrorism may also be interpreted as actions set within the context of the geopolitical structure of world leadership. The US’s entrance into the conflict in Vietnam, and the growing dominance of the Vietnam War in political debate, was one ingredient in the growing influence of radical left-wing groups in Western politics. The Vietnam War fermented critique of the goals and actions of the world leader. Especially, its twin “innovations” development and national self-determination began to be questioned by left-wing political groups, as the escalation of the Vietnam War was interpreted as the old process of colonialism in a new guise.

• A component of this radicalism was the emergence of terrorist groups in Western Europe and the US motivated by Marxist ideology. For example, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigade in Italy, and the Weather Underground in the US were all motivated by left-wing ideology. The political change that these groups professed was couched, to varying degrees, within a vision of “international Marxism,” and the context for their actions was discontent with the global actions of the US, and its agenda as world leader.

• Another side to the third wave of terrorism was nationalist groups who saw the project of decolonization and national self-determination as incomplete and unfair. Two prominent examples are the IRA and the Northern Ireland conflict and the PLO and its claims for a Palestinian state. The IRA had witnessed the decline of the British Empire across the globe, but called for the process to continue and allow for a united Ireland free of British rule. The PLO had witnessed the establishment of a new nation-state on the territory of Palestine, but it was the state of Israel.

• Nationalist conflicts remained a key motivation for terrorists in the third wave. However, the geography of their actions was significantly different from the second wave. In the third wave a greater internationalization of terrorist activity became evident. Terrorist groups were still predominately based within particular states, and were focused upon change at the scale of the state, but they began to operate and cooperate across state boundaries. The PLO is a good example, using the tactic of hijacking international passenger flights to increase the geographical scope of its activity and generate an international audience for its political message.

• Perhaps the most poignant act was the 1972 Munich Olympic Games when Palestinian terrorists entered the Olympic village, a symbol of international respect and peace, and killed 11 Israeli athletes. Claims of the “whole world watching” were exactly the geographical outcome the terrorists were aiming for; the Palestine-Israel conflict became a matter of international importance and diplomacy.
• The second form of internationalization in the third wave was the growing cooperation between terrorist groups based in, and identified with, different states. Training and weapons exchanges became a part of terrorism, and the networks of terrorism became an international rather than national phenomenon.
• Internationalization was perceived by terrorist groups as a means of widening the scope of the conflict and hence increasing the “audience” for their cause.
• It also facilitated state-versus-state conflict. Various governments attempted to gain influence in a particular dispute by supporting different factions of the same cause such as Syria, Libya, Iraq, and other states funding separate Palestinian groups. The outcome of state sponsorship was to make terrorism “almost respectable,” with a sufficient majority of states at the UN preventing any effective international coordination of counter-terrorist actions. The Soviet Union and Libya were significant suppliers of weapons and funds to terrorist groups, but in the 1980s Syria and Iran became increasingly important.

4. Fourth Wave of Terrorism (1990s–present)

• The fourth wave of terrorism portends a much more dramatic geographical change with severe implications for both acts of terrorism and the effectiveness and implications of counter-terrorism.
• The fourth wave of terrorism is the period of religious terrorism, though terrorism motivated by nationalism is far from gone. The geography of goals and beliefs of religious terrorists goes beyond international connections; it is a geography that “transcends the state,” perhaps the state as political agent is irrelevant to this form of terrorism.
• Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist religions are all tainted by groups who utilize a fundamentalist view of the belief system to justify acts of terrorism.
• In other words, religious terrorism is a contemporary global phenomenon, and not limited to one particular religion, as politically motivated claims against Islam, especially, suggest. Religious terrorists are fighting a “cosmic war”; a war of good against evil in which the adjudicator is God or another form of supreme being, and the terrorists are merely the soldiers conducting God’s will. The battle, in the case of religious terrorism, is for people’s souls and not a secular political agenda.
• The state may be the source of acts deemed “evil” but the state is not the answer, for that one has to turn to salvation and a different world.
• Terrorism motivated by religious fundamentalism is a particularly dangerous form of terrorism. It is more likely to invoke terrorist acts that produce a large number of casualties and be less sympathetic to overtures of conflict resolution than the previous waves of terrorism.
• Geopolitical actors have seen the state to be the key structure that both constrains or motivates their actions, but it has also been seen as the key “prize”: the geopolitical structure that, if controlled or changed, will reap political benefits. By waging a “cosmic war” religious terrorists have shattered this essential geopolitical assumption of the twentieth century, confounding policy-makers and academics in the process.
• Religious terrorism, by fighting a “cosmic war” transcends the state as an arena for politics: the goal is to serve God’s will and fight “evil”. Essentially, the battle is of a spiritual nature and not secular. If that is the case, then victims are “infidels” or “sinners” whose death will, in the minds of the terrorists, please God. With these beliefs, religious terrorists do not need to make the political calculations of secular terrorists in which the number and type of casualties had to be balanced: enough to “shock” but not too many to alienate “sympathizers.”
• For religious terrorists, their actions are part of one sort of Armageddon or another, and not the bloody side of a wider political process, and hence the lack of constraint on the number of casualties. The second implication of the “cosmic war” thesis is that the state is no longer seen as the key geopolitical arbiter. The state as a structure that could enable terrorists and their sympathizers by providing political concessions, or even conceding defeat, is deemed irrelevant by religious terrorists.
• The question no longer becomes a matter of harassing politicians to address the terrorists concerns, as is usually the goal of nationalist-separatist terrorists. Instead, the belief is that the state is the embodiment of the evil that, following God’s will, needs to be destroyed.
• Religious terrorists still use or need states, and the goals of religious terrorism are still related to the state as the key geopolitical structure. The identification of Afghanistan as the “home” or “base” of al-Qaeda immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 is testimony to the relationship between some terrorist groups using religion as their motivation and the need for the protection and sponsorship that can be offered by territorially sovereign states.
• Religious terrorism is creating geography different from those of the previous waves, as the state plays a less central role. Resort to the scale of a “cosmic war” makes religious terrorists less chained to the opportunities and constraints that exist when the state is seen as the key geopolitical structure. This new geography of structure and agency has implications for the severity of terrorist acts and the possibilities for conflict resolution. However, the state is still an essential scale in the calculations of religious terrorists, whether as a strategic territorial haven or the target of political goals.