The World against [World of Terror]

Terrorism is as old as humankind. Where are the hot spots, and why is it so much more lethal today?

As the new century began, an epidemic of terrorism spread panic around the globe. In world capitals, leaders fortified their security and curtailed public appearances. Ordinary citizens felt unsafe walking the streets of major cities, while the terrorists themselves were like phantoms—everywhere and nowhere at the same time, seemingly able to strike at will. Terrorism became the preoccupation of police and politicians, bankers, and business leaders. Headlines screamed out news of the latest outrage: "WASHINGTON STUNNED BY THE TRAGEDY" in one paper, "IN GREAT PERIL" in another. One horrific September terrorist attack, in the United States, sent the stock market reeling and sparked anti-immigrant sentiment. Another attack, in Madrid, plunged Spanish politics into turmoil over issues of war and peace. Politicians in the U.S. took to describing the war on terror as a struggle of good versus evil, while some religious leaders, quoting scripture, proclaimed that the end of the world was at hand.

The year was 1901.

As frightening as modern terrorism is, the bitter fear it generates would have been familiar to those alive at the turn of the 20th century. A few decades before, Russian revolutionaries had killed Tsar Alexander II with a bomb in St. Petersburg. In 1894 an Italian anarchist stabbed French president Sadi Carnot. In 1897 the Spanish prime minister was assassinated just as Cuba's drive for independence was boiling over; within a year, Spain was at war with the United States. And in 1901 William McKinley, President of the U.S., was assassinated by a 28-year-old anarchist, Leon Czolgosz. Thirteen years later, of course, a Serbian terrorist shot and killed Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria—and triggered World War I.

Obviously terrorism—defined here as the systematic use of murder, injury, and destruction, or the threat of such acts, aimed at achieving political ends—has the power to alter the course of history, as the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, last spring's train bombings in Madrid, and bloodcurdling headlines from Israel and Iraq remind us today. And with the additional threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, it does seem that humanity has crossed into a perilous new era, in which a new breed of terrorist, armed with fearsome new weapons, has acquired the means to challenge even the most powerful nations on Earth.

How did the world come to this point? What in the world has changed?


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