Terrorism as a Military Strategy

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the success of a terrorist act depends on the nature of the terrorist activity and the aims of the organisation. It looks at how there have been a number of successes in terms of securing specific demands in the past such as 1970 'skyjacking' operation by the PFLP. In contrast, it also discusses how terrorism can be divisive and how it can engender the very opposite of what it sets out to do such as the 2005 London bombings. It looks at how a post 9/11 society is one that treats the threat of terrorism as a consequence of modern city living and how this is perhaps the ultimate irony of terrorism and the main reason why it could never be considered a reasonable military strategy. The more terrorist activity there is, the less political value it has. It concludes that terrorism is perhaps the only strategy that many disenfranchised groups have which may account for its constant presence on the global political stage.

From the Paper:

"Terrorism shocks not merely through the use of physical violence but through the symbolic transgression of social morality and national security. Terrorism, as many commentators have suggested (Townshend, 2000; Laqueur, 1999; Chomsky, 2001 etc) goes right to heart of what makes us safe; it forces us to pay attention to it whether we want to nor not. The recent proliferation of video taped messages from leaders of suspected terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda is a testament to the symbol over the actual act of physical violent; there is nothing violent in the images of Osama bin Laden addressing the world through the Aljazeera television networks but it has tremendous symbolic presence - in a world that is dominated by media and communication technology, as Van der Veer and Munshi (2004) suggest, one of the major successes of modern terrorist organisations is their ability to use the resources of their enemies: the Internet, satellite television, mobile phones and the mass media."

More papers on Terrorism as a Military Strategy:

• Essay # 74050 : "Niger - Military Strategy "
• Persuasive Essay # 112882 : "American Military Strategy"
• Term Paper # 101384 : "Environmental Terrorism"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: