What Terrorists Want; Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat

xxii, 312, [2] pages. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Includes Introduction. Part One: The Terrorists; Part Two: The Counterterrorists. Also includes Acknowledgments, Glossary, Notes, Bibliography, and Index. Richardson shows that the nature of terrorism did not change after the attacks of September 11, 2001; what changed was our response. She argues that the Bush administration's global war on terror was doomed to fail because of an ignorance of history, a refusal to learn from the experience of other governments, and a fundamental misconception about how and why terrorists act. As an alternative, Richardson offers a feasible strategy for containing the terrorist threat and cutting off its grassroots support. Terrorists are substate actors who violently target noncombatants to communicate a political message to a third party. Terrorists are neither crazy nor amoral. They come from all parts of the world. They come from many walks of life. They fight for a range of different causes. Some have support from the communities from which they come; some do not. They range in size from a handful of Corsican nationalists to thousands of armed Tamils. Some are fighting for the same goals that have motivated wars for centuries, such as control over national territory. some are trying to overthrow the state system itself. They come from all religious traditions and from none. One thing they do have in common: they are weaker than those they oppose. Louise Mary Richardson FRSE (born 8 June 1958) is an Irish political scientist whose specialist field is the study of terrorism. In January 2016 she became the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, having formerly served as the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews, and as the executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. From 1989 to 2001 Richardson served as an assistant professor and then an associate professor in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Richardson is the author of What Terrorists Want, an account of terrorism written after the September 11 attacks. Other publications include When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations in the Suez and Falkland Crises, The Roots of Terrorism (ed) and Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past (co-edited with Robert Art). She has also published many journal articles, book chapters, and reviews on the subject of terrorism. Between 2001 and 2008, in addition to her teaching and management roles, Richardson gave over 300 talks and lectures on terrorism and counter-terrorism to educational and private groups as well as policy makers, the military, intelligence, and business communities. She has testified before the United States Senate and has appeared on CNN, the BBC, PBS, NPR, Fox and a host of other broadcast outlets. Her work has been featured in numerous international periodicals. Derived from a Kirkus review: The short answer? Fame and payback, perhaps even a thrill. The long answer? Read this essential, important primer. Terrorist groups have many motives and ideologies, notes Richardson, but they tend to similar paths: They are founded by mature, well-educated men but staffed by less learned and certainly more pliable youths; they are fueled by a sense of injustice and the conviction that only they are morally equipped to combat it; they see themselves as defenders and not aggressors; they often define the terms of battle. Thus massacres, suicide bombings and assassinations are all in a day's work. Richardson notes that only when authorities make efforts to get inside the minds of their terrorist enemies do they succeed in defeating them, as with the leadership of the Shining Path movement in Peru. Still, if terrorists share a pathology, then so do at least some of their victims: Once attacked, people in democratic societies are more than willing to trade freedom for security. Richardson closes by offering a set of guidelines for comb.…