In this week's Geopolitical Weekly, George Friedman discussed the
geopolitical cycles that change with each generation. Frequently, especially
in recent years, those geopolitical cycles have intersected with changes in
the way the tactic of terrorism is employed and in the actors employing it.
The Arab terrorism that began in the 1960s resulted from the Cold War and the
Soviet decision to fund, train and otherwise encourage groups in the Middle
East. The Soviet Union and its Middle Eastern proxies also sponsored Marxist
terrorist groups in Europe and Latin America. They even backed the Japanese
Red Army terrorist group. Places like South Yemen and Libya became havens
where Marxist militants of many different nationalities gathered to learn
terrorist tradecraft, often instructed by personnel from the Soviet KGB or
the East German Stasi and from other militants.
The Cold War also spawned al Qaeda and the broader global jihadist movement
as militants flocking to fight the Soviet troops who had invaded Afghanistan
were trained in camps in northern Pakistan by instructors from the CIA's
Office of Technical Services and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
directorate. Emboldened by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and
claiming credit for the subsequent Soviet collapse, these militants decided
to expand their efforts to other parts of the world.
The connection between state-sponsored terrorism and the Cold War ran so deep
that when the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union's collapse, many declared
that terrorism had ended as well. I witnessed this phenomenon while serving
in the Counterterrorism Investigations Division of the Diplomatic Security
Service (DSS) in the early 1990s. While I was in New York working as part of
the interagency team investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a
newly appointed assistant secretary of state abolished my office, declaring
that the DSS did not need a Counterterrorism Investigations Division since
terrorism was over.
Though terrorism obviously did not end when the Berlin Wall fell, the rosy
sentiments to the contrary held by some at the State Department and elsewhere
meant that there was no impetus to mitigate the growing jihadist threat or
protect diplomatic facilities from it. The final report of the Crowe
Commission, which was established to review the twin August 1998 bombing
attacks against the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, explicitly
noted this neglect of counterterrorism and security programs, as did the 9/11
Commission report.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks triggered a shift in international geopolitics by
leading the United States to concentrate the full weight of its national
resources on al Qaeda and its supporters. Ironically, by the time the U.S.
government was able to shift its massive bureaucracy to meet the new
challenge, creating huge new organizations like the Department of Homeland
Security, the efforts of the existing U.S. counterterrorism apparatus had
already badly crippled the core al Qaeda group. Though some of these new
organizations played important roles in helping the United States cope with
the fallout of its decision to invade Iraq after Afghanistan, Washington
spent billions of dollars to create organizations and fund programs that in
hindsight were arguably not really necessary because the threats they were
designed to counter, such as al Qaeda's nuclear briefcase bombs, did not
actually exist. As George Friedman noted in the Geopolitical Weekly, the sole
global superpower was badly off-balance, which caused an imbalance in the
entire global system.
With the continued diminution of the jihadist threat, underscored by the May
2011 death of Osama bin Laden and the fall in Libya of the Gadhafi regime
(which had long employed terrorism), once again we appear on the brink of
another cyclical change in the terrorism paradigm. These events could again
lead some to pronounce the death of terrorism.
Several developments last week served to demonstrate that while the
perpetrators and tactics of terrorism (what Stratfor calls the "who" and the
"how") may change in response to larger geopolitical cycles, such shifts will
not signal the end terrorism.
The Nature of Terrorism
There are many conflicting definitions of terrorism, but for our purposes we
will loosely define it as politically motivated violence against
noncombatants. Many terrorist acts have a religious element to them, but that
element is normally related to a larger, political goal: Both a militant
anti-abortion activist seeking to end legalized abortion and a jihadist
seeking to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq may act according to
religious principles, but they ultimately are pursuing a political objective.
Terrorism is a tactic, one employed by a wide array of actors. There is no
single creed, ethnicity, political persuasion or nationality with a monopoly
on terrorism. Individuals and groups of individuals from almost every
conceivable background -- from late Victorian-era anarchists to Klansmen to
North Korean intelligence officers -- have conducted terrorist attacks.
Because of the impreciseness of the term, Stratfor normally does not refer to
individuals as terrorists. In addition to being a poor descriptor,
"terrorist" tends to be a politically loaded term.
Traditionally, terrorism has been a tactic of the weak, i.e., those who lack
the power to impose their political will through ordinary political or
military means. As Carl von Clausewitz noted, war is the continuation of
politics by other means; terrorism is a type of warfare, making it also
politics by other means. Because it is a tactic used by the weak, terrorism
generally focuses on soft, civilian targets rather than more
difficult-to-attack military targets.
