For more than 150 years, we have been living with terrorism. Like an inherited illness, it is passed from generation to generation. Waves of violence succeed one another. Early anarchists, fascists, 1960s revolutionaries, hijackers of the 1970s, militant nationalists in the 1980s, Islamist extremist or extreme rightwing hatemongers, all are variations on a dismal theme.
Decades of security strategies and debates over definitions have come to no conclusion about the elusive “root causes” of terrorism. Since the 9/11 attacks of 2001 we have seen the most sustained research effort ever made. This has led to much deeper knowledge and innumerable thwarted plots, but not a foolproof answer as to how we can prevent a relatively small number of individuals causing massive disruption, loss of life and instability on a planetary scale with a single act.
