ABSTRACT
Governments around the world have tried a variety of approaches in dealing with terrorism. Sederberg (2003) has suggested that terrorism can be dealt with as the equivalent of war, as criminal activity, and as a disease. Some of these efforts are consistent with views that regard terrorism as warfare as was apparent with the announcement of the Global War on Terrorism by President George Bush, Jr. The invasion of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001 is another example of a war approach. Russia has adopted a similar strategy for dealing with the unrest and terrorist attacks originating in Chechnya relying in large measure on military actions to deal with the unrest. A second approach focuses on dealing with terrorism primarily through the police and court systems. Any meaningful act of terrorism is going to violate existing national laws in any country; thus, it can always be considered criminal activity and dealt with accordingly. Most terrorist groups are short-lived precisely because their initial attacks expose them to reactions by the police and security forces, and they are quickly discovered and prosecuted or eliminated in other ways. Other responses by governments involve considering terrorism a disease where the causes as well as the symptoms must be dealt with. In this view the appropriate response for countries attempting to get to the root causes that underlie the rise of the terrorist groups. Although there is no one root cause of terrorism, in specific cases governments may realize that neglect of a particular region or discrimination against a portion of the population may have created fertile ground for the appearance and spread of terrorism. As a consequence, a government may attempt to change policies. Of course, when governments are actually supporting domestic 97factions that use terror against a group of its own citizens, the government will obviously choose to do nothing to deal with the violence. When governments are facing violence by dissidents, however, they will often take counterterrorism actions in keeping with one or the other of these perspectives.
