Quote Originally Posted by Eden View Post
First, I wonder if there is a direct link between failed or vulnerable states and terrorism. Taking a long view, some of the most persistent, dangerous terrorist movements arise from stable, powerful, even enlightened states. Japan, Spain, Germany, and the UK have all generated significant home-grown terrorist threats. No one can accuse Saudi Arabia of being enlightened or, in most senses, modern, but it does have a pervasive and stable security apparatus. Yet as a society it supplied money, leadership, organization, motivation, and recruits to our current set of foes. I guess there is some harm done and mischief generated in places like the Horn of Africa and parts of Central Asia, but it seems to me that their importance as training bases and sanctuaries are overblown. Terrorists (as opposed to your garden-variety insurgents) have access to sufficient training, money, and weapons within modern stable states; they don't need secret bases in some God-forsaken hellhole. In fact, I suppose, one could argue that terrorism is a peculiarly modern product of increasing stability. It is a tactic of last resort when you have no other outlet, or when your cause is so unpopular you can never gain support for it through legitimate means. Is it possible to imagine that, were Saudi Arabia a participatory democracy, Osama would be running for office rather than running for his life?
Gotta agree with the terrorist argument here. You also need to consider the changing face of many of those organizations (after all, the anti-globalization folks were the first true trans-national terrorist group, and the majority of them come from pretty settled and stable regions). Failed and failing states provide a fertile recruiting ground or a cause around which the terrorists can initially rally, but I do think they're much more likely to originate in societies that are relatively stable and there's an intellectual (or would-be intellectual) class with time on its hands and an ax (or two) to grind. It's also more likely in societies (IMO) that are more based on traditional cultural ideas. This can help explain why the West Germans produced so many terrorist groups in the 1970s and into the 1980s, and also why they seem to be a constant (if small) feature in Japanese society (going back to at least the 1920s).

There are, as always, exceptions to this framework...which points out the danger in any "one size fits all" framework.