Terrorism, recurrence, causality, expansion

Abstract

For the purposes of this work, the terrorism is understood as a method of political violent action, which tends to be articulated in processes of long duration (terrorist campaigns), in order to compensate asymmetries in the context of a conflict. As method, the terrorism operates provoking a destruction or chaos, according to an eminently transitive model and whose psychological effect is superior to his material effects (since it chooses aims with high symbolic value), to effects of transmitting a message and affecting big audiencies, in order to promote (principal though not exclusively) certain political pretensions (Molano-red, 2010). One of the most remarkable characteristics of the terrorist method is his trend to appear in big waves of global coverage. A pioneering investigator (Rapoport, 2004:47) defined these big waves as “ a cycle of activity in a certain period - a cycle characterized by phases of expansion and contraction … (whose) fundamental feature is his international character; similar activities that happen in several countries, orientated by a common predominant force that determines the characteristics and mutual relations between the groups participants “. Following this hypothesis, has been suggested in another part (Molano-red, 2009b) the existence of three global cycles of terrorism, that is to say, momenta (more than periods) during which the use of the terrorism as favorite method for the political action for diverse groups in the whole world was intensified and extended: a “ revolutionary cycle “ (that goes from 1870 until 1914, approximately), a “explanatory” (that would take place between 1948 and 1980), and the more recent one, the “milenarist”, which dates back of the decade of 1990 and nowadays it would be in full expansion.