NO END TO WAR: Terrorism in the 21st Century. By Walter Laqueur. Continuum. 288 pp. $24.95

The first great merit of Walter Laqueur’s characteristically judicious book on the new terrorism is its comprehensiveness. For cool and clear-eyed analysis of the differences between the narcoterrorists of Colombia and traditional national terrorists such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and of the gap between them and the fanatics of Al Qaeda, there is no better guide.

Laqueur, one of the leading and most experienced academic experts on terrorism, keeps his sense of perspective and proportion. In a brisk review of the last 150 years of terrorism, he stresses that "its political effects in contrast to the publicity it received were small." In some circumstances, terrorists succeeded in highlighting authentic injustices, as with America’s own John Brown in the pre-Civil War years, but usually they provoked police or political reactions that defeated them. "The more successful terrorism was in destabilizing society, the more effective the mobilization of the antiterrorist forces which led to the downfall of the militants."

Turning to the new jihad-based terrorism of Al Qaeda, Laqueur provides an excellent study of the roots of contemporary Islamic terrorism, although some with knowledge of the religious currents within the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale might question his stress on its Egyptian origins. But he makes the useful point that, unlike the old Communist International, the new Islamic terror network can make use of spaces like mosques that in democratic societies are outside the supervision of the security services.

It is refreshing, amid so much overheated prose about the menace of Islam and clashes of civilizations, to see the phenomenon analyzed by a penetrating and informed intelligence. Yet there is no squeamishness about his controversial conclusion, which is that the civilized world has to recognize that not all terrorists are rational actors who can be bought off by negotiation or appeasement. Some are stark, staring mad.

Since 1945, the world has grown grimly accustomed to terrorists with a clearly defined and negotiable aim—an independent Vietnam or Algeria, a united Ireland, a Palestinian state. But there is a new cleavage between those terrorists, such as Yasir Arafat and the IRA’s Gerry Adams, who have sought to bomb their way to the peace table, or at least to a negotiated political solution, and the new implacables, such as the suicide bombers of 9/11, who want to blow up the peace table along with everything else.

Moreover, the new terrorism has the apocalyptic prospect of obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Laqueur assumes that at some point their use is almost inevitable, however good our security. Costly publichealth precautions are going to become increasingly familiar, along with regular training and exercise drills, public awareness programs, and surveillance measures that will test our civil liberties.

A system of global security cooperation will be required to monitor and block the movements, finances, and communications of the terrorists. There is simply no alternative to such a strategy, which will require the United States to seek allies and partners and international legitimacy. Recent talk to the contrary is so much hollow bluster.

—Martin Walker