The Age of Terrorism

An updated version of Laquer's 1977 Terrorism, the present study seeks to disentangle truth from the mythology of terrorism that has emerged during the last two decades. The arguments are essentially negative: terrorism is neither a new phenomenon nor a ""natural'' response to oppression; terrorist organizations are not shoestring operations with deeply ideological foundations nor are they primarily based in the Middle East; and state-sponsored terrorism is ``not a far more dangerous threat than any previous movement.'' In the author's controversial view, terrorism is a side-show affecting the lives of a relative handful of people; it has not brought about any major political, economic, social or cultural upheaval; the damage caused by terrorists has been repaired without much delay and at comparatively little cost; the political impact of terrorism is inversely proportional to the attention it receives in the media. As Laquer sees it, the danger of international terrorism is not in the acts themselves but in the possibility of triggering a full-scale war. (June)