Putting the wave of Islamist violence in Europe in historical context, perspective
Miller notes that the IRA, the Basque ETA, and other terrorist organizations in the past had a single aim – in the case of these two organizations, targeting the United Kingdom or Spain — but that ISIS is inspiring a wave of homegrown jihadists across Europe and the world to engage in violence. The origins and potential targets of terrorism are thus greater than that seen in the 1980s and 1990s.
Miller also says that there is another question: What counts as terrorism? There are more than 200 definitions of terrorism and there is often a disagreement over whether a specific act of deadly violence should be considered as an act of terrorism.
“It’s a question of political strategy and of course you can come up with an agreement on how to define it in academic debate. The problem is it’s used as a means for denouncing violence which you don’t approve of,” said Miller.
Max Boot, writing in the Wall Street Journal, comes to the discussion from the other political direction, but he reaches the same conclusions Miller does.
“It is certainly understandable if fear and panic now grip the Continent,” Boot writes. “But it’s important to remember that this is hardly the first wave of terrorism that Europe has seen — and so far not the worst.”
Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present Day (2013), notes that the current, jihadist campaign of terrorism in Europe is the third terrorist wave on the continent, and it is not the deadliest.
The first wave was launched by anarchists who struck across Europe and the Americas from the 1880s to the 1920s. Among the deadliest attacks of the first wave:
- A horse-drawn wagon filled with explosives killed thirty-eight on Wall Street in New York in 1920
- An anarchist threw two bombs into a crowded opera house in Barcelona in 1893, killing twenty-two people
- Between 1892 and 1894, Paris saw eleven bombings, which killed nine people
Boot notes that the anarchists’ specialty was the assassination of heads of state. Among those killed by anarchists:
- 1881 — Tsar Alexander II of Russia
- 1894 — French president François Sadi Carnot
- 1897 — Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo
- 1898 — Empress Elisabeth of Austria
- 1900 — King Umberto I of Italy
- 1901 — President William McKinley.
The second wave of terrorist attacks in Europe was carried out by leftist and nationalist terrorists from the 1960s to the 1980s. This wave included groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Red Army Faction in West Germany(also called the Baader-Meinhof gang), the Red Brigades in Italy, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Boot notes that, “between the early 1970s and early 1990s, there were four years when at least 400 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Western Europe and five years when fatalities exceeded 250.”
Among the high-profile attacks of the second wave are the Pan Am aircraft over Lockerbie in 1988 (270 dead); attacks on airports in Rome and Vienna in 1985 (19 dead); the Bologna railroad station bombing in 1980 (85 dead); and the attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics (1s dead, not counting the terrorists).
Boot writes:
Horrible as the recent atrocities have been, they are not as bad as those of the second terrorist wave. Attacks this year in Western Europe have killed 130 people (not counting the attackers) and last year killed 147. Islamic State has claimed many more victims in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries — including the U.S.(49 dead in Orlando, 14 in San Bernardino).
Boot is optimistic. “History does not suggest when this current wave of terrorism will end. It does suggest that it will end someday, and that it can be ameliorated, if not entirely stopped.”
The first wave of terrorism petered out because the anarchist ideology lost its appeal. The terrorists of the 1960s also eventually lost their ideological motivation. The PLO and IRA were able to reach political arrangements which addressed some of the things they were fighting for, while the communist-inspired militant groups lost their attraction when communism was discredited.
Boot concludes:
As the failure of Communism discredited Marxist extremism, so the eventual failure of Islamism — whether in Taliban-era Afghanistan or present-day Iran or Islamic State — will discredit Islamist extremism.
That day can be hastened by vigorous Western action to destroy Islamic State and subvert Iran’s regime. Meanwhile, more can be done to improve intelligence and security; Israel offers a good model.
But there is no foolproof way to stop the low-tech attacks we are seeing. Like it or not, we will have to tough it out while the ideological extremism of the Islamic world burns itself out.
