Deterring Conventional Terrorism: From Punishment to Denial and Resilience

Abstract

This article considers the developing role of deterrence in countering conventional terrorist threats, tracing the post-9/11 rejection and later rediscovery of deterrence as a tool of counter-terrorism. Why do so many policymakers assume that the ‘new’ terrorism represented such a break with the past? Why was deterrence neglected as a consequence, under the belief that few terrorists do not aspire to be strategic in their campaigns? To the contrary, this analysis shows that most terrorists are open to attempts at coercion and in particular can be influenced by denial-based strategies. In the case of the United Kingdom, denial-based strategies successfully diverted a potentially crippling campaign of economic dislocation in the 1990s, with lessons for today's challenges. A reinvigorated focus on resilience – physical and societal – as part of a denial-based approach to deterring terrorist attacks, particularly those involving home-grown activists, is recommended. This offers the prospect of time and space for broader counter-terrorism programmes of counterradicalization and de-legitimization to run their course and should be part of future counter-terrorism strategies.