In the wake of 9/11, many observers asserted some variation of the claim that “terrorism never works.” Drawing inspiration from circumstances like Londoners’ resolute determination during the German Blitz of 1940-41, they contended that efforts to demoralize civilian populations through mass killing invariably fail and are often counterproductive.
Historian Caleb Carr’s book The Lessons of Terror itself provides a useful lesson. The original version—published in 2002—bore the subtitle, “A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again.” Yet, as Michael Ignatieff observed in a brief review, the claim is overblown. In fact, terrorism sometimes works, in the sense that it achieves the political aims of those responsible for it. Ignatieff cited Algerian terrorism against the French and the campaign of the Irgun and Stern Gang against the British in the prelude to the formation of the state of Israel. Notably, when Carr released a revised edition in 2003, he dropped the portion of the subtitle that followed the colon in tacit acknowledgment that, unfortunately, terrorism does not always fail.
The same can be said about political violence. It too sometimes works.
That is not to say that one should condone or encourage political violence. Quite the contrary. In the wake of the nearly successful attempted assassination of former President (and current Presidential candidate) Donald Trump, political leaders across the political spectrum quite rightly condemned political violence as antithetical to democracy. To be sure, a few Republican politicians—most prominently Ohio Senator J.D. Vance—sought to blame President Joe Biden and other Democrats for having demonized Trump and thus fostered the conditions for an attempt on his life. But Vance was hardly condoning that attempt.
It is one thing to condemn political violence. It is quite another to stop it. As I explain in the balance of this column, because political violence is a potentially potent instrument, efforts to prevent it will typically require heightened security measