The Limits of Terrorism: A Network Perspective1

Capturing the spirit of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Robert Gilpin (1981) explained how the diffusion of technology and other capabilities was leading to the decline of US hegemony relative to rising challengers. After a brief hiatus during the halcyon decade of the 1990s that followed the end of the Cold War, the hegemon is once again under siege. This time, however, networks of discontented individuals and groups have joined the ranks of states in exploiting the diffusion of modern transportation, communication, and technology to challenge the dominant state(s) in the system (Deutsch 1966; Rosenau 1990; Rosenau and Czempiel 1992; Risse-Kappen 1995; Zacher and Sutton 1996; Slaughter 2004). Enabled or amplified by the technological innovations and diffusions that have characterized the last several decades, network-based threats include identity theft, drug trafficking, infectious disease, and terrorism (Matthew and Shambaugh 1998; Lilley 2003; Sageman 2004; Friedman 2005). We agree with arguments that contend that network-based threats are difficult to defeat and pose a long-term challenge to security, especially at the individual level. But the resilience of networks is not limited to terrorists and criminals; it is a prominent feature of contemporary states and gives them considerable protection as well. Moreover, most networks face significant collective action problems that limit what they can achieve. These characteristics make it extraordinarily unlikely that terrorists or other such actors will be able to undermine the national or homeland security of countries or, indeed, achieve any long-term strategic goals (Matthew and Shambaugh 2005). Consequently, even though terrorism poses a grave and persistent threat to personal security and a wide range of devastating attacks are possible, we argue that its threat to national security is at times poorly characterized and, hence, misrepresented. The West is never likely to win a global war against terrorism or other network-based threats, but, like terrorists, nation-states can impose large costs on individuals or groups within the network. Their organizational structures enable them to do so with a greater efficiency and a greater degree of coordination over a longer period of time than their network-based adversaries. If diffuse terrorist groups succeed in overcoming the collective action problems of networks, their institutionalization will generate new preferences and vulnerabilities that may make them easier to control.