Terrorism (Military History)

Introduction

Terrorism is well-defined as “the deliberate, systematic, murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends” (Jonathan Institute 1979). The United Nations has working definitions of terrorist acts. Many countries have formal definitions embedded in state codes. Should any precise definition seem unsatisfactory, Dutch expert Alex P. Schmid established another useful approach in 1983: listing multiple yet distinctive characteristics of terrorism. Examples may be the following: It is illegal violence or the threat thereof; it always has political content; most victims are non-belligerents/civilians; psychology and shock value are at a premium, not destruction of martial forces; and the intended audiences—to be frightened or influenced—are far wider than the crime scene. Terrorism has become an established factor in international relations and has its own position in the spectrum of irregular warfare. The topic has had no emphasis in standard military histories—although that may be changing after 2001. Terrorism is discernibly different in nature from military practice and experience, and is barred under international law and law of war. However, terrorism and guerrilla war have been part of many wars and low-intensity campaigns. Most insurgents have chosen to use terror. Substate actors may view terrorism as an alternative to war and perhaps even an alternative to planning and executing widespread insurgency. For all these reasons, terrorism deserves a place in a military bibliography, and to a degree the selections following are balanced in that direction.

Specialized Sources

In a world of current media, and engines such as LexisNexis and EBSCO that can search in academic journals, there is less inclination to turn to a printed encyclopedia. But two are briefed here as offering numerous, short, informative listings on named terrorist groups: Janke and Sim 1983 and Ashley (2011). These are followed by just three of the proliferating contemporary websites: Global Terrorism Database, the South Asia Terrorism Portal; and the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor. The US Department of State has done admirably, in almost all years, producing its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, which are useful on a dozen levels, including informing critics of official Washington’s point of view on overseas violence. Varied journals of strategic studies, international relations, military affairs, and small wars sometimes run useful articles on terrorism, or terrorism and its links to war. Specialized journals are available for regions of the world; these offer important background and general themes for the terrorism researcher at risk of delving too narrowly into a minority’s violence at the expense of context. For readers on terrorism with global interests and a current-day focus, three journals deserve mention for their qualities: Jane’s Intelligence Review; Terrorism and Political Violence; and Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

Department of State (US). Country Reports on Terrorism.
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These are annual products of inter-agency collaboration and the considered opinions of officials in the security arena. Shorter in the 1980s and 1990s, they now run to 250 or 300 pages Each report covers events of the previous year, region by region and with strategic overviews, tables of data, and a glossary of named groups pitched to the operational level. State sponsors of terrorism are described, with notes on the consequences of being listed as such.
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Global Terrorism Database. START. University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
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Naturally not as current as a newspaper, this website carries invaluable data on groups’ patterns of activity over time: e.g., how many violent actions—and of what types—a group took during named years. Or, data can pair with other resources to reveal the start-point or end of a group. It becomes evident that some groups do not indulge in public violence in their early years, yet other groups remain disturbing long after their last bombing.
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Jane’s Intelligence Review. Defense and Security Intelligence and Analysis Section, IHS Jane’s.
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Military historians know Jane’s for its annuals on fighting ships, but today the company is far larger, and prints products about scores of security-related topics. This monthly is the single best English-language periodical with worldwide coverage on guerrilla wars and terrorism, and it is also informative on organized crime and narcotics. Jane’s also publishes Terrorism and Insurgency Monitor.
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Janke, Peter, with Richard Sim. Guerrilla and Terrorist Organizations: A World Directory and Bibliography. New York: Macmillan, 1983.
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Former head of research at a British think tank, Janke assembled over five hundred pages of capsule material on famous and obscure groups up to his time. Remarkably reliable and valuable for scholars. But being outdated, it can be paired with the new, smaller, and less-tested collection by Paul Ashley: The Complete Encyclopedia of Terrorist Organizations (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2011).
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South Asia Terrorism Portal.
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A website of the Institute of Conflict Management, New Delhi. Like the conflict journal Faultlines, of which there are now over twenty volumes, this website was established by the noted Indian police official K. P. S. Gill and colleague Dr. Ajai Sahni. Careful reporting, sober commentary, and an overall antiterrorist spirit come through in the web articles, which are often in profuse detail. The terrorist group profiles are excellent.
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Studies in Conflict &Terrorism.
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Monthly journal edited by Bruce Hoffman, offering a strong range of authors and topics. For example, a special issue of 2005 by guest editor Cindy D. Ness was excellent on aspects of women engaged in terrorism, a theme continued by a 2013 article addressing the challenge of female suicide bombers in Iraq. There are few book reviews but many good articles each year.
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Terrorism and Political Violence.
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A quarterly journal. For decades the editorial board has been dominated by British and American scholars, though not exclusively so. Right-wing terrorism, terrorist ideology, ecoterrorism, and strategy are examples of subjects well-covered, year after year. A few pieces are statistic-heavy, but the norm is prose from authors not working in quantitative science. “Special issues” overseen by John Horgan have sometimes evolved into published books.
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Terrorism Monitor.
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A bi-weekly, online journal published by the Jamestown Foundation. This is a periodical by a think tank with evident expertise on Eurasia. Its detailed reports from the Caucasus, Russia, and other regions not well covered in Western media fill gaps in terrorism studies.
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Separable from Guerrilla Warfare

Written by the most respected of theorists of “regular” or traditional war, Clausewitz 1984 includes an essay on the irregular as well; it describes indigenous parties, usually civilians, such as those who tore at the guts of French armies occupying Spain and Russia. It discerns passion and force in unstructured rebellion, and wonders at its large possibilities. But the sense it projects that this form of war is somehow new is disputed by encyclopedists of low-intensity conflicts who followed (the authors of Callwell 1990, Asprey 1975, and Boot 2013). Those books argue that irregular war, guerrilla war, and terrorism are all as old as humankind. Among the brilliant studies emphasizing guerrilla war in a specific locale are those about Arab efforts against the Ottomans during World War I (Lawrence 1932) and the Algerian National Liberation Front versus France after World War II (Horne 1977). The specific roles that terrorism has had within insurgency have been illuminated by Horne 1977 and by a British expert on Malayan “Communist Terrorists” (Thompson 2005). O’Neill 2005 stays with that conceptual theme but reaches out to multiple continents, and attempts a universal approach. As terrorist cells or groups are often embedded within larger insurgencies, state response has often come with a joint force, meaning the analyst must attend to more than the ground war; e.g., Corum and Johnson 2003 shows how airpower has had utility in fighting terrorists and insurgents.

Asprey, Robert B. War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975.
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A massive work covering two millennia of famous and obscure guerrilla fights—though without attention to small modern terrorist groups. Has characteristics of Callwell’s Small Wars (Callwell 1990) but is composed in serial short histories, not by military themes. Asprey brings the guerrilla war story forward into the early 1970s, and his chapters on Indochina wars of 1946 onward carry scent of the impending defeat in Vietnam.
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Boot, Max. Invisible Armies: Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Liveright, 2013.
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Author of a respected history of US “small wars,” now Boot chronicles episodes in five thousand years of “guerrilla” and “irregular” wars. If data tables are imperfect, the larger volume appears sound, the text wise and reliable. Regrettably the Tamil LTTE Tigers’ war against Sri Lanka vanishes in a few lines. Anarchist terrorists of the 19th century and other small or inchoate organizations are included—the book does not restrict itself to guerrilla armies.
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Callwell, Charles E. Small Wars: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers. London: Greenhill, 1990.
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Published in 1896 and then often revised, as for 1906. Description and analysis of Europe’s colonial fights around the world. Terrorism by subject peoples is not explicitly treated. Emphasis is on how the outsiders should conduct intelligence, distinguish cultural attributes of different enemies, etc. The lesson is that overwhelming force is recommended to “awe” an uncivilized foreign opponent, which brings Callwell into conflict with later thinkers.
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Clausewitz, Carl von. “The People in Arms.” In On War. Edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, 479–483. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
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Book 6, chapter 26. While Napoleonic war dominated his lifetime, Clausewitz was fascinated by the partisans who bled invading and occupying armies. These five pages in the famed 1832 work are an honest and incomplete inquiry into the phenomenon of “the people in arms.” The Prussian author recognizes the passion and force of popular uprisings against organized armies but also how prone such movements and “militias” can be to disorder and dispersal.
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Corum, James, and Wray Johnson. Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
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The contests discussed are covered by innumerable histories; what makes this book unique is a perspective from the air. Although counterinsurgency receives the emphasis, the volume also treats counterterrorism, as well as the antigovernment actors in both those kinds of dramas. Two seasoned lecturers in military affairs have made a successful combination. Their photos and maps are of help; terrorism books rarely have good maps.
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Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954–1962. New York: Viking, 1977.
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How terrorism and guerrilla war fit into the larger insurgency, which Algerians of the National Liberation Front waged against France. The unrivaled scholarly treatment of the war, by an English historian. Its title, from a Rudyard Kipling poem, has also been borrowed for a more recent American book on guerrilla wars.
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Lawrence, T. E. “Science of Guerrilla Warfare.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. 14th ed. Edited by T. E. Lawrence. 1932.
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“Lawrence of Arabia” proves himself a master of compression—not only a master of lyrical prose as in Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1935. These seven dense columns elaborate principles from experience in the field with Arab guerrillas during World War I. Argues that rebellion can succeed, with time, if 2 percent fight and the rest of the population is sympathetic. Uses the term “irregular war,” now a Pentagon favorite. See pp. 950–953.
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O’Neill, Bard E. Insurgency & Terrorism. Washington, DC: Potomac, 2005.
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Shaped the educations of several generations of civilians and military officers. Learned, and with a global reach in its illustrations. Conceptually sound—except perhaps in categorizing Leninist and Maoist groups as “egalitarian,” an interpretation that ignores their explicit principles of vanguard leadership. The first edition of 1990 was important scholarship; the second offers slight updates.
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Thompson, Robert. Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam. St. Petersburg, FL: Hailer, 2005.
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This slim 1966 book advanced professional military educations for many. Probably unfairly, it is criticized for being too formulaic, and extending “lessons learned” from one war to the next. Explaining how terrorism, insurgency, and “shadow governments” work, Thompson then offers rules and remedies: good plans, their lawful execution, intelligence, and attention to local “hearts and minds”—a phrase introduced in the Malayan conflict.
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Terrorism’s Particular Nature

