Future of Terrorism: Are We Seeing a Fundamental Shift?.pdf

In 2001, David Rapoport challenged us to think about terrorism differently. Looking at the history and evolution of terrorism, he suggested that modern terrorism could be characterized as a series of cycles in which terrorist goals and activities generally fit a set of dominant features. Each “wave,” in this perspective, has a “different energy” driving actors and actions, with modern terrorism presented as a series of waves beginning with the Anarchist Wave and transitioning over time through the anticolonial, New Left, and finally religious waves. While many characteristics of today’s emerging trends appear to comport with Rapoport’s religious wave, this paper asks whether today’s terrorism might represent the beginnings of a new, fifth, wave of modern terrorism.