Christopher C. Harmon

Summary: Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends. Now a well-established feature of world politics and conflict, terrorism is used by single-minded small groups, state agents, and broader insurgent movements to seek political and military results judged difficult or impossible to achieve in the usual political forums or on the battlefield. Dr. Harmon speaks on the diverse policies and varied strategies of major terrorist groups, especially several of those most threatening to the U.S. today. The terrorist emerges from these researches as more calculating, more educated, and more successful than some scholars have depicted him. Various options for counter terrorism will then be discussed, each with its points of favor and points of difficulty for the American polity.

Christopher C. Harmon is the author of Terrorism Today, released last April by the London publisher Frank Cass. He has lectured and written on terrorism since completing his doctoral dissertation on the subject at Claremont Graduate School in 1984. After working for the U.S. Congress, and then teaching strategy at the Naval War College, Dr. Harmon became Professor of International Relations at the Marine Corps’ Command and Staff College in Virginia. With David Tucker he edited Statecraft and Power: Essays in Honor of Harold W. Rood (1994). Dr. Harmon’s recent lectures on terrorism have been at Villanova University, the New York Military Affairs Symposium, the American Political Science Association national meeting in Washington, D.C., and the George Marshall European Center for Security Studies, in Germany.