Conceptually, terrorism is as different from regular military affairs as it is from pacific politics. Yet it mixes with both, creating gray areas that may confound, or at least require explication. These selections confront these problems. The reader learns that—despite conventional wisdom—some terrorists admit to what they do and use the word “terrorism” for it (Robespierre 2007, Marighella 1971). Wilkinson 2011 is the third edition of a groundbreaking book, which distinguishes terrorism, compares insurgency, and makes evident how significant terrorism’s challenges may be to politics. Short selections as in Laqueur 2004 from terrorist actors themselves add much and broaden the mind beyond Al Qaeda. The reader who seeks terrorist campaigns in historical context does well to consult Walter Laqueur’s history books; the aged master is still at work.

Laqueur, Walter, ed. Voices of Terror: Manifestos, Writings and Manuals of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Other Terrorists from around the World and throughout the Ages. New York: Reed, 2004.
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The preeminent historian in terrorism studies chooses old and key documents. Especially useful are the translated selections from Sergey Nechaev, Johannes Most, Nikolai Morozov, and similar founders of terrorist thought. The charter document for Hamas, and some other choices here, are deeply cut for length. One regrets not seeing Hezbollah’s seminal “Letter to the Oppressed.”
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Marighella, Carlos. Minimanual of Urban Guerrilla Warfare. In Urban Guerrilla Warfare. Edited by Robert Moss. Adelphi Paper 79. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, August 1971.
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Marighella, revolutionary in thought and deed, died in a police shoot-out in Brazil soon after the publication. His legacy in advice at the operational and tactical levels is enormous. Translated into numerous languages and found in many a safe house. Short, ruthless, accurate. Page 36 explains why “Terrorism is an arm the revolutionary can never relinquish,” Accompanying essay by Moss is valuable.
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Robespierre, Maxmilien. “On the Principles of Political Morality That Should Guide the National Convention.” In Virtue and Terror. Edited by Jean Ducane, 108–125. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso, 2007.
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An embattled leader of the French tells the Assembly in his speech of 5 February 1794 why revolutionaries must have virtue but must also defend virtue with terror. “The Terror” was part of official security policy in 1793 and 1794. Such thoughts and practices misled the revolution but yield the important modern political science term. Those reasons argue for inclusion of this unique item dealing with government terrorism of its own people, a conceptually different subject than the substate forms of terrorism addressed by this bibliography.
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Wilkinson, Paul. Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2011.
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Wilkinson educated a legion of future professors in terrorism studies. His special interest was in the careful balancing of lawful, open democracy as against enemies that attack the innocent for shock value. The Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, scene of the November 2008 massacre, was thus an apt cover photo for the third edition, which carries chapters on the media, aviation security, peace processes, etc.
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Early Dynamics

The late 19th and early 20th centuries presented civil society with a challenge from anarchism, which had both philosophical and violent aspects. The self-described terrorists were internationalist, well-educated, devoted to propaganda, and networked—but also able and eager to act as individuals. These similarities with today’s terrorists are intriguing, and journal literature is comparing and exploring them (e.g., Richard Bach Jensen). The earlier women and men were not religious, and some were explicit atheists. Joll 1964 is the proper introduction, to be followed by works such as Avrich 1988 (cited under Terrorist Groups: North America). With time, as World War I approached, anarchism was shouldered aside by communism, whose revolutionary leaders such as Vladimir Lenin used but kept control over the weapon of terrorism. Trotsky 1961 has been neglected, but the Red Army founder’s life and ideas well suit any list joining military and terrorism books. An almost novelistic view into how terrorist psychology and practice work inside insurgency is supplied by Gage 1983 for the Greek Civil War. Laqueur (Laqueur 1987) has encyclopedic knowledge of the early movements and writes with rich awareness of the latest trends. Anarchism and communism remain alive today, sometimes fueling terrorism, but both ideologies are much weaker.

Gage, Nicholas. Eleni: A Savage War, a Mother’s Love, and a Son’s Revenge: A Personal Story. New York: Random House, 1983.
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This New York Times reporter’s narrative captures the feel of evil better than any textbook. His achievement dwarfs the later film version (CBS 1985) of the story by laying out the actual workings of system, psychology, and violence inside communist insurgency, key to many post-1945 internal wars. One village’s tragedies are not fully offset by the reader’s awareness that the terrorists in Greece will ultimately be defeated, allowing eventual return of democracy to its birthplace.
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Joll, James. The Anarchists. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964.
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Gracefully combines philosophy, history, and terrorist operations in describing early modern terrorists. Proudhon, Bakunin, and other influential figures have roles in the account, as do themes: e.g., the anarchists’ relations with labor union “syndicalists” and the concept of “propaganda by the deed.”
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Laqueur, Walter. The Age of Terrorism. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987.
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Dependent in places on Lacqueur’s 1977 book Terrorism, this expanded volume is the serious reader’s best introduction to the modern problem before 2000. Offerings include “The Sociology of Terrorism” in chapter 3, “Left and Right” in chapter 7, and “International Terrorism” in chapter 8. Laqueur’s unusual reach into foreign-language sources is one of the reasons his work is in the vanguard of English-language scholarship.
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Trotsky, Leon. Terrorism & Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961.
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Lenin and Mao usually skirted the subject of terrorism, but Trotsky was not coy: One sees plainly the place this modern phenomenon has within communist mobilization and war in the 20th century. And yet the earlier edition in English (in 1920) was entitled Dictatorship vs. Democracy.
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Late-20th-Century Dynamics

From the end of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 through the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in 1979, international terrorism has shoved itself into modern politics and then defied eradication. The literature has followed, and where several books once trickled out each month, now they flood in. Criminal justice, sociology, psychology, military science, international relations, and other areas of study have joined political science in their interest in terrorism. Works by Brian Jenkins are significant because in the early 1970s he fathered terrorism studies at the RAND Corporation, which began careful data collection on events worldwide; Jenkins 1981 analyzes hostage-taking at embassies and documents a leading tactic of those times (and one that could return). The rise of terrorism that was specifically international—and accompanied by internationalist rhetoric—can be associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its sub-groups, briefly described in Laffin 1982. Crenshaw 1995 reflects terrorism studies in academic maturity. The roots of today’s religious fervor and terror might be studied in mid-20th- century failed rebellions by Sunnis, but these are followed by the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran after 1979, and semi-successful substate actors of this era, especially Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda (al Suri 2004). Today, many terrorist groups are very well organized, including those of communist principles. Semi-organized groups are common in both right-wing milieus and circles of Sunni zealots; the latter have been interviewed and analyzed in Sageman 2004. But perhaps hardest to anticipate and thus frightening to the public are individual, “self-radicalized” terrorists. That syndrome has been deeply understood by Silber and Bhatt 2007. And it is flatly recommended as a strategy by the Al Qaeda web magazine INSPIRE. Such “leaderless resistance” ideas were visible in American white power theory a generation ago and are to be studied as an operational type, not as a mainstream religion.

Al-Malahem Media Foundation. Special Issue: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. INSPIRE, no 1–11 (2010–2013).
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American English, aimed at Western audiences. Appeals to educated readers, not just anyone bent upon action. Affects openness to diverse views and interactivity while also advancing theories of Muslim superiority, a theory of attritional and economic warfare against “apostates” and “Crusaders,” and exhortations to “individual terrorist jihad.” Issues of 30–75 colorful pages offer theology, guerrilla war doctrine, terrorist tradecraft, and bomb recipes. The periodical influenced attacks, e.g., Fort Hood, Texas, and was found on the computer of one of those in the Boston marathon plot of 2013.
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al Suri, Abu Musab. The Call to Global Islamic Resistance. N.p., 2004.
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Jihadist websites posted this massive book at the end of 2004, and CENTRA Technology of Arlington, Virginia, produced an English translation. Those not reading Arabic or preferring a short essay may profit from the biography and treatise summary by Paul Cruickshank and Mohanad Hage Ali (Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, January 2007). Candid about Sunni Islamist movement failures, this is a form of history-writing, yet its larger purpose is recommending a new strategy for the post-9/11 era. Unusually important.
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Crenshaw, Martha. Terrorism in Context. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.
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The dean of the Americans at work in political science on terrorism, Crenshaw assembled a bright international coterie for this tome. Its 633 pages hold deep studies by Italy’s Donatella della Porta and Frenchman Michel Wieviorka, among others. Paramilitaries in Ireland are examined by Charles Townshend—author of Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction for Oxford University Press.
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Jenkins, Brian. Embassies under Siege: A Review of 48 Embassy Takeovers, 1971–1980. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, January 1981.
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As valuable as it is short, for instruction about a once-common form of terrorism, the seizure of an embassy and prolonged holding of numerous hostages. May be supplemented by Joseph G. Sullivan’s collection of diplomats’ stories published in 1995 and also titled Embassies under Siege. Today’s terrorists are more likely to assault a mission (e.g., Benghazi, 2012) or embassy with varieties of arms and/or a vehicle bomb.
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Laffin, John. The PLO Connections. London: Corgi, 1982.
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Especially valuable on training, arms procurement, and international movements of these substate actors—factors overlooked in many reputable academic histories. As father of the Palestine Authority, the PLO must be credited with a measure of strategic success for its adept combination of terrorism with other methods, especially politics. A slender paperback and easy-to-read on one level, yet jammed with facts and important characterizations.
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Sageman, Marc. Understanding Terror Networks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
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From prolific interviewing this former CIA officer developed a theory that many contemporary Islamist plots were hatched by “bunches of guys” who had known one another socially. London Tube bombings are examples. New communications technologies extend such possibilities. Sageman’s concept, while valuable, has limits. It does not explore such realities as the linkage of many terrorist acts in Britain to Pakistan. And Sageman would not attempt to minimize “Al Qaeda Central,” which persists under Ayman al Zawahiri. The author has also written on leaderless resistance.
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Silber, Mitchell D., and Arvin Bhatt. Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. New York: New York Police Department Intelligence Division, 2007.
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In less than a hundred pages, intelligence specialists capture patterns of a pressing threat: individual self-radicalization leading to lethal “jihad.” The study found some common stages in radicalization, and its value has been underscored by subsequent cases in European and American cities—to which perhaps some add the Boston brothers of April 2013. Easily available on the web.
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Strategies

The best definitions of terrorism indicate that it is calculated—as important a factor as premeditation in criminal justice concepts. Successful terror groups do not only plan actions, they have larger, strategic plans. Ancient China’s Sun Tzu 1963 offers a deeply psychological treatise on warfare that stresses influencing the enemy and other audiences with violence, superior intelligence, trickery, and assassination. Its arguments favoring “winning without fighting” were intended for warlords and commanders and emperors, but almost no other theorist better reveals modern terrorism’s strategies of dislocating governments away from their strengths. Such ideas in 19th- and 20th-century prose abound (Laqueur 2004, cited under Terrorism’s Particular Nature). States, too, conduct terrorism—not just foreign guerrilla wars or espionage. Henze 1981 offers a short and strong essay on how Soviet Bloc policy and strategy was damaging Turkey and its NATO partners. The author’s next book is about the East Bloc role in the shooting of Pope John Paul II, a personage of global significance in anti-communism. Much later, Harmon 2001 seeks to draw out five of the most common strategies of contemporary terrorists. These include economic damage, a strategy common to Marxist-Leninists and to Al Qaeda. Today the leading world concern is about Islamist strategies; an exemplar is “The Syrian,” Abu Musab al-Suri, explained in Lia 2008.

Harmon, Christopher C. “Five Strategies of Terrorism.” Small Wars & Insurgencies 12.3 (Autumn 2001): 39–66.
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Holding that terrorism is usually purposeful, the author considers argument and example for spreading chaos, discrediting and destroying existing government, economic damage, military damage, and internationalization of the cause. Reprinted by Alan O’Day, Ashgate’s editor of Dimensions of Terrorism (2004). Harmon and Arial Merari also wrote (individually) on the strategies of terrorism within insurgency, respectively, in Autumn 1992 in Small Wars & Insurgencies and in Winter 1993 in Terrorism and Political Violence.
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Henze, Paul B. Goal: Destabilization: Soviet Agitational Propaganda, Instability and Terrorism in NATO South. Marina del Rey, CA: European American Institute for Security Research RS-13–1, December 1981.
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The late 1970s and early 1980s had the Republic of Turkey under nearly catastrophic pressures of subversion and terrorism, as well as military intimidation by the Warsaw Pact, its member Bulgaria, and partner Syria. Henze’s essay—now obscure—recalls that campaign’s fires, largely superseded by other security questions.
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Lia, Brynjar. Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of Al-Qaeda Strategist Abu Mus’ab al Suri. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
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This work will be important to those unable to use the Arabic-language web version of al Suri’s 1,600-page Call to Global Islamic Resistance (see al Suri 2004, cited under Late-20th-Century Dynamics). Lia, of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, supplies a biography and many al Suri excerpts—a number of which are about terrorism, including its relationship to “open front” warfare.
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Sun Tzu. The Art of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edited and Translated by Samuel B. Griffith. Foreword by B. H. Liddell Hart. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.
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While newer editions of Sun Tzu are on offer, this Oxford edition by an American Marine Corps officer with service in China may well be the best. It is a staple of military schools, and there are other good reasons to study Sun Tzu. Western readers should set aside preconceptions about linkage to Mao Tse Tung—it is only limited—and instead approach this text as one introduction to thinking like a terrorist.
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State Sponsorship

International law—both traditional and United Nations–era—may oppose the “export” and use of armed parties abroad in covert warfare against another state, but the practice is familiar. Introduction to the issues of law and international affairs involved may be found in Murphy 1989 with its table of “twelve types of state involvement” with foreign groups. A step forward in currency for the reader on general factors and state practices is Byman 2007. Of the books on Soviet support for terrorism, Goren 1984 is a strong start. Cold War operations of communist bloc states are summarized by Cline and Alexander 1985 and then detailed in a series of personalized accounts in Ra’anan, et al. 1986. Levitt 2006 could be more emphatic on Iranian support for Hamas but does offer a superb study of that recipient itself. Mumbai’s late 2008 tragedy is lucidly re-created and analyzed by a team from RAND in Rabasa, et al. 2009. And if these scholarly prints on such political violence seem to require respite for the eyes, Assayas 2010, the French film drama Carlos, is rather reliable as to international and state connections—even if it is careful to publish a disavowal.

Assayas, Oliver, dir. Carlos. France: Criterion Collection, 2010.
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In five and a half hours of film, a dramatic and rather reliable re-creation of the terrorist career of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez. With strong communist roots, Carlos moved into militant Palestinian circles in the early 1970s and worked with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, its sponsors, and Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. “The Jackal” is also shown in Vienna, Paris, and East European cities and safe houses—where his presence and work are now documented. He is depicted as increasingly mercenary over time, although today the convict, in French prison, declares himself still “an international revolutionary.”
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Byman, Daniel. Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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The 2005 volume, filling a gap in recent literature, has been followed by a paperback. The Georgetown University scholar does some conceptual work and moves to case studies such as Iran, Syria, and Pakistan. The chapter on Afghanistan under the Taliban is important as the world watches Taliban the second time around. A chart tracks the named groups that receive distinctive types of state aid.
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Cline, Ray, and Yonah Alexander. “State-Sponsored Terrorism.” In A report for the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism of the Committee on the Judiciary. U.S. Senate, 99th: 1st sess. Washington, DC: GPO, June 1985.
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Hearings began with considerations of “a new age of terrorism,” sought definitions of terrorism vs. guerrilla war vs. wars of national liberation, and ended with possible responses to state-sponsored terror. There are capsules on internationally active “Selected Terrorist Groups.” A commercial variant by the two authors followed: Terrorism as State-Sponsored Covert Warfare, Fairfax, VA: Hero Books, 1986.
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Goren, Roberta. The Soviet Union and Terrorism. Edited by Jillian Becker. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984.
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The author died shortly after completing this academic dissertation-—which then emerged during the open debate in the United States about Soviet bloc terrorism sponsorship. Marxism-Leninist doctrine and history, legal questions, and contemporary Soviet bloc practices are analyzed. Becker’s earlier good scholarship (see Becker 1977, cited under Terrorist Groups: Europe) assured that any editing would be done with a careful hand.
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Levitt, Mathew. Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
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With experience in two US agencies, Dr. Levitt details the sophisticated Palestinian Sunni organization. He argues that the three “wings” of Hamas—the military, social, and political—are intimately connected. This implies that all members are responsible for the terrorist tactics of some. In 2013 Levitt released a new volume on international operations by Hezbollah—the Shia group even more strongly backed by Iran.
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Murphy, John F. State Support of International Terrorism: Legal, Political, and Economic Dimensions. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989.
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In only 128 pages, a clear sketch of the issues that even years later would baffle some writers on countering terrorism. Twelve types of state involvement receive focus in one chart that offers (1) a good framework for assessing the level of support, as well as (2) a professor’s rubric for running graduate-level seminars. A fine example of the sort of specialized study that Westview often publishes.
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Ra’anan, Uri, Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr., Richard H. Shultz, Ernst Halperin, and Igor Lukes. Hydra of Carnage: International Linkages of Terrorism: The Witnesses Speak. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1986.
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This compendium can also serve well in the section Late-20th-Century Dynamics. It collects first-person stories of significance from court documents, memoirs, and interviews, illuminating dimensions of “international terrorism” missed in many general accounts. With words and photos, it closely documents the official hands that were held out to some terrorist actors.
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Rabasa, Angel, Robert D. Blackwill, Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, C. Christine Fair, Brian A. Jackson, Brian Michael Jenkins, Seth G. Jones, Nathaniel Shestak, and Ashley J. Tellis. The Lessons of Mumbai. A RAND Occasional Paper, 2009.
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The Rand Corporation in California has marshaled an admirable team, including Chalk and Jackson, to study the meanings of the sixty-hour-long massacre in an urban center in western India. Addressed along with “key judgments” about the terrorists’ actions are Pakistan’s involvement and India’s failures in response.
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Terrorist Groups

Every region has a variety of terror groups and none is predictable or uniform as to ideology or practices. Maoist groups, which usually challenge not only the state and its citizens but also armies, are represented in Peru as well as in India and Nepal. A “lone wolf” rightist murdered scores of children in Norway in 2012 and the United States has seen murders by hyper-political individuals attracted to ecology, rightist racism, and anti-abortion fights. Melbourne, Australia; Toronto, Canada; Istanbul, Turkey; and Manila in the Philippines have all faced mass-lethality plots staged by Sunni Muslim zealots. The burgeoning world literature, including one-time reports by think tanks and documentary films, makes selections a challenge. The following subsections offer windows into five large regions and, as in other parts of this article, specialized works, memoirs, and unique volumes of focus are the types chosen for annotation—not textbooks.

Asia

A continent of unending variety, Asia also manifests strong communist themes in its revolutionary groups. Among the very first international terrorists from the region were a few with outsized influence, such as the Japanese Red Army (Farrell 1990). Marks 2007 probes some of the larger insurgencies of the region. Jones 1989 is focused solely on the Filipinos of the New People’s Army, just as Swamy 2008 focuses on Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers; both groups have done guerrilla war and terrorism simultaneously. Asian terrorism with origins in the 1990s was sometimes religious: there are studies of Aum Shinrikyo, the cultish and singular Japanese entity (Center for New American Security 2012); Jemaah Islamiyah, Indonesia’s Al Qaeda affiliate (Ressa 2003); and in the southwest, Taliban (Bergen and Tiedemann 2013). This latter volume, Bergen and Tiedemann 2013, will well serve those now focusing on the peace process—and Taliban—in Afghanistan. Finally, bringing terrorism studies fully into the new visual age, there are recent documentary films employing video shot by victims and other witnesses to the Beslan school massacre in Russia in 2004; no film in particular is annotated here.

Bergen, Peter, with Katherine Tiedemann, eds. Talibanistan: Negotiating the Borders between Terror, Politics, and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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A large compendium of fresh research from many hands. South Asians and other experts closely examine aspects of political conflicts in the Afghan-Pakistan border area. Attention is paid to Al Qaeda, but the closer focus is on Taliban: its non-uniform character, its varied prospects in different provinces, and its distance from Al Qaeda since 2001. Plentiful endnotes; no separate bibliography.
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Center for New American Security. Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons. 2012.
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Contributors included Richard Danzig, Marc Sageman, and Japanese scientists and the investigations involved doctors, court records, and interviews. The 2011 edition was a tight package on the chemical weapons work of Aum. Biological weapons got notably less treatment. Aum today shows the effects of heavy punishment by the state and retains only a subdued web presence under a new name, Aleph. This second edition is free in two electronic forms.
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Farrell, William R. Blood and Rage: The Story of the Japanese Red Army. Lexington, MA: Lexington, 1990.
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Students and Marxist-Leninists formed the JRA, and this book title is not overwrought; JRA made a spectacle, whether purging itself via “snow murders” in 1971/1972 or engaging in mass killing inside Lod Airport, Israel, a year later. Led by a woman, JRA remnants carried on into a fourth decade before attrition left nothing.
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Jones, Gregg R. Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989.
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One of the world’s two or three longest-running insurgencies is the New People’s Army. The Jones study is worthy, lengthy, rich, careful. Here one may read about labor, the church, elections and boycotts, strategic debates, propaganda, and other subtopics. It is unfortunate that this book is now so dated—which is also true of the good, simpler volume done by reporter William Chapman.
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Marks, Thomas A. Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia. Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus, 2007.
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Writing at the strategic level, Dr. Marks also has a reporter’s eye and much field experience. Terror-using insurgents in Sri Lanka and the Philippines are given close analysis, and the chapter on Thais helps one understand today’s political violence in that country’s south. As revolution in part succeeded in Nepal—on which Marks is expert—see chapter 7 on Maoist insurgency there, as well as later journal articles by others.
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Ressa, Maria A. Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia. New York: Free Press, 2003.
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Aimed at popular markets and undergraduates, this easy-reading, intriguing book explains Jemaah Islamiyah. The Indonesian Sunnis loyal to Al Qaeda are still active today, well justifying a second edition. Four pages on the “characters” and a good index are of help. Ms. Ressa wrote while working as an investigative journalist for CNN.
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Swamy, M. R. Narayan. Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerrillas. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Vijitha Yapa, 2008.
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This Indian journalist published his newspaper pieces about the last days of the LTTE Tamils, The Tiger Vanquished (2010). But his more substantive earlier volumes may better serve. These focus on the LTTE and on its (past) leader V. Prabhakaran, and the books—deserving, dispassionate, and detailed—went through multiple editions. “Hybrid warfare,” “protracted insurgency,” and “terrorism” were all integral to this force of Tamils, defeated by Sri Lanka after decades of fighting.
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Europe

National-separatist and leftist groups changed European politics in the modern era. The earliest was the Irish Republican Army (Coogan 1993), with its Irish “republican” variants, as well as “loyalist” enemies hoping to keep Ulster within the United Kingdom. For the half-century run of the ETA Basques in Spain, no single volume in English supplies full current history, but this may be overcome via superb journal contributions of active Spanish scholars Rogelio Alonso or Fernando Reinares. Italy seethed with violent provocations and evolving substate organizations (Weinberg and Eubank 1987). Next emerged the German leftists, then as now exemplified by the Baader-Meinhofs (Becker 1977, Aust 2009). Kassimeris 2001 studies the secretive and small 17 November cadre in Greece. Pluchinsky and Alexander 1992 collects invaluable documents and communiqués from many countries, letting these “red terrorists” speak for themselves. Europe’s tragedy is to be home to masses of immigrants from North Africa but also minorities binding themselves by violence to religio-political change in Europe and/or the old homelands, a phenomenon described from the inside by the Algerian Sifaoui 2004. To such national and country studies one must add statistics and today’s news, which are parsed and analyzed by Europol for its E.U. Terrorism Situation and Trend Report each year.

Aust, Stefan. Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF. Translated by Anthea Bell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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The admirable third edition of the work (in German, Baader Meinhof Complex) is current history, reliable, riveting. Mines less from the new treasures of Stasi and other communist archives than one expects. This book’s perspectives have become familiar due to the worldwide success of the dramatic film of the same name (directed by Uli Edel, 2008). A few critics found the film indulgent of terrorism, but there seem few grounds for that.
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Becker, Jillian. Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang. New York: J. P. Lippincott, 1977.
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This treats the Red Army Faction’s early years, with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, and lesser-known militants. It deserves study before the reader moves on to treatments of the “German Autumn” of 1977—there are many written in German. RAF pitched downward, irrevocably, in that year due to the morale-crushing recapture of a sky-jacked jet by Border Police, the suicide of several RAF leaders, and growing intelligence capabilities of the republic.
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Coogan, Tim Pat. The IRA: A History. Niwot, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1993.
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Irish, British, and American writers have all offered histories of the IRA “Provisionals.” Coogan’s text of nearly 500 pages in small print deserves a nod for reliability and detail. Chapters 33 and 34 present what is alleged to be “The Green Book”—a pair of internal IRA manuals of special interest.
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European Police Office. E.U. Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. The Hague: Europol. Annual.
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“TE-SAT” reports have been almost ignored by American analysts but deserve a place amidst statistical and analytical work. Each runs to forty or fifty pages and breaks out sections devoted to terrorism: religiously inspired, ethno-nationalist, left-wing, right-wing, single-issue, trends, and future outlook. Those who read German may go on to the annual on internal terrorism issues done by Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Federal Constitution.
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Kassimeris, George. Europe’s Last Red Terrorists: The Revolutionary Organization 17 November. London: Hurst, 2001.
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For a quarter-century a knot of Marxist-Leninists—also linked by family relations—duped Greek authorities and frustrated NATO countries victimized by their periodic assassinations, arsons, etc. Only a failed bombing led to collapse, which happened immediately after this book appeared. Readers will find this a somewhat sympathetic and elaborate treatment of the group’s ideas.
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Pluchinsky, Dennis, and Yonah Alexander. Europe’s Red Terrorists: The Fighting Communist Organizations. London: Frank Cass, 1992.
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The Frank Cass Publishers book series of the 1990s was very good and this was among its best volumes. Terrorism studies are buffeted by charges of “labeling” and “the coloration of facts with values,” and someone concerned by that can do best by recourse to the study of terrorists’ words and comparison with deeds. Here are (many of) their words.
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Sifaoui, Mohamed. Inside Al Qaeda: How I Infiltrated the World’s Deadliest Terrorist Organization. Translated by George Miller. New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2004.
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An Algerian journalist, bombed out of his offices, moved overseas to Paris and by playing up his Algerian roots won confidences and interviews within the diaspora in the city. After infiltrating, Sifaoui wrote damaging accounts of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (after 2007, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib). The story is an example of how terrorism in France has many international connections. Vivid first-person prose.
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Weinberg, Leonard, and William Lee Eubank. The Rise and Fall of Italian Terrorism. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1987.
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Incident levels climbed so in the early 1970s that some feared anarchy would follow. This book describes both “black” (neo-fascist) and “red” (communist) movements and the patterns of their activities against the political and social backdrops. The response of the state to the threat included clumsiness, moderation, patience, and ultimate success. This case study on the “years of lead” ends well and so becomes a foundation for Weinberg’s short book The End of Terrorism? in 2012.
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North America

Pamphlets and proponents of anarchism arrived in force from Europe and the East in the late 19th century and then flourished inside the United States in schools of philosophy, in labor unions, and in violent political undergrounds. An exemplar in the scholarship of the movements has been Paul Avrich (see Avrich 1988). Wider parameters of left and right opened up on American soil in the mid and latter decades of the 20th century, and many episodes are captured in short chapters in McCann 2006. Canada, which rarely figures in textbooks on terrorism, is linked to the United States by terrorist violence, not only tourism and trade. Kinsella 1994 details one such pattern in the spreading of the Ku Klux Klan. Later examples come with Middle East–based extremists working in Canada (see Bell 2007); at times such men crossed into the United States from the north, intent upon targets. Bell 2007 likewise details ethnic diasporas, especially Tamils of the LTTE Tigers, who did their work mostly in Canada but eventually also in the United States Diaspora politics among Irish-Americans were important to energizing and paying for militant “republicanism” in Ireland, as indicated by Holland 1987 (cited under Specialized Topics). Aspects of indigenous late-20th-century violence in the United States can be well-explored by highly individual works. A PhD named William Pierce wrote fictional “diaries” about a race war under a pseudonym (Macdonald 1978); the book attracted wide right-wing followings. As for the political left, an infiltrator into the Marxist-Leninist Weather Underground produced a gritty testament on militant life and political psychology of the early 1970s (Grathwohl 1976). Years later, one of the originators of eco-sabotage sought a tone between the sensible and the war-like in his polemic for environmental extremism (Foreman 1991). These are some but not all of the schools of terrorist thought and practice that have roiled North American politics and police departments. Yet another is Quebecois separatism—which, it should not be forgotten, once occasioned martial law in modern Canada. These and more challenges preceded 9/11; many are causes likely to recur, or endure, well after 9/11.

Avrich, Paul. Anarchist Portraits. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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Seminal thinkers for this book, chosen in part for their influence on some Americans, include Bakunin, Nechaev, Kropotkin, and Proudhon. The ideologically driven actors on the US scene include Sacco and Vanzetti, Alexander Berkman, Mollie Steimer, and Emma Goldman. Admirable scholarship and wonderful to read.
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Bell, Stewart. Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism around the World. Toronto, Canada: Wiley, 2007.
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A sort of complement to Kinsella’s Web of Hate (Kinsella 1994), this volume, equally forceful, is focused on foreign enemies who act inside Canada but are often closely linked to hostile regimes and armed parties abroad. The Tamil Tigers—defeated by Sri Lanka in 2009—are one major scene; varieties of Al Qaeda actors fill certain others.
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Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. New York: Harmony Books, 1991.
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A co-founder of the organization Earth First!, the author blends personal warmth, hot rhetoric, and cold facts in arguing that much more than words are needed to save the planet. Controversial aspects of the book include the analytical question of whether arson and sabotage of property can qualify as “terrorism” if they do not kill. Unquestionably, they menace.
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Grathwohl, Larry, as told to Frank Reagan. Bringing Down America. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1976.
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The Weathermen—whose name soon changed to reflect numerous females in cadre and leadership positions—were infiltrated, almost by chance, and then revealed in this later memoir. The short furious bombing campaign of this organization can be better understood by reading this account in tandem with the group’s manifestos and the later autobiographies by Weather Undergrounders Billy Ayers and Mark Rudd.
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Kinsella, Warren. Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1994.
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The KKK and other groups, often indigenous, have posed a lesser-noticed threat to a republic rightly proud of its liberalism. Here are over four hundred revealing pages.
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Macdonald, Andrew. The Turner Diaries. Hillsboro, WV: National Vanguard, 1978.
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This small-format paperback sold hundreds of thousands of copies, led to at least a half-dozen attacks, and helped create the Pacific Northwest racist group called The Order in the early 1980s. The Oklahoma City bomber of 1995 often carried, or sold, copies of this fictional story of a race war won by whites. Naturally the book is unavailable in most public libraries.
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McCann, Joseph T. Terrorism on American Soil. Boulder, CO: Sentient, 2006.
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Subtitled as “A Concise History of Plots and Perpetrators from the Famous to the Forgotten.” The chapters begin with the assassination of President Lincoln, and by the time the reader reaches 9/11 it is evident that (1) the US polity has had much experience in being attacked by terrorists, and (2) most of those have not been warriors for Islam—however intense the current campaign.
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Latin America

To a degree, Latin American terrorists instructed the world. Practices of Uruguayan Tupamaros—opposed to democracy and to US influence—were captured and broadcasted in Costa-Gravas 1972, the famous film State of Siege. The encyclopedia Radu and Tismaneanu 1990 acquires and digests a vast amount of information about Latin terror groups, whether current or of recent past; even now it is an invaluable reference on such entities as ELN and FARC in Colombia. Shining Path is of such importance to Peru, to insurgency, to terrorism, and to drug-trafficking, that it merits two titles here (Gorriti 1999, Fumerton 2002).

Costa-Gravas, dir. State of Siege. France: Reggane Films, 1972.
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Audiences, including many terrorist cells, studied this two-hour French film with subtitles. Supposedly set in Uruguay, where the Tupamaros were in urban insurgency, the gritty film details terrorist methods, especially in kidnapping. When the country’s armed forces reply with dictatorship, the crackdown offers other angles from which to consider terrorism, as well as a role armed forces have played scores of times in 20th century history around the globe. Difficult to buy or rent today, the movie is accessible on some sites such as YouTube and Ovguide.
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Fumerton, Mario. From Victims to Heroes: Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980–2000. Amsterdam: Rozenberg, 2002.
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Based upon extensive field research in Peru by an author later teaching in Utrecht, this is unique. It was, and reads as, a long political science dissertation. Yet too many books marginalize the vital roles of self-defense militias in defeating insurgency in Peru. Those who sense how much they have missed will find it here. The English text is accompanied by a summary in Dutch and offers German and Spanish-language sources.
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Gorriti, Gustavo. The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
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There are good accounts in English of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency and its prodigious terrorism: e.g., Simon Strong of the United Kingdom (Shining Path 1992), David Palmer of the United States (Shining Path of Peru 1992), and Gustavo Gorriti of Peru (in Spanish 1990 and the title cited here). All tracked a lengthy insurgency yet left it just before its decapitation in late 1992. Any richly deserves a second edition. This choice is by a respected Peruvian journalist with years of interviews and reporting that few others match. Sendero documents and government points of view are represented, and the index is good.
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Radu, Michael, and Vladimir Tismaneanu. Latin American Revolutionaries: Groups, Goals, Methods. Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense, 1990.
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Dozens of substate revolutionary groups are meticulously evaluated and analyzed. Now more history than current affairs, but an exemplary study of militants. A few of the subjects mentioned in the pages, such as Daniel Ortega, now hold high positions and public offices in Latin countries.
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Northern Africa and the Middle East

No film about terrorism is better-known and respected than Pontecorvo 1966, The Battle of Algiers. Harsh and unblinking, it reveals much about modern terrorism’s methods—a few of which the Algerian FLN invented. For example, the insurgents’ collective leadership was smart enough to widely and formally deploy diplomats and spokesmen, whose stories later come together in the study Connelly 2002. Another innovator, in eastern parts of this region, was “Carlos,” whose work with indigenous actors such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine helped make the world a stage for Palestinian and anti-Israeli dramas; see Dobson and Payne 1977. Macdonald 1999 is an intense viewing experience and study of the Black September operation: One Day in September; gunmen on both sides at Munich behaved in the fishbowl of a televised 1972 Olympics. That movement was of course rife with fault lines, a fact made vivid by Abu Nidal’s numerous attempts to kill Yasser Arafat and his officers (Seale 1992). A rich array of scholarly journals—some regional, some topical—are tracking more recent terrorism trends and events in the Middle East. And for the Iraq War that began in 2003, there may be no more patient and reliable account, easily accessible, than the Iraq Index of the Brookings Institution, under the direction of Livingston and O’Hanlon.

Connelly, Mathew. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post–Cold War Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Terrorism analysts have been aware of the “diplomats” these groups use, but only with this book has a serious and lasting study been done. FLN insurgents killed many Algerians and lost most fights with French troops, but they won the war for public opinion and forced France out. This examination of a substate actor’s diplomacy has inspired a study of PLO diplomacy (2012), also from Oxford University Press.
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Dobson, Christopher, and Ronald Payne. The Carlos Complex: A Study in Terror. New York: Putnam, 1977.
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Written in a popular style by two experts on terrorism of the 1970s. Tracks Ilich Ramirez Sanchez and his Palestinian (and international) teams as they work back and forth across the Mediterranean, capturing world attentions. Lebanon, Yemen, and the Sudan are among the many places from which “Carlos” works. A later biography, equally deserving, was Jackal (Follain, 1998). One that disappoints is Tracking the Jackal by Yallop, 1993.
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Iraq Index. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
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During a most politicized war, this site, under the direction of Ian S. Livingston and Michael O’Hanlon, was carefully and frequently updated, offering statistics for such categories as journalists killed, Al Qaeda in Iraq member strength, and civilian fatalities in a given year. The final update to the tables was done in mid-2012. Valuable as a record of terrorism, guerrilla war, and “current history.”
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Macdonald, Kevin. dir. One Day in September. Sony, 1999.
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This documentary film re-creates terrorist events in Munich in 1972 with research, live TV, interviews, and a cool narration. There are many separate stories to this film. One is the disaster at Furstenfeldbruck airport, where Bavarian police attempted to kill the terrorists and nearly everyone in two helicopters died. Another is how several terrorists escape death, reappearing for a heroes’ welcome in Libya. Yet another is German mismanagement of most of these sad events, which led to governmental preparedness thereafter.
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Pontecorvo, Gillo. dir. The Battle of Algiers. Igor Film/Casbah Film, 1966.
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A drama in French. An Italian communist made this lengthy film in a pseudo-documentary style, and it grips audiences. One learns much of the workings of the Algerian underground, and a famed terrorist Yacef Saadi plays himself in the movie. The French paratroops and their commander display both their skill and their readiness to unleash any form of violence in order to hold Algeria. France won “the battle of Algiers” in less than two years, as well as most of the other battles, while losing the war. This paradox is much studied by military professionals.
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Seale, Patrick. Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire: The Secret Life of the World’s Most Notorious Arab Terrorist. New York: Random House, 1992.
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A weighty biography which reflects much research and many Middle Eastern sources. However, the book ends with a suggestion that Nidal was a stalking horse for Israel—because of the damage he did to the PLO. This may be a point of view, or perhaps a blind spot: authors on terrorism usually miss these groups’ propensity to attack other revolutionaries and liberals, and to engage in internal purges.
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Specialized Topics

Once a narrow field, terrorism studies are so broadly spread today, and growing, that this section could name scores of rich subtopics. One must first consider the political roots of terrorism and thus its relationship with political parties; only one book has done that directly (Weinberg, et al. 2009), although the specialized journals are doing case studies. Women have served in many capacities in terrorist groups—for decades—and their involvements have opened new pathways into thinking about motivation, recruiting, operations, and logistics. Macdonald 1991 offers good and early studies in this respect. The financing of terrorism once had few students; three of the leaders were journalist James Adams (The Financing of Terrorism 1986), Irish affairs specialist Jack Holland (Holland 1987), and Israeli criminologist Rachel Ehrenfeld (Ehrenfeld 1990); space here allows only a sketch of the latter two. Since 9/11, of course, there is a crowd in the field. Ideas matter, and so Aldis and Herd 2007, a collection of foreign experts and critics of government action, deserves study. Many ideas—and bastardizations of them—make the rounds of the World Wide Web, a terrorism problem studied by Weinmann 2007. And finally, terrorism sometimes does end—at least in one zone or for one group; MacGinty and Darby 2002, a study of the peace process and the IRA Provos is a consolation and permits hope for largely resolving one or more of our globe’s “intractable” conflicts.

Aldis, Anne, and Graeme P. Herd. The Ideological War on Terror: Worldwide Strategies for Counterterrorism. London: Routledge, 2007.
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The global coalition against terrorism had done badly at defeating the ideologies behind substate political violence. Robert R. Reilly, Sebastian Gorka, Robert Satloff, experts at the Quilliam Foundation, and others wrestle with the reasons why. Of the books to date, this has the widest perspective without losing focus and the greatest depth without limiting itself to a single geographical region. Do not miss the former African National Congress officer’s case study from the Republic of South Africa.
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Ehrenfeld, Rachel. Narco-Terrorism. New York: Basic Books, 1990.
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In the mid-1980s there was concern about the linkages of drug cartels and terrorist groups, such as Armenians of ASALA and Columbians of FARC and ELN. Middle Eastern groups were also involved in the drug trade, and today Hezbollah’s reach in Latin America is related. This was the first serious book on a new and global problem. The best book since 1990 on narco-terrorism may be on Taliban, the second edition of Gretchen Peters’s Seeds of Terror.
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Holland, Jack. The American Connection: U.S. Guns, Money and Influence in Northern Ireland. New York: Viking, 1987.
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While there are newer books on terrorist finance—some very fine—few to none are this good on the roles of an overseas diaspora in a modern terrorist campaign or guerrilla war. Diasporas have maintained low-intensity conflicts in Kosovo, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, to name a few countries. Primarily, this book tracks American extremists’ obsessions with militant Irish “republicanism” dating back to the mid-19th century.
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Macdonald, Eileen. Shoot the Women First. New York: Random House, 1991.
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The surprising title comes from a European police official remarking on what to do if suddenly faced with armed terrorists: he thought the female especially lethal. Journalist Macdonald found and interviewed terrorists of the 1970s and 1980s. She reports that women join and operate in terrorist groups for reasons that are similar to the reasons the men have. The book was groundbreaking yet now seems little-remembered, perhaps due to good new volumes from Mia Bloom and others.
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MacGinty, R., and John Darby. Guns and Government: The Management of the Northern Ireland Peace Process. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
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A new school of work within terrorism studies examines peace processes and opportunities for negotiation. The interest—and the optimism—are tied in part to the Irish decade of about 1996 through 2006, including cessation of IRA Provo attacks and participation in politics by some senior past members. Similar things have occurred in terrorist movements elsewhere; e.g., Latin and Central American politics include many former guerrilla leaders.
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Weinberg, Leonard, Ami Pedahzur, and Arie Perliger. Political Parties and Terrorist Groups. 2d ed. London: Routledge, 2009.
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An original idea and a valuable book, especially now that some well-known terrorist groups—in Palestine and Nepal, for example—have broadened their appeal while declining to renounce their past, moving into democratic politics, sometimes winning major elections.
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Weinmann, Gabriel. Terror on the Internet. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2007.
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The scholar from Haifa University conducted a year of research at USIP in Washington and completed an important book and lecture series on what has since become most topical. His study of Middle East websites exposes an endless variety of hate speech, incitation to violence, money-raising, and recruitment material. But in the end Weinmann does not call for taking many of these sites off line.
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Weapons of Mass Destruction

Al Qaeda experimented with several forms of WMD and hunted for ways to buy nuclear material or a bomb. But lesser and simpler weapons—including truck bombs—can do “mass destruction” and have. From the United Nations to the US Department of Justice, there are precise definitions of “WMD.” Oklahoma City (1995) and Boston (2013) bombs differed greatly yet crossed the WMD threshold. Definitional issues are explored in a new monograph by a US expert: Carus 2012. American administrations from President Bill Clinton’s onward have agreed that the potential nexus between terrorists and WMD is at the top of security concerns of the present era. Tucker 2000 offers varied case studies of groups active before the 21st century. Joseph 2009 examines a state sponsor of terrorism trying hard to add WMD to his national arsenal in Libya and details an unlikely success in foreign efforts to block such development. A working group of scientists and strategists examines terrorists in a range of mass-lethality plots, many of which succeeded (Rasmussen and Hafez 2010). The drives these groups show—drives for power and drives for scientific means of great destruction—are one way to consider how terrorism may link to more traditional warfare.

