The Political Economy of Terrorism

Despite the war on terror, the one certainty is that terrorism will continue as a tactic associated with conflicts. As long as there are grievances, there will be conflict and, thus, terrorism. Terrorism will always be present owing to its cost effectiveness and its favoring of the weak against the strong. A bomb that costs a mere few hundred dollars may cause hundreds of millions in damage – for example, the 1993 bombing of the north tower of the World Trade Center. Desperation and frustration are key motives for terrorism. Its cruelty can, at times, make it an end in itself.

Since the start of the modern era of terrorism in the late 1960s, terrorism experts have used current experiences and trends to predict the future of terrorism. Predictions are based on two paradigms: (i) an induction derived from recent events, and (ii) forecasts stemming from statistical methods. Both paradigms have their shortcomings. When experience is used, predictions tend to be reactive, coming from an unanticipated driver – for example, the shift from leftist-based to fundamentalist transnational terrorism. Such predictions are useful until the next major unseen upheaval. Policy ends are better served if changing grievances, players, and tactics are recognized near their onset so that countervailing actions can be proactively engineered at the outset of change. Forecasts based on statistical techniques are less accurate as they are projected into the future. As in the case of experience-based predictions, a statistical-fitted trend cannot foresee shocks that throw off forecasts.