A "Wave" Model of Terrorism

UCLA political scientist David C. Rappoport proposed a wave model of terrorism that has been tested, extended, and revised by William Thompson (in Devezas, ed., Kondratieff Waves, Warfare and World Security, 2006).  It's a pretty interesting model, so I thought I'd share.

Thompson argues that terrorism and global warfare have evolved together, for several reasons.  First, both terror and global warfare are linked to economic "long waves" that bring new technologies and greater alienation due to industrialization.  This has led to a gradual increase in the scale and intensity of both global warfare and terrorism as both have evolved.  Second, global war is fought by professional armies using conventional tactics.  These are precisely the conventions that terrorism seeks to disrupt, so that terrorism is always to some degree a response to conventional warfare.  Third, to some extent global war has blurred the line between combatants and non-combatants.  (The non-combatant death toll in World War 2 was higher than the death toll for combatants.)  And fourth and most importantly, global wars are fought to change the international system and to determine who the new system leader will be.  Thus, global wars change the targets and goals of terrorism and the norms under which they operate.

Rappoport believed that terrorism began in 1870's Europe, but Thompson pushes its origins back to 1790's France.  In any case, Rappoport and Thompson agree that there have been basically four waves of terrorism-- each lasting roughly a generation, or about 40 years-- since 1870.  The first wave was an "anarchist" wave consisting mostly of political assassinations.  This wave was brought to an end by WWI.  The second wave sought decolonization through guerilla warfare, and was ended by WWII.  The third wave was a "Marxist revolution" wave that ended with the collapse of the USSR.  And the fourth and final wave has been a religious fundamentalist (and especially Islamist) wave that employs suicide bombers and attacks on symbolic targets.  This wave is currently in progress.

Thompson tests these propositions empirically and finds that yes, the motives of terrorism have shifted from nationalism to ideology to religion over the course of the twentieth century, and yes, we can empirically measure the compressions of terror "waves" in terms of the number of active terrorist groups operating at any given time.

This model is interesting because it illustrates that terrorism isn't anything new.  It has been around for a long time, and owes as much to systemic factors as to specific circumstances or ideologies.  There will probably always be terrorists, no matter who is running the international system and no matter how hard they try to defeat the terrorists or to redress their grievances.  We can expect the makeup of terrorism to change over time, though, especially as China and India become the dominant global powers (either through warfare or peaceful transition).  I, for one, won't be sorry to see that responsibility shifted from American shoulders.  Let the Asians deal with it.  Good riddance!