Terror,the Strategic Tool: Response and Control

Abstract

The United States appears ill prepared to deal with an emerging form of interstate rivalry, that is, the use of terror as an unconventional weapon to achieve conventional political ends. The terror event represents a powerful form of leverage simply because of its media value. Using media coverage to amplify their impact, acts of terrorist violence have paralyzed Western governments and undermined their credibility. In a destabilized international environment, the vectored terrorist threat offers additional advantages to radical nations or superpowers in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. Under the guise of criminality, it can become a low-cost, low-risk, high-leverage tool of low-intensity warfare, difficult to combat because uncertainty about the origin of the threat limits the full range of diplomatic and military responses.

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References

1. Brian Jenkins is undoubtedly the first scholar to make this point. Among his well-known writings is Terrorism: Trends and Potentialities (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 1977).

and Walter Laqueur , Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).

3. In November of 1981, a conference was held in Caracas that included individuals suspected of terrorist connections, causing heated debate and embarrassment in the Venezuelan government.

4. Walter Laqueur , “Terrorism—a Balance Sheet,” in The Terrorism Reader, ed. Walter Laqueur (New York: Meridian Press, 1978), pp. 251-267.

5. For more detailed information, see Robert H. Kupperman and Darrell Trent , Terrorism: Threat, Reality, Response (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979).