Terrorism Research Paper

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The term ‘terrorism’ refers to the systematic use or threat of violence to communicate a political message rather than defeat an opponent’s military forces. Thus the targets of terrorism are symbolic. Victims of terrorism represent a wider audience. To achieve maximum shock effect, terrorist violence is usually dramatic and provocative. Typically small numbers of extremists who otherwise lack the capacity to challenge those in power resort to terrorism. However, the term is also used to describe clandestine violence in support of the state or by the state. A defining characteristic of terrorism is that its users expect rewards that are out of proportion to both the resources they possess and the risks they assume. Terrorism is, furthermore, a strategy that is not restricted to any particular ideology.

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1. Historical Development Of Terrorism

As a strategy of resistance to the modern state, terrorism emerged some half century after the French Revolution, when the term originated as a description of the state regime of terror. In the late nineteenth century, ‘terrorism’ became a strategy of opposition. Russian revolutionaries and anarchists in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany established terrorism as a central mechanism in attempts to overthrow established regimes, most of which were autocratic. In 1881 the assassination of the Czar of Russia horrified European governments while it inspired revolutionaries and nationalists from Ireland to India. Terrorism in Russia focused on selective assassinations of key political leaders. Anarchists introduced the concept of ‘propaganda of the deed,’ the idea of an outrageous action, such as a bomb thrown indiscriminately into a public gathering, that would frighten the ruling classes and arouse the masses. Irish republicans added to the repertoire by organizing attacks in London, outside the immediate theater of conflict. This formative era of terrorism ended with World War I, sparked by the assassination of the Austrian archduke by a Serbian nationalist.

In the interwar period right wing extremist movements adopted terrorist tactics in their struggles for power. The period is best known, however, for the practice of totalitarian terror from above in Germany and the Soviet Union. After World War II, terrorism figured prominently in some national liberation struggles of the 1950s and early 1960s, such as in Cyprus and in Algeria. As the colonial era ended, social scientists expected terrorism to disappear with it. Yet at precisely this moment terrorism was transformed into a major international phenomenon. In the late 1960s, Latin American revolutionaries and Palestinian nationalists independently conceived of a new tactic of terrorism: the seizure of hostages in order to compel governments to concede to their demands. Violence escalated when foreign states who supported these local regimes, such as the USA, also became targets. Hijackings of aircraft in the Middle East and diplomatic kidnappings in Latin America, for example, became routine. The 1972 seizure of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic games demonstrated the immense publicity value of hostage-taking as well as the spillover of Palestinian terrorism to Western Europe.




By the mid-1970s, left wing and separatist terrorism came to pose serious internal security problems for liberal democracies, especially in Western Europe. In Germany and Italy, for example, terrorism emerged in the wake of student protest movements. In the Basque regions of Spain and in Northern Ireland, ethnonationalist organizations mounted prolonged separatist campaigns, which lasted to the end of the century. Outside of Europe, India and Sri Lanka also faced chronic terrorism from secessionist ethnic minorities in the 1980s (continuing through the 1990s in Sri Lanka). Furthermore, in Latin America, after revolutionary terrorism had ended in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, the Shining Path movement rose to challenge the regime in Peru in the 1980s.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 stimulated the growth of yet another type of terrorist actor, as radical anti-Western Islamic groups formed in Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, and, by the end of the decade, Algeria. The seizure of US hostages in Lebanon, as well as the advent of massive vehicle bombs, such as the attack on the American Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, continued to focus attention on terrorism in the Middle East. Palestinian groups also remained active, for example, in the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in 1985.

State-sponsored terrorism became another new issue of the 1980s, initially because of the Iran hostage crisis. In 1986, the USA, convinced that Libya was responsible for terrorism against Americans, retaliated with military force. This in turn provoked Libya to take revenge in the mid-air bombing of Pan Am 103 in 1988.

Terrorism continued to shock governments and their publics in the 1990s. High-casualty terrorism in the United States was an unprecedented development. Its origins were both domestic, as individuals associated with the US far right bombed the Oklahoma City federal building, and international, with Islamic

militants organizing the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. A second emphasis in the 1990s was the fear of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, a fear inspired not only by the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways by a religious cult but also by the prospect of the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In the Middle East, radical Islamic groups used terrorism to oppose the peace process initiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), while the Gulf War and the subsequent US military presence in Saudi Arabia inspired Islamic militants to attack American interests. In 1998 simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania provoked the USA to retaliate militarily against targets in the Sudan and Afghanistan.

2. Explanations Of Terrorism

Interest in the study of terrorism has paralleled the historical evolution of the phenomenon. Until the 1970s, little was written on the subject. Typically terrorism was treated briefly as the first stage of internal war, to be abandoned as insurgents moved to guerrilla warfare and then on to conventional war. By the 1990s, the literature contained thousands of specific citations to terrorism, including contributions by historians, political scientists, economists, legal scholars, criminologists, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, and anthropologists. Nevertheless, there is no comprehensive unifying theory of terrorism. Nor is terrorism a central element in major theories of war and conflict. The importance of the concept is determined by the political significance of terrorist actions, rather than by intellectual context.

