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The chapter explores how, despite earlier counterterrorism failures and two bitter wars in Chechnya, terrorism in Russia has declined in the 2010s. The Islamist-separatist terrorism problem that used to dominate national politics was degraded to a relatively peripheral issue that hovers at a level of persistent, but low-scale and increasingly fragmented violence, primarily in the North Caucasus. However imperfect, interim and incomplete, a ‘solution’ that has worked out in the Russian case was not ‘war’. This ‘solution other than war’ was made possible by certain developments outside Moscow’s direct control, such as the internal split within the insurgency catalyzed by its increasing jihadization, and resulted from a combination of the policy of Chechenization, shifts in federal security strategy towards smarter suppression and prevention, and massive reconstruction and development assistance. While this solution is no substitute for addressing the underlying structural causes of violent extremism and has involved enormous security, financial, human rights and governance costs for the nation, these costs are much lower than the cost of war. This is seen as one of the key broader lessons to be gleaned from Russia’s response to terrorism. It also explains why Russia has a genuine interest in ensuring that this degree of stabilization and decline in terrorism of North Caucasian origin is not distorted or reversed by new destabilizing factors, including transnational influences and connections.

The book ends with a brief story that revisits major themes of the book: the secularistic culture at the Department of State and its aversion to thinking about religion; the threat to the American homeland of Islamist terrorism; the promotion of “freedom” in the Middle East without religious freedom; the limited value of set piece face-to-face diplomacy; the need for public pressure on the U.S. foreign policy establishment; enduring skepticism among some in the West about the motives of religious people; the American opportunity in the lands of Islam and in China; and, finally, the potential role of religious actors in civil society, in the pursuit of justice, and in the principle that lies at the very heart of religious freedom: the dignity of the human person.

This chapter turns to the Middle East, assessing the organizational evolution of the main Palestinian terrorist groups from 1989 through 2005. In addition to testing hypotheses about the relationship between preference divergence and control, the Palestinian case allows one to compare an Islamist group (the religious-nationalist Hamas) to a secular nationalist one (the secular-nationalist Fatah), helping to illuminate what may or may not be unique about Islamist terrorism. Not surprisingly, there is some evidence that one Islamist group, Hamas, is substantially different in terms of how severe a problem it had with operatives, but the group clearly faced similar organizational challenges to its secular compatriots.

This chapter addresses the failures of the “outsourcing” phase described briefly in Chapter 2, and other events and issues that prompted European interior ministries to wrest control of state–mosque relations from their foreign-ministry counterparts and undertake efforts to bring Islam to the table. First, there is a discussion of socioeconomic indicators of integration, followed by the growing problem of foreign government control over Muslims' religious life, an increasingly felt inadequacy of prayer space and imams, and finally, the rise of Political-Islam activism and Islamist terrorism. Then, the chapter delves into the first of two phases of these efforts that culminated in the establishment of Islamic Councils in the ten European states with sizable Muslim populations.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book's main arguments, all of which encourage a broader understanding of the rationale behind Islamist-jihadist terrorism. Of note are the two common misconceptions debunked in previous chapters: the notion that terrorist organizations are irrational actors and, conversely, that they are rational actors, albeit ones that operate under Western norms and rationales. In order to create effective counter-terrorism measures, one must first acknowledge the dynamic and highly adaptive nature of terrorist organizations, as well as the social, ideological, and political factors that remain unintelligible in the context of Western liberal democratic thought. And while it is impossible to truly eliminate terrorist threats, the first step to counteracting terrorism lies in critical self-examination, precise and unbiased identification of the terrorist enemy, and understanding of that enemy's subjective rationale.

This chapter discusses Hamas as an evolving example of what has been discussed in the previous chapters. As the rest of the book has repeatedly emphasized, an effective counter-terrorism policy cannot do without an understanding of the rationales, ideologies, and hierarchy of goals behind terrorist organizations. The model outlined so far in this book for identifying the rationale behind terrorism comes into play here, in the form of a case study on Hamas. Hamas typifies both hybrid and Islamist terrorism, and has proven to be unparalleled in its flexible adjustment to a volatile region—and to counter-terrorism measures. By identifying the organization's root and instrumental motivations and goals, decision-making considerations, and other such criteria, this chapter is able to piece together a clear history of Hamas's breakthroughs and successes and, more profoundly, its failures and shortcomings in achieving its own goals.

This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of the root and instrumental causes and goals underlying Islamist terrorism. To understand Islamist-jihadist terrorism in general, and the phenomenon of suicide terrorism in particular, it behooves Western decision makers steeped in liberal democratic values to take a step back and begin to view the impetus for terrorism from the perspective of the terrorists themselves. Decision making within terrorist ranks are complicated affairs, influenced by myriad social, political, and even personal considerations. Yet certain commonalities arise within the terrorist rationale that points to influences created via propaganda, indoctrination, and incitement as they are grounded in religious justifications, interpretations, and commandments, if not in a single member's susceptibility to personal and social-organizational factors such as peer pressure or a desire for revenge. Understanding these varied considerations is crucial to exploring the rationale behind specific types of terrorist attack.

Transnational terrorism, an enduring phenomenon that became a hallmark of the post-cold-war era, continues to evolve. This chapter explores several emerging trends in Islamist terrorism that are likely to challenge European security institutions in the coming years and decades. The chapter argues that the Islamic State has revolutionized the jihadist landscape. ISIS has effectively eclipsed al-Qaeda, modernizing its predecessor’s hidebound model of allegiance and recruitment, sponsoring and facilitating attacks overseas, lighting sectarian fires across the Middle East and North Africa, and exploiting cyber tools and social media to propagandize itself widely. Relatedly, European foreign fighters have joined ISIS at an unprecedented clip: several thousand have fought within its ranks. Combining these trends helps illustrate how transnational terrorism challenges European security in new and complex ways.