The type of weapon used does not define terrorism. For example, using a
vehicle-borne improvised explosive device against an International Security
Assistance Force firebase in Afghanistan would be considered an act of
irregular warfare, but using it in an attack on a hotel in Kabul would be
considered an act of terrorism. This means that militant actors can employ
conventional warfare tactics, unconventional warfare tactics and terrorism
during the same campaign depending on the situation.
Terrorist attacks are relatively easy to conduct if they are directed against
soft targets and if the assailant is not concerned with escaping after the
attack, as was the case in the Mumbai attacks in 2008. While authorities in
many countries have been quite successful in foiling attacks over the past
couple of years, governments simply do not have the resources to guard
everything. When even police states cannot protect everything, some terrorist
attacks invariably will succeed in the open societies of the West.
Terrorist attacks tend to be theatrical, exerting a strange hold over the
human imagination. They often create a unique sense of terror dwarfing
reactions to natural disasters many times greater in magnitude. For example,
more than 227,000 people died in the 2004 Asian tsunami versus fewer than
3,000 on 9/11, yet the 9/11 attacks produced a worldwide sense of terror and
a geopolitical reaction that has had a profound and unparalleled impact on
world events over the past decade.
Cycles and Shifts
A number of events last week illustrate the changes happening in the
terrorism realm and demonstrate that, while terrorism may change, it is not
going to end.
On Feb. 17, the FBI arrested a Moroccan man near the U.S. Capitol in
Washington who allegedly sought to conduct a suicide attack on the building.
The suspect, Amine el Khalifi, is a clear example of the shift in the
jihadist threat from one based on the al Qaeda core group to one primarily
deriving from grassroots jihadists. As Stratfor has noted for several years,
while these grassroots jihadists pose a more diffuse threat because they are
harder for national intelligence and law enforcement agencies to focus on
than hierarchical groups, the threat they pose is less severe because they
generally lack the terrorist tradecraft required to conduct a large-scale
attack. Because they lack such tradecraft, these grassroots militants tend to
seek assistance to conduct their plots. This assistance usually involves
acquiring explosives or firearms, as in the el Khalifi case, where an FBI
informant posing as a jihadist leader provided the suspect with an inert
suicide vest and a submachine gun prior to the suspect's arrest.
While many in the media tend to ridicule individuals like el Khalifi as
inept, it is important to remember that had he succeeded in finding a real
jihadist facilitator rather than a federal informant, he could have killed
many people in an attack. Richard Reid, who many people refer to as the
"Kramer of al Qaeda" after the bumbling character from the television show
Seinfeld, came very close to taking down a jumbo jet full of people over the
Atlantic because he had been equipped and dispatched by others.
Still, the fact remains that the jihadist threat now predominantly stems from
unequipped grassroots wannabes rather than teams of highly trained operatives
sent to the United States from overseas, like the team that executed the 9/11
attacks. This demonstrates how the jihadist threat has diminished in recent
years, a trend we expect to continue. This will allow Washington to
increasingly focus attention on things other than jihadism, such as the
fragmentation of Europe, the transformation of global economic production and
Iran's growing regional power. It will mark the beginning of a new
geopolitical cycle.
Last week also brought us a series of events highlighting how terrorism may
manifest itself in the new cycle. On Feb. 13, Israeli diplomatic vehicles in
New Delhi, India, and Tbilisi, Georgia, were targeted with explosive devices.
In Tbilisi, a grenade hidden under a diplomatic vehicle was discovered before
it could detonate. In New Delhi, a sticky bomb placed on the back of a
diplomatic vehicle wounded the wife of the Israeli defense attache as she was
headed to pick up her children from school.
On Feb. 14, an Iranian man was arrested after being wounded in an explosion
at a rented house in Bangkok. The explosion reportedly occurred as a group
was preparing improvised explosive devices for use against Israeli targets in
Bangkok. Two other Iranians were later arrested (one in Malaysia), and Thai
authorities are seeking three more Iranian citizens, two of whom have
reportedly returned to Iran, alleged to have assisted in the plot.
While these recent Iranian plots have failed, they nonetheless highlight how
the Iranians are using terrorism as a tactic in retaliation for attacks
Israel and Israeli surrogates have conducted against individuals associated
with Iran's nuclear program.
It is also important to bear in mind as this new geopolitical cycle begins
that terrorism does not just emanate from foreign governments, major
subnational actors or even transnational radical ideologies like jihadism. As
we saw in the July 2011 attacks in Norway conducted by Anders Breivik and in
older cases involving suspects like Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and
Theodore Kaczynski in the United States, native-born individuals who have a
variety of grievances with the government or society can carry out terrorist
attacks. Such grievances will certainly persist.
STRATFOR
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Austin, TX 78701 US
221 W. 6th Street, Suite 400
Austin, TX 78701 US