Carus, W. Seth. Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Occasional Paper no. 8, revised. National Defense University Press, January 2012.
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A veteran of studies in this area, especially of non-nuclear WMD, Professor Carus provides ninety pages of explanation of how international and US domestic law codes handle definitions of weapons of mass destruction. Useful to experts, especially.
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Joseph, Robert G. Countering WMD: The Libyan Experience. Fairfax, VA: National Institute, 2009.
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An American ambassador and a top CIA officer teamed up with British officials to press Colonel Qaddafi’s Libya hard, in 2003–2004, on surrendering implements of WMD. Their work, the adjacent Iraq War, and punitive sanctions led to the fulsome surrender of weapons and even machinery to make some of them. Short and unique, this is a book first about counterproliferation, second about success therein, and third about the last years of a state sponsor of international terror.
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Rasmussen, Maria J., and Mohammed M. Hafez. Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Destruction: Preconditions, Causes, and Predictive Indicators. Fort Belvoir, VA: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2010.
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Opens with an executive summary and theoretical material on the rather new academic subject of terrorist innovation. Case studies of operations: Palestinian skyjackings; a lethal road mining by Basque ETA; the Irish IRA in a hotel bombing; American right-wingers’ Oklahoma City federal building blast; the 9/11 use of aircraft as bombers; and 2005’s London Tube detonations. The examination of Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin attack can supplement another think tank report noted in Terrorist Groups: Asia.
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Tucker, Jonathan B., ed. Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
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Ricin was used by East Bloc secret services to murder an émigré, and it has been found in the possession of Al Qaeda men in Europe. The 2013 letters laden with ricin and sent to American officials were hardly the first domestic US cases: in 1991, the Minnesota Patriots Council hoped to threaten or kill tax authorities and other government figures. These twelve case studies are detailed, and will endure—not slip—in value over time.
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War with Al Qaeda, 2001–

Al Qaeda has required of America, NATO, and certain other countries one of the longest and most intense counterterrorist campaigns in modern history. Even the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden, and a building desire in some official circles to put this “war” behind us, leaves successor Ayman al Zawahiri, other Al Qaeda leaders and veterans, and franchises in the field. Another challenge for the world community is the other enemy center of gravity, the war of ideas—in which few Western powers have performed well. There are two complementary histories on the formation of Al Qaeda by journalists who met the principals: Atwan 2006, and Bergen 2006. The speeches in Bin Laden 2005 offer a better vehicle for analysis of his ideas. Al Zawahiri 2006, along with insufficiently known editions from 2001 and 2012 are required for advanced analysis. What American experts knew, thought, and did gets good and varying analysis in the 9/11 Commission Report (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States 2004) and Scheuer 2006. For the later phases of war there are many fresh books, and the flow will continue. Offering scholarly views from diverse English-speakers, and also global perspectives, is Cigar and Kramer 2011. But like another book of very similar name, this was composed just before the death of bin Laden, so the strong value it now has will slip somewhat with time.

Al Zawahiri, Ayman. “Knights under the Prophet’s Banner.” In His Own Words: A Translation of the Writings of Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri. By Laura Mansfield. Old Tappan, NJ: TLG, 2006.
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The Al Qaeda leader recounts wins and losses in the Egyptian political underworld and his later engagements in South West Asia. Public disinterest in him due to “lack of charisma” or other reasons is not relevant, but his ideas are; he was Al Qaeda’s first staff ideologist for good reason and now is also the unrivaled principal. Others must judge the quality of the Mansfield translation, but this reader in English is grateful for her service in making this book available. A second edition, only in Arabic and twice as long, arrived on the World Wide Web in 2012.
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Atwan, Abdel Bari. The Secret History of Al Qaeda. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
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A Palestinian journalist who lived in Saudi Arabia and then London managed to spend three days with bin Laden in 1996. His book is rigorous, intelligent, and a product of many Middle Eastern sources.
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Bergen, Peter. The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader. New York: Free Press, 2006.
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Myths abound about Al Qaeda, so it is important that dozens of valuable primary sources—including close acquaintances of Bin Laden—have had their words preserved here and woven together into a narrative. The recorder and author is the Australian journalist who also interviewed bin Laden and has become an American media fixture as well as a good scholar at the New America Foundation.
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Bin Laden, Osama. Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden. Edited by Bruce Lawrence. Translated by James Howarth. London: Verso, 2005.
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Two dozen speeches—many of them in full length—display the mind of the Al Qaeda founder and the causes on which Sunni extremists recruit and motivate. Readers will value the range—1994 through 2004—and the fullness of the collection, which exceeds that of the Gilles Keppel/J-P Mileli edition by Harvard in 2008. As translation always matters and may vary, it is useful to add that Dr. Howarth also worked on the Oxford University Press edition of the Koran.
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Cigar, Norman, and Stephanie Kramer, eds. Al-Qaida after Ten Years of War. Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2011.
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Marine Corps University wanted a global picture of Al Qaeda’s strengths, weaknesses, and trends after a decade of war with the coalition. The chapter authors include Bergen, Scheuer, Fernando Reinares of Spain, and specialists on Northern Africa and Egyptian scenes: David Shinn, Ricardo Rene Laremont, and Amr Abdalla. Editor Cigar, an Oxford PhD turned Middle East expert, has published widely on strategy.
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National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2004.
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Senior politicians Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean chaired this congressional task force and led its very professional staff. Their product is a study in failures set down in strong language yet so well done it has largely escaped criticism. While the volume lacks an index, Internet versions may be searchable on a computer.
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Scheuer, Michael. Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Revised ed. Dulles, VA: Potomac, 2006.
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It is not easy choosing between the books by Scheuer—the thinker who founded the CIA analytical cell pursuing Bin Laden. A long, ill-formatted bibliography few will use, and a glossary that is too short. But this big second edition is an expressive catalogue of the world’s arguments about the causes and character of Al Qaeda. Its author’s divergences from official US policy lines regarding the “Global War on Terror” make it a resource for critical thinkers.
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Counterterrorism

To deal with violent substate actors and “warfare in peacetime,” states turn to many means of resistance. Law provides a starting point, and for that De Frias, et al. 2012 is a capacious resource. Democracies sometimes simply proscribe such violent parties—a pattern explained in the unique, if somewhat dated, journal article Finn 2000. The arm of the judiciary is essential, and some states have special investigative magistrates who become terrorism experts (Bruguiere and Pontaut 2009). Dozens of democracies now have experience in meeting terrorist challenges, and new books are capturing such experience in case study collections, e.g., Art and Richardson 2007. The German-American partnership at the George C. Marshall Center reaches broadly to capture many of the functions of counterterrorism, such as intelligence, as well as multiple national experiences. The readings end with a cluster of US perspectives: Donohue 2004 on civil liberties, Graff 2011 on the Federal Bureau of Investigation as it shifted course after 2001, and Shultz 2004 on earlier US reluctance to use force.

Art, Robert J., and Louise Richardson, eds. Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 2007.
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International scholars—most are recognized experts on a given country—examine counterterrorist campaigns in Turkey (Henri Barkey); Israel (Boaz Ganor); India (Paul Wallace); Japan (John Parachini and Katsuhisa Furukawa); Venezuela (Peter Calvert), etc. Art is known for his books on force and statecraft, while co-editor Richardson has assumed the reins of St. Andrews University in Scotland (where over long years Paul Wilkinson had built up terrorism studies; see Terrorism’s Particular Nature).
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Bruguiere, Jean-Louis, with Jean-Marie Pontaut. Ce que je n’ai pas pu dire. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2009.
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(Translated That Which I Could Not Say Before.) Unique view into the roles of the investigative magistrates that focus on terrorism cases in France (and certain other European countries such as Spain). Valuable on investigative techniques, and on Soviet bloc sponsors of terror, e.g., Bulgaria, and Libya. Published in French.
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De Frias, Ana Maria Salinas, Katja LH Samuel, and Nigel D. White. Counter-Terrorism: International Law and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199608928.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Women and men from two dozen countries contributed to this tome, which opens with ten pages of contributors’ credentials. Thirty-eight major articles link counterterrorism issues to armed conflict, criminality, human rights, right and redress for victims, parliamentary oversight, etc.
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Donohue, Laura K. “Fear Itself: Counterterrorism, Individual Rights, and U.S. Foreign Relations Post 9/11.” In Terrorism & Counterterrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment: Readings and Interpretations. Edited by Russell Howard and Reid Sawyer, 313–338. Guilford, CT: McGraw-Hill, 2004.
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Questions of law are enormously important—and irreducible to literature on torture. Donohue is an open critic: if many voters (and writers) share her concerns about civil liberties protection, few muster so well the legal arguments against White House and congressional decisions. (For a contrary view, Johns Hopkins law expert Ruth Wedgewood moderately supports most US law-making during the decade after 9/11.) There are more good scholars in this volume, including John Arquilla, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Brad Roberts.
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Finn, John E. “Electoral Regimes and the Proscription of Anti-Democratic Parties.” Terrorism and Political Violence 12.3–4 (Autumn/Winter 2000): 51–74.
DOI: 10.1080/09546550008427570Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Perhaps the only political science journal article to well-explore this important general subject, one all democracies grapple with: proscription of terrorist-influenced political parties. Such a ban is and should be controversial, but it immediately enhances state powers to use surveillance, arrest, and limited force.
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Graff, Garrett M. The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War in the Age of Global Terror. New York: Little, Brown, 2011.
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The youthful author has been a journalist, not a scholar. But his ability combines with access to intelligence and law enforcement sources—including hundreds of documents—making this a worthy and up-to-date account. Some will be surprised when they read how often the FBI operates overseas. The book does not deal thoroughly with cyberterror and cybersecurity, now a leading mission of the FBI. Back Bay Books released the paperback in 2012.
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Harmon, Christopher C., A. N. Pratt, and Sebastian Gorka, eds. Toward A Grand Strategy against Terrorism. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education Division, 2010.
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Andrew Pratt’s counterterrorism course has taught over 1,400 graduates/practitioners at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Germany. After his essay on the history and patterns of terrorism, other faculty examine “tools” states use against terrorists such as diplomacy, finance, and intelligence. A Reuters editor writes on the media. There are case studies on Afghanistan, Pakistan, France, and Germany. An essay, chronology-based, tells how terrorist groups end.
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Shultz Jr., Richard H. “Showstoppers: Nine Reasons Why We Never Sent Our Special Operations Forces After Al Qaeda before 9/11.” Weekly Standard 9.19 (26 January 2004): 25–33.
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A seasoned expert on special operations enjoyed intimate access to the Pentagon while writing a classified study. This published “brief” of his findings is one of the most intriguing articles written on US counterterrorism. Until 9/11 many senior American generals had political, legal, and institutional reservations about pursuing terrorists with force—to which were added worries over another disaster such as “Desert One” in Iran in 1980.
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Use of Force

