Alexander, Yonah, ed. Counterterrorism Strategies: Successes and Failures of Six Nations

Naval War College Review,  Wntr, 2008  by Jonathan Stevenson

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Alexander, Yonah, ed. Counterterrorism Strategies: Successes and Failures of Six Nations. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006. 283pp. $24

Zimmermann, Doron, and Andreas Wenger, eds. How States Fight Terrorism: Policy Dynamics in the West. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2006. 269pp. $55

Since the attacks of 11 September, a kind of conventional wisdom about counterterrorism has emerged. On one hand, the "new terrorism" involves the violent expression of a radical religious agenda, suicide attackers, and mass-casualty violence. It is, therefore, both harder to deter and more destructive than the old ideological and ethnonationalist varieties of terrorism, whose practitioners, in Brian Michael Jenkins's now classic (and obsolete) formulation, wanted a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead. On the other hand, the takedown, led by the United States, of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan forced the operational core of al-Qa'ida to disperse and the transnational terrorism network to become even more flat and decentralized. This meant that operational initiative was increasingly left to local "upstart" cells, which, though perhaps aided by al-Qa'ida middlemen, were merely inspired rather than directed by the central leadership.

The upshot is that the new foot soldiers of the global jihad may be motivated less by the cultural humiliation of Islam at the hands of the West or Osama Bin Laden's redemptive grand vision of a global caliphate than by local or regional social conditions, onto which they simply graft that ideal and thereby generate greater energy, purpose, and focus. In Europe, the main culprits may be the political and economic marginalization of Muslims in their host countries and their bitter memories of colonial abuses. In the Middle East, the gravamen of the radical Muslim complaint could be the plight of the Palestinians or the perceived co-optation of Arab regimes by the United States and other Western powers. In the Philippines, it might he the refusal of the state to accord Muslims political parity and a measure of autonomy.

In accord with these views, the perception has evolved among counterterrorism experts that containing the Islamist terrorist movement requires disaggregating it into regional and sometimes local elements and devising customized policies to deal with them. Effective policies will inevitably entail direct applications of soft as well as hard power--in particular, conflict resolution and state building. Also, successful applications of soft power are likely to have a more positive effect on Muslim perceptions of non-Muslim governments than are exercises of hard power. Two new edited volumes of essays, Yonah Alexander's Counterterrorism Strategies and Doron Zimmermann and Andreas Wenger's How States Fight Terrorism, approach the challenge of terrorism in the post-9/11 world on a state-by-state basis. In doing so, they appear to certify this evolving view, and with it the corollary that although the global jihadist movement is in many ways transnational and virtual, it admits of no holistic solution. Even if there was, one might add, existing multilateral and supranational organizations would be incapable of implementing it.

Alexander's book is a workmanlike and highly competent compendium of substantially descriptive historical case studies of counterterrorism approaches in the United States, selected European countries (France, Germany, and Italy), one Arab state (Egypt), and Sri Lanka, bracketed by the editor's introduction and summary with conclusions. Those conclusions are perhaps the probative elements of the volume, as Alexander in them attempts to distill from the case studies a range of constructive counterterrorism policies. But the proffered list tends either to state the obvious ("prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states and terrorist groups") or confirm admonitions that have already been made in abundance ("increase cooperative relationships and alliances with like-minded nations"). Furthermore, probably because Alexander's study was initiated in 1998--that is, before 9/11--the choice of case studies is arguably misaimed. Egypt's pre-9/11 experience is relevant precisely because it is a formative aspect of the transnationalization of Islamist terrorism and the rise of al-Qa'ida, and the Tamil Tigers' activity in Sri Lanka is worthy of study also because of their persistence and innovation (for instance, suicide attacks). However, one key European state, from a counterterrorism standpoint--the United Kingdom--is completely excluded.

Zimmermann and Wenger's book, unlike Alexander's, was undertaken at the specific prompting of the 9/11 attacks and jihadist terrorism. It constitutes a more incisive and structurally oriented look at issues and challenges, namely, those peculiar to counterterrorism in the post-9/11 epoch. Indeed, following a trenchant introduction outlining the contemporary challenge, the first chapter, by Laura K. Donahue, deals comprehensively with the United Kingdom, aptly summing up the British dispensation as having "not been a radical departure from the previous state of affairs but rather an acceleration of the state's counterterrorist strategy." This volume also contains chapters on countries like Norway that have had little counterterrorism experience and those like Canada whose security policies are overdetermined by strong and prominent neighbors. Given the wide transnational presence of the global jihadist movement and the potential problems it poses to states heretofore untouched by (or at least insulated from) terrorism, the inclusion of such states seems wise. The chapter on the United States by RAND analyst William Rosenau is nuanced and marked by calm pragmatism. Rosenau stresses that even transnational Islamist terrorism as perpetrated by al-Qa'ida does not qualify as an existential threat to the United States and intimates that treating it as such could unduly skew national priorities--and may already have done so. Martin van Creveld's fine but largely historical treatment appears at first blush to be something of a non sequitur, but it may have been included to illustrate (as it does) the attritional effects that a long-term terrorist campaign can have on a modern state and military in the absence of political resolution.