Terrorism is a contested concept that resists precise definition. Since the term is both elastic and emotionally powerful, it lends itself to subjective interpretations driven by political rather than analytical purposes. It is also difficult to distinguish terrorism from other forms of violence, such as, for example, guerrilla warfare or criminal activity. Must the victims of terrorism be noncombatants, for example? If so, are attacks on military targets acts of terrorism? If terrorism is defined in terms of the intentions behind the action, is it possible to know those intentions? What is the relationship between religion and terrorism? Furthermore, terrorism occurs so frequently and in so many different historical and cultural settings that it is difficult to make comparisons or draw general conclusions. Analysts of the subject even dispute basic questions of fact, such as whether or not terrorism is becoming more lethal or whether it is more likely in democracies.

2.1 Why Does Terrorism Happen?

Terrorism occurs in situations of conflict. Divided societies, repressive governments, economic inequalities, or ideological rivalry among states, for example, create the grievances that generate terrorism. In other cases, conditions are permissive. Democracies, for example, may be susceptible to terrorism because they tolerate dissent and allow an open news media. Yet few of the individuals who are dissatisfied or even actively engaged in social protest movements move on to participate in terrorism. Thus understanding the causes of terrorism requires knowledge of psychological motivations, at the individual or small group level. Research points to the dynamics of group relationships rather than specific personality types or mental pathologies. Once established, underground groups may struggle primarily to maintain group solidarity and cohesion. They bind together individuals with different backgrounds, skills, and levels of political commitment.

At the same time, terrorism is purposive behavior, a conscious strategy to gain attention, attract recruits, mobilize popular support, and provoke government repression. The policy of no concessions adopted by the US government in the early 1970s rests on the premise that terrorism is a rationally chosen strategy: if governments deny reward and guarantee punishment, terrorism will decline. When governments blame the news media for publicizing terrorism, they are assuming that terrorism would not exist without the reward of media attention.

The use of terrorism by states against their external enemies may also be related to inequalities of power that force the weaker party to be deceptive rather than open. Internal regimes of terror are due to the desire not only to crush but to forestall resistance. It is worth noting that insurgent movements may also govern by terror in territories they hold.

Terrorism also depends on opportunity, especially the availability of targets and of resources. In a modern world of industrialized states, with sophisticated transportation and communication networks and dense patterns of social, political, and economic interaction, both targets and weapons are in plentiful supply. Government efforts to defend specific points of vulnerability, such as civil aviation or embassies in high-threat countries, may produce a displacement effect, as terrorists substitute easy targets for hard ones. The development of the modern news media, especially television, permits terrorists to reach a worldwide audience almost instantaneously.

2.2 Forms Of Terrorism

Bombings constitute the most common form of terrorism. Since the late nineteenth century and the invention of dynamite, terrorists have targeted public buildings and crowded public spaces. Although most bombings do not cause casualties, terrorists are capable of organizing spectacular high-casualty violence, facilitated by technological improvements in both explosives and timing devices. However, the capacity for high-casualty bombings does not depend on sophisticated technology; extremely powerful devices can be constructed with common fertilizer, for example. The same principle applies to potential terrorism using weapons of mass destruction: simple techniques could still be quite deadly.

Armed attacks on unsuspecting civilian targets, such as airline passengers or tourists visiting historic sites, are also part of the terrorist repertoire. Over time assassinations of individual government officials became less frequent, perhaps because of the availability of alternatives or the inaccessibility of public figures, who are now heavily guarded. Nevertheless, the second half of the twentieth century includes the assassinations of important leaders; Anwar Sadat, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, and Yitzhak Rabin number among them. (Not all assassinations can be defined as terrorism; the attack must be linked to an organized conspiracy or oppositional movement.)

The seizure of hostages is an explicit way of bargaining directly with governments. The tactic includes hijackings of airliners and even cruise ships, individual or group kidnappings, and armed takeovers of buildings such as embassies. Hostage seizures as a form of international terrorism had become less common by the end of the twentieth century, but kidnappings have continued, especially in domestic conflicts such as the ongoing insurgency in Colombia.

2.3 The Effects Of Terrorism

Does terrorism succeed? It attracts the attention of the news media and the public, and the issue ranks high on the agendas of many governments and international organizations. However, does recognition of the threat or even of the grievances behind terrorism produce favorable political outcomes? Despite widespread publicity, the political effectiveness of terrorism is generally short-term and limited in scope. Terrorism may intimidate jurors or dissuade tourists, but it cannot compel popular majorities to give in to minority demands. Both the Irish Republican Army and the PLO eventually renounced terrorism. Terrorism polarizes opinion by mobilizing support and hardening opposition. In this way, it can inflame existing conflicts and disrupt peace processes, but it rarely changes fundamental attitudes.

Bibliography:

  1. Crenshaw M (ed.) 1995 Terrorism in Context. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA
  2. Della Porta D 1995 Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
  3. Gilbert P 1994 Terrorism, Security and Nationality: An Introductory Study in Applied Political Philosophy. Routledge, London
  4. Hoffman B 1998 Inside Terrorism. Columbia University Press, New York
  5. Laqueur W 1987 The Age of Terrorism. 1st Am. edn. Little Brown, Boston
  6. Merkl P H (ed.) 1986 Political Violence and Terror: Motifs and Motivations. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA
  7. Nacos B L 1994 Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the World Trade Center Bombing. Columbia University Press, New York
  8. Reich W (ed.) 1998 Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD
  9. Wieviorka M 1993 The Making of Terrorism. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
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