Terrorism may differ dramatically from conventional war, but terrorism is about power and so counterterrorism sometimes requires force. Counterterrorism also overlaps with counterinsurgency, when a state faces a large enemy force widely grounded in popular support and using terrorism regularly. Thus, some of these readings deal with discrete uses of force against terrorists, and some deal with counterterrorism as a part of wider martial conflicts. The list features Schmitt 2002 on international legal bases for fighting international terrorists and then moves into kinetic realms. McRaven 1996 describes and analyzes selected special operations from 1940 through 1976, delivering a principled argument about how to do them well. Klein 2005 retells, and adds to, the accounts of Israeli killing teams hunting Palestinians after the 1972 Munich massacre. Geraghty 1998, whose author wrote earlier on the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service, contributes an important volume on Northern Ireland. Hughes 2011 is an adept new study of military operations in support of civil authority. Offered are two very different avenues into beating terrorist insurgents. Herrington 1987 has the older story of police-and-intelligence cooperation against the Viet Cong. Army/ Marine Corps 2006, presents a newer doctrinal publication on counterinsurgency by two American military services, which became an unexpected seller with the public in 2006.

Army/Marine Corps. Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency. 2006.
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Received with enthusiasm at publication, and much or all of the favor is deserved. Like Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency (Thompson 2005, cited under Separable from Guerrilla Warfare), this strategic and operational-level study deals with political terrorism in the context of full-blooded insurgency in which the population constitutes the essential “geography.” May be studied alongside Joint Publication 3-26: Counterterrorism, a good approach to problems of an international campaign.
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Geraghty, Tony. The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict between the IRA and British Intelligence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
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At the risk of conflating “intelligence” with the present subtopic of uses of force, Tony Geraghty’s book deserves inclusion for its attention to both in the setting of British security force operations in Northern Ireland. This is fine history, by an expert.
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Herrington, Stuart A. Silence Was a Weapon: The Vietnam War in the Villages. New York: Ivy, 1987.
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To counter insurgents using terrorism, police—not the armed forces—are often in the lead. This thoughtful and sometimes dramatic account shows the cooperation of one American intelligence adviser and one gritty and smart Vietnamese police officer in their joint pursuit of Viet Cong individuals in villages of rural Hau Nghia province. Effectively shows a form of “HUMINT” at work against a clandestine infrastructure.
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Hughes, Geraint. The Military’s Role in Counterterrorism: Examples and Implications for Liberal Democracies. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2011.
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A lecturer for Kings College London, Hughes has followed his countryman Paul Wilkinson into pondering when and how powerfully armed personnel should exert force on the government’s behalf in the context of a liberal democracy. The monograph offers over three hundred notes and a fine glossary.
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Klein, Aaron. Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response. Translated by Mitch Ginsburg. New York: Random House, 2005.
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When Canadian George Jonas wrote Vengeance (1984) it created a sensation, but readers wondered how much was true. Klein, an Israeli intelligence specialist and reporter, is writing current history, and carefully. It is still a story with great drama. Among the revelations: Israel’s targeting was careful but not confined to those responsible for the Olympics massacre, and at least one of the Munich triggermen is probably still alive and free.
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McRaven, William H. Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1996.
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The admiral now commanding all Special Forces of the US services prepared this work years ago for his master’s degree at the Naval Post Graduate School. It sees good service in some military schools and is not focused on countering terrorism, but on raids, etc. The chapter on the rescue at Entebbe in 1976 is very valuable.
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Schmitt, Michael N. Counter-Terrorism and the Use of Force in International Law. Marshall Center Papers 5. Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany: George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, 2002.
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An expert on humanitarian law and law of war examines the international legal bases for the international fight against Al Qaeda. Lucid and accessible to the non-lawyer at seventy-three pages plus many endnotes. Schmitt was an air force officer and then a professor, dean, and holder of academic chairs at several US government schools.
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Country Studies

As evident in Counterterrorism and Use of Force, many individual countries merit study for how they have engaged terrorist enemies. US involvement, insurgency, and terrorism are all parts of Filipino history since the Spanish-American War, and one exemplary study—on the defeat of the post–World War II Hukbalahap—is offered by Greenberg 1987. France has been involved just as long in Algerian affairs; Paret 1964 is an unrivaled short history of French military “psy-ops” against the insurgency of the 1950s. During the global war on terror, France became a pillar of coalition efforts, lending interest in its well-conceived white paper on security (Ministry of Defense of France 2008). Israel too deserves close study, and its intelligence or security systems sometimes anticipate the practices of other governments (Netanyahu 2001). Multiple national experiences are briefed for readers in the Yonah Alexander collection, Alexander 2006. And for those interested in the recent history of US policy and strategy, extensive readings and careful instruction are offered by Alexander and Kraft 2007.

Alexander, Yonah, ed. Counterterrorism Strategies: Successes and Failures of Six Nations. Washington, DC: Potomac, 2006.
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Alexander pens a profile of US counterterrorism and then opens the door to colleagues, all foreign experts, each writing on his country: Sri Lanka (Mendis), Egypt (Abou-el-Wafa), Italy (Merlo), Germany (Schneckener), and France (an outstanding essay by Parmentier). Format, portability, and cost factors combine with sound quality to recommend this as an undergraduate textbook—although the Egyptian and Sri Lankan cases would each require a supplemental reading because of recent dramatic events there.
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Alexander, Yonah, and Michael Kraft. Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy. 3 vols. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007.
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This is an immense, detailed country study. Its 1,360 pages are laid out with all the skill the editors developed over decades in the field. Kraft, now retired, was a congressional aide and State Department gentleman who gave a career to counterterrorism’s legislative challenges. Alexander is the field’s single-most-published academic.
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Greenberg, Lawrence M. The Hukbalahap Insurrection: A Case Study of a Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the Philippines—1946–1955. Washington, DC: Army Center of Military History, 1987.
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“Huk” Filipinos battled the Japanese in World War II but after 1946 turned their weapons against the new republic. Secretary of Defense–turned–President Ramon Magsaysay had been a Huk; he understood and resisted the renewed insurgency and its terrorists. With limited US help, his government made fresh and multifaceted efforts against the causes and effects of insurgency. Magsaysay won, and this monograph shows how. Assessable in style; high in quality.
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Ministry of Defense of France. Defense et Securite National: Le Livre Blanc. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2008.
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Translated: Defense and National Security: The White Book. A government-prepared, comprehensive review of French security measures for low-intensity threats, including integration/interaction of policing and traditional armed forces; military modernization issues; the resumption of close work with NATO; etc. With its preface by then-President Nicholas Sarkozy, it was noted in world affairs, in part as France had not suffered a severe terror attack since 1996.
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Netanyahu, Benjamin. Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorism Network. 2d ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
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Written with one eye on Israel’s defense and the other on allies who may help. Netanyahu edited earlier books before his first prime ministry (e.g., Terrorism: How the West Can Win, 1986). This is a slim 1995 creation, reprinted to an enhanced reception just after 9/11. He has always had an unusually good command of language, the work is thoughtful, and no reader is surprised when the arguments are hard-line.
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Paret, Peter. French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine. Princeton Studies in World Politics 6. New York: Praeger, 1964.
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The book in English to treat French psychological warfare against the FLN in Algeria. Among the factors discussed are: French experience in Indochina as the army is reassigned to a new conflict in Algeria; creative new thinking; and varied tactics and media for breaking opponents and winning over the population.