Background
International terrorism is state-sponsored criminal, violent acts committed by groups or individuals. Besides being sponsored by foreign nations, international terrorism encompasses terrorist organizations that use terrorist cells and networks beyond the country of their original operations. International terrorism should be considered not only as an act of direct support but also as the laxity to adopt and implement international measures against terrorist activities and perpetrators. In this case, direct collaboration and lack of cooperation in support of counterterrorism interventions should both be considered enablers of international terrorism. While there is seemingly a fifth wave of terrorism, it is just but a resurgence of a combination of the tactics and aims of the past four waves. Given that international terrorism affects all nations alike, either directly or indirectly, global efforts aimed at combating counterterrorism, with the United States contributing a critical role in coordinating the fight as a global leader.
Four Waves of International Terrorism
First Wave: Anarchist
The first wave of international terrorism is the anarchist based on the foundational basis of creating a doctrine. Rapoport (2004) states that the anarchist formation of a doctrine viewed terror as the most effective and quickest way to destroy conventions that muffled humanity into securing enmities and settling grievances. According to the anarchists, the society had concealed reservoirs of hostility and ambivalence that generated guilty to the people. Terrorists believe that they would be freed from immoral deeds of the society and the guilty thereof if they commit terrorist activities against the state or its supporters (de Graaf, 2015). Similarly, as Rapoport (2004) explains, anarchists reasoned that using terrorism repeatedly to force those who defended the authorities to respond in a manner that undermined the government rules that the individuals respected would free themselves from the paralysis of guilt occasioned by latent conventions.
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Further, it is notable that tactics used in terrorism exceeded the moral conventions of controlling violence, such as punishment and war rules. According to Rapoport (2004), Russian rebels angered by the slow reforms initiated by Czar Alexander II initiated terrorist assassination against government officials, culminating in the death of the Czar. Polish and Armenian nationalist groups using bank robberies to fund their activities emerged in Russia. Balkans were driven by the feeling that new boundaries of nations rising after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire were unsatisfactory. Exiled Russians began anarchist campaigns that shaped terrorism in India. In the 1890s, the “Golden Age of Assassinations” saw the killing of prime ministers, monarchs, and presidents by international assassins. Besides, the 1905 Terrorist Brigade had its headquarter in Switzerland, struck from Finland, and was financed by Japanese.
Second Wave: Anticolonial Wave
The second wave came in the wake of the Versailles Peace Treaty that ended World War I. Rapoport (2004) posits that World War I victors sought the collapse of the defeated states’ empires under the disguise of national self-determination principle. World War II enlarged and reinforced the Versailles Treaty implications when victors compelled the overwhelmed to quit their empires. While states such as Israel, Algeria, Cyprus, and Ireland were established out of terrorism, others such as Egypt, India, Nigeria, Morocco, and Tunisia rose out of the Western commitment to self-determination as victors started liquidating their empires. The U.S. had expanded to a major Western power that advocated an end to empires, but self-determination accelerated with the rise of the cold war when the Soviets helped would-be rebels (Rapoport, 2004).
Terrorism driven by the nationalism agenda forced imperial powers to surrender. The terror campaigns were used in regions where special political interests and challenges made withdrawal an inferior option (Rapoport, 2004). For instance, Arabs and Jews in Palestine differed on the meaning of British withdrawal from the territory. Similarly, Algeria wanted the French to remain because of the significant European population in the nation. Northern Ireland also proposed that Britons remain. Britain wanted Cyprus to remain its base for Middle East operations. The success of the second wave s attributed to the terrorist change of language (Rapoport, 2004). For instance, in Israel, Irgun, called its people freedom fighters fighting government terror (Rapoport, 2004). Currently, nationalism is still driving terrorism, either state-sanctioned or driven by individual organizations. A case is in Hong Kong, in which the people are demanding separation from China, the Basques in France, Jumma people in Bangladesh, Abkhaz in Georgia, Assam in India, and the Kurdish in Iraq (Forest, 2018).
Third Wave: New Left
Political events stimulated the rise of the third wave. The Vietnam War stirred the “New Left” wave because “the effectiveness of the Viet Cong’s primitive weapons against the American goliath’s modern technology rekindled radical hopes that the contemporary system was vulnerable” (Rapoport, 2004, p.56). The youth in the Western and Third World nations became ambivalent about the importance of the modern system. Many groups, including the French Action Directe, Italian Red Brigades, American Weather Underground, Japanese Red Army, and West Germany Red Army Faction (RAF), emerged as the Third World vanguards with the training, weaponry, and moral support of the Soviet (Rapoport, 2004). As the author explains, in the third wave, revolutionaries combined nationalism and radicalism, as evident from the struggles of Armenians, Kurds, Irish, Corsicans, and Basques (Forest, 2018).
Unlike in the second wave but similar to the first wave, women assumed a key role in the third wave. They became theatrical targets such as hijacking to create hostage crises such as the kidnapping of the Aldo Moro, Italian prime minister by the Red Brigades in 1979 (Rapoport, 2004). On the other hand, in 1978, the Sandinistas initiated the downfall of the Somoza regime when they took hostage Nicaragua’s Congress. In total, 409 international kidnappings yielding 951 and a ransom amounting to $350 million occurred between 1968 and 1982 (Rapoport, 2004). The “New Left” terrorism has risen again, especially in Muslim nations. The ambivalent youth have propagated a wave of change evident from the collapse of various governments, including in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and other nations (Jayaraman, 2016).
Fourth Wave: Religious Wave
The overlapping nature of ethnic and religious identities evident in religious terrorism wave is seen in Palestinian, Israeli, French Canadian, Macedonian, Armenian, Cypriot, and Irish struggles in which groups seek to establish secular states (Rapoport, 2004). As the scholar claims, religion has been significant in supplying organizing principles and justifications for states. For instance, in Sri Lanka, while the Buddhists try to transform the state, terrorist responses by the Hindu Tamils seek to create a parallel secular state. Globally, Islam is the epitome of the religious wave. Terrorism has been either in support of or against Islam. Sikhs propagated for a religious state after the emergence of Islam in Punjab. Jews tried to blow up the Jerusalem Islam shrine while waging assassination plans against Palestinian mayors.
Hebron highlighted that a Jew killed 29 Muslims in Abraham’s tomb (as cited in Rapoport, 2004, p.61). Furthermore, Christian terrorism driven by racist Biblical interpretations arose in the U.S. However, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, a more politically inclined occurrence, ignited the religious wave. Islam insurgents, including the Sunni in Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia, Philippines, and Tunisia, began with rebels attacking Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan with the largest of the terrorist group being the Al-Qaeda (Rapoport, 2004). Suicide bombings characterize the religious wave as terrorist groups battle against governments, and their supporters considered enemies of their religion (de Graaf, 2015). Besides al-Qaeda, other terrorist organizations such as the ISIL with Islamic religious inclinations have emerged wreaking havoc in Iraq, Syria, and other countries, which support western powers (Korbatov et al., 2015).
A Treaty to Build and Sustain International Cooperation on Counter-Terrorism
During the anarchist wave of the 1890s, President Theodore Roosevelt explained that through treaties declared by all civilized nations would be an effective way to fight terrorism (Rapoport, 2004). Treaties are anchored on globally enforceable laws passed and adopted by nations such as the ICC treaty governing crimes against humanity (Gardiner, 2015). Therefore, through treaties, it could be possible to counter international terrorism since different nations would collaborate under global laws. However, states would need to finance global police operations and an international court that would undertake prosecution and trial of the terrorism perpetrators. Historically, as a global leader, the United States has the mandate to promote global security and peace, thereby making it the clear leader in formulating, enacting, and implementing a global treaty against international terrorism.
One of the disadvantages of seeking a global treaty to fight international terrorism is limited support from nations driven by self-interests or political benefactors of terrorism. Jayaraman (2016) claims that, besides North Korea, some of the Middle East nations such as Syria and Asian nations, including Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq thrive on terrorism with their political leaders having terrorist inclinations. Likewise, Korbatov et al. (2015) opine that some nationalist leaders from the terrorist harboring or supporting nations side with the terrorists turning them against their political opponents or other countries deemed to support the political competitors.
However, establishing a global treaty to counter international terrorism is highly advantageous. Besides giving nations a choice to opt-in and out of the treaty, it reaches far and wide across the globe, which implies that it could benefit many nations. Bjorge and Bjørge (2014) present that global treaties are free to join and offer extensive protection against international challenges because they operate globally. Waibel (2014) highlights a global treaty bearing a corporate membership clause in which a regional body such as NATO or European Union (EU) that could sign on behalf of its members become binding to all member states. In this case, the treaty becomes ratified by the adoption of the majority members of the regional body, an aspect that extends its protective mandate far and beyond the already ratified nations.
A treaty allows nations to share intelligence and information exchange on a global scale. Gardiner (2015) argues that treaties establish collaborative structures through which nations exchange information and intelligence. Concerning international terrorism, treaty members, individual nations, and corporate bodies, such as the UN, NATO, EU, African Union could share intelligence, explore counter interventions, as act in unison against the perpetrators. While diplomatic interventions could be effective, in the event of a protracted denial or failure to comply with international decisions could necessitate the need for a collaborative approach in striking the terrorist collaborating regimes.
References
Bjorge, E., & Bjørge, E. (2014). The evolutionary interpretation of treaties . Oxford University Press, USA.
de Graaf, B. (2015). Counter-terrorism and conspiracy: Historicizing the struggle against terrorism. In The Routledge History of Terrorism (pp. 425-441). Routledge.
Forest, J. J. (2018). Nationalist and separatist terrorism. In Routledge handbook of terrorism and counterterrorism (pp. 74-86). Routledge.
Gardiner, R. K. (2015). Treaty Interpretation . Oxford University Press, USA.
Jayaraman, S. (2016). International terrorism and statelessness: Revoking the citizenship of ISIL foreign fighters. Chi. J. Int'l L. , 17 , 178.
Korbatov, A. B., Suzuki, E., & Goldblum, B. L. (2015). The fight against nuclear terrorism needs global cooperation—and the IAEA. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , 71 (5), 67-76.
Rapoport, D.C. (2004). “The four waves of modern terrorism.” In Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (pp.46-73). Georgetown University Press.
Waibel, M. (2014). Uniformity versus specialization: A uniform regime of treaty interpretation? In Research Handbook on the Law of Treaties . Edward Elgar Publishing.
