Terrorism : how to respond / Richard English.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

What is terrorism? -- Why do people resort to terror? -- What can we learn from terrorism past? -- How should we respond?

Richard English argues here that the post-9/11 War on Terror has spectacularly failed and that we now need a radically new approach to dealing with international terrorism. Recent policies have ignored the lessons of the past, and Terrorism: How to Respond seeks to remedy this lack of vision by looking at the long history of terrorism and assessing why such violence emerges, how it is sustained, and--most crucially of all--how and why it ends. Written by an historian who has long studied Irish terrorism and politics, this book argues that we cannot adequately respond to the practical challenge of terrorist violence around the world unless we are more honest about the precise nature of the phenomenon, and about explaining its true and complex causes. Drawing on first-hand research into terrorist organizations, Richard English offers an authoritative and accessible analysis of arguably the most urgent political problem of the twenty-first century--and how we can successfully respond to it.