In an interview on Terrorism

Your final book is The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright.

This is the best of all the books about the story of the rise of al-Qaeda, culminating in the attacks of 9/11. I could have given you five books that were all about al-Qaeda – aspects of its ideology, structure, history, propaganda, ideas and so forth – and when you first contacted me I was planning to do so. But then I thought better of it. We are all focused on al-Qaeda and that one story, preventing us from putting the current campaign and our response to it into a broader context.

I think reading this one book gives you an excellent grasp of the human story and the context from which al-Qaeda emerged. Wright talks about the development of extreme Salafist Islamist thinking, the origins of al-Qaeda, the transition from the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan to the 9/11 attacks. He also tells the story of those in the CIA and FBI who saw the growth of the movement and tried to meet the threat, but without the bitterness and personal agendas of some of the tell-all accounts.

Wright’s book is written in an engaging style, engrossing and entertaining but well-researched, based solidly on facts, and never sensationalistic. (There is also a very nice appendix with a summary of the main characters, a big help for those who find it difficult to remember Arabic names.) My students consistently love it. There is a reason why The Looming Tower won the Pulitzer Prize! I think it is a very fine book.

And what about you, considering all your research and work, do you think there is any progress in bringing about the demise of terrorism?

Well, this is very much my own personal view and not representative of official policy. Not the demise of terrorism per se, but I think that we are making progress at crafting a broader, more strategic approach to the demise of al-Qaeda. The US started out immediately after September 11 in a way that was consistent with how many democracies respond after a traumatic terrorist attack. We struck back hard, over-emphasising military force. It was a virtually instinctive response and, if you look at the history of counter-terrorism, not unusual.

But as the years have gone by, we are gaining sophistication in understanding the enemy, the leveraged nature of this kind of violence, and the need for a much broader range of types of counter-terrorism. This includes everything from aid, to diplomacy, developing local partnerships, distinguishing between elements of the ‘movement’, de-radicalisation programmes, perhaps even in some limited circumstances working with local partners to engage in negotiations with local nationalist groups. Above all we are gaining a better and much more seasoned understanding of al-Qaeda’s local affiliates. Understanding the differences between individuals, local movements, and the core of al-Qaeda is at the heart of our efforts to be much more sophisticated in knowing the enemy – especially its vulnerabilities. I think we are finally coming to realise that this takes time and mental effort: we are making good progress but there are no ‘silver bullets’.

Still, we are getting ourselves out of that action, reaction, dysfunctional pattern that I described at the beginning. One of the ways to do so is to think about pathways for ending terrorist campaigns over the course of the centuries that have been remarkably consistent. If you think specifically about the way al-Qaeda is most likely to end, then nudge it in that direction using a wide range of different policy tools (not just the military), you are more likely to help it toward that end.

And what direction would you say that should be for al-Qaeda?

Well, I think they are either going to implode, by which I mean succumb to internal weaknesses, in-fighting, ideological bickering, loss of operational control, targeting mistakes and loss of popular support – some of the dynamics that we have already seen. Or they are going to transition into a more conventional kind of violence, meaning insurgency or even conventional war. There are elements of each of those patterns now, and the question for us is which way do we really want it to go? My answer would be implosion. That does not mean we can sit back and wait for it to end – far from it! This is still a very dangerous threat. But we need to calibrate our actions with this kind of strategic vision in mind. Implosion is the best ending from our perspective, likely to be the least costly, most rapid, and most politically enduring.