The future of terrorism ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the alt-right

Walter Laqueur, 1921-

Book - 2018

An expert on terrorism and an expert on counterterrorism answer the two questions everyone is asking about the rise of terrorism today: why is this happening, and when will it end?

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Subjects
Published
New York : Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Walter Laqueur, 1921- (author)
Other Authors
Christopher Wall, 1989- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
vii, 261 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250142511
  • Introduction: Terrorism and Its Future
  • The Changes Wrought by the Fourth Wave
  • Part I. History and the Invention of Terrorism
  • 1. The History and Emergence of Modern Terrorism
  • 2. Writings on Tyranny and the Origins of the Philosophy of the Bomb
  • Russia's Terrorism as a Doctrine
  • 3. Turkey, India, and the Russian Example
  • Terrorism by Indian Nationalists and Former Pacifists
  • 4. Propaganda by the Deed
  • Arms and the Class Struggle: Spain and the United States
  • 1. Terrorism and Nationalism
  • 5. The Philosophy of the Bomb and the Far Right
  • The Right Wing Elsewhere
  • The History of Terrorism
  • 6. Final Remarks on the History of Terrorism
  • Part 2. Contemporary Terrorism
  • 7. The New Face of Terrorism
  • Why Was IS Successful?
  • 8. A Truncated History of IS
  • The Iraq War and the Emergence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq
  • How Iraqi Politics Created Islamic State
  • The Arab Spring, Al-Qaeda, and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
  • The Jabhat Al-Nusra Threat, the Khorasan Group, and the Co-Optation of Islamic State's Credibility
  • Stymied Iraqi Reforms, Islamic, State's Decline Since 2014, and the Future of Terrorism
  • 9. Beyond Islamic State
  • Religion and a Globalized Decentralized Ideology
  • Al-Qaeda and Islamic State: Battle of Egos in the Process of Final Victory
  • The (Not) Forever War: What Is Beyond Islamic State?
  • 10. The Battlefields of the Future
  • Yemen: A Regional Cold War Fought Through Proxies
  • Libya: A Mosaic Civil War
  • Afghanistan: A Legacy of Failed State Reconstruction
  • Where to Next?
  • 11. Terrorism in Europe and in the United States
  • The Lone-Wolf Phenomenon
  • The Foreign Fighter Flow
  • The Islamic State Threat to Europe
  • The Terrorism Threat in the United States
  • Terrorism Going Forward?
  • Part 3. Reflections on Terrorism
  • 12. The Culture of Modern Terrorism
  • IS and the Nature of Evil
  • Jihad Cool
  • 13. Terrorism Misinterpreted
  • Terrorism and the Psychiatrists
  • 14. Economic Explanations of Terrorism
  • Terrorist Organizations as Industrial Activity
  • Why Is Terrorism Effective?: The Club Goods Theory
  • Terrorism as Theater and the Macro/Micro Divide Within Conflicts
  • The Economics of Terrorism
  • 15. Religious Violence and Terrorism
  • Suicide Terrorism
  • Refugees
  • 16. Terrorism: The Future
  • Lessons from the Current Wave of Terrorism
  • When Terrorism Prevails?
  • So What About This Current Wave of Terrorism?
  • Epilogue: Terrorism Under President Trump
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Historian Laqueur and Wall, a counterterrorism instructor for the Navy, adeptly connect terrorism's current Islamist incarnations with secular, socialist forebears that plagued Russia and Europe in centuries past. A brief, fast-paced historical overview leads to probing and provocative ruminations on the multifarious factors that draw young men toward violence in the service of an ideology: "all manifestations of terrorism," the authors opine, "are connected with the rise of democracy and nationalism." Though ISIS has surpassed al-Qaeda in recent years, the authors contend that the latter remains more dangerous in the long term, as it has consolidated its resources and broadened its networks while lulling the world into the false belief that it is obsolete. The authors also highlight how, in the U.S., where far-right violence is much more common than Islamist violence, terrorism retains the ability to spark vast overreactions and abandonment of liberal values less often seen in Europe; they point out, for example, that, following the Boston Marathon bombing, constitutional protections were suspended and the entire state of Massachusetts was put on lockdown, though the death toll was small compared to that of the attacks in Paris two years later, to which the response was much less extreme. The authors' nuanced perspective on a complex phenomenon will appeal to readers interested in what lies beyond the headlines. Agent: Joe Spieler, the Spieler Agency. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Historian and terrorism expert Laqueur (No End to War), writing here with naval terrorism specialist Wall, promises readers a whistle-stop tour of the history and theory of terrorism, starting with a brief glance at the earliest appearance of the concept and ending with the latest developments as related to the Islamic State. The result is less than a resounding success; Laqueur moves so quickly that the text often becomes bewildering, and nonspecialists will be hard put to follow the arguments. There are also factual errors; for example, Laqueur puts the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland down to the planning of a group called "the Invincibles"-while members of this collective may well have been involved, most historians of Ireland would agree that they were responsible for two political killings in 1882 and little else. VERDICT A challenging and contentious read. Specialists in terrorism and related fields will want to examine this volume closely. General readers should probably try instead Charles Townshend's Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction.-Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook, Harvard Univ. Lib., Cambridge, MA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The dean of terrorism studies (Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, 2015, etc.) examines trends in Islamist and alt-right acts of political violence.There is good news in Laqueur's prognosis, including the absence of another tsunami event like 9/11. For one thing, he notes, most acts of political terrorism occur in just five countries, and the number of victims is some 40 times less than that of heart attack victims. Still, he writes, that's 18,000 people per year"17,958, to be precise," in 2013. Laqueur looks at his subject through the lens of the overall decline in violence that has so cheered Steven Pinker of late before getting into the meat of the matter: Terrorism is successful where government is faltering. "Terrorism," he writes, "is not an exogenous feature of the modern nation-state but rather a symptom of bad governance." In that light, the growth of alt-right violence has not yet blossomed into full-fledged terrorism in the United States, but the ingredients are there, including dog whistles from the sitting president. As the author notes, the alt-right shares with Islamism the call for "a homogenous society that absolutely rejects outsiders," a view that is wider spread in a time of rampant nationalism; it wouldn't take much to tip a certain element of followers from race-hate rhetoric to armed action. As for Islamism, Laqueur argues that the Trump administration is feeding right into the narrative of the U.S. as a "crusader" power through such blunders as pushing to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, maligning and discriminating against Muslims with a broad brush, and otherwise subscribing to the discredited "clash of civilizations" thesis. The bad news, then, is that while political violence may be lessening, it won't disappear anytime soon.Of considerable interest to the geopolitically inclined, as are all of Laqueur's many books. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.