Terrorism: Between Prudence and Paranoia,
Abstract
Lacking conventional power, extremists use terrorist tactics to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm. In this atmosphere. people will exaggerate the strength of the terrorists and the importance of their cause, giving the terrorists the power to compel governments to behave in certain ways to avoid further attacks or divert vast resources to protect themselves. Terrorism is aimed at the people who are watching, The specific target, the victim or victims, may be secondary, even irrelevant to the terrorists, so long as they achieve the psychological effects they desire. How much security is enough depends on a level of fear, a subjective measure. If terrorists had a more limited range of targets, and attacked more often, we could more easily assess the effectiveness of various security measures. As it is, we remain uncertain whether the absence of an attack is due to security or to the fact that terrorists never intended such an attack in the first place. Obviously, we must take precautions, not only against terrorist attacks, but also against psychological effects of terrorism--and of the measures we take in the name of security. The problem is that there is no line between prudence and paranoia; if we let ourselves go, we could work ourselves up into a frenzy of fear that not even the terrorists could improve on.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1983
- Accession Number
- ADA152750
Entities
People
- B. M. Jenkins
Organizations
- RAND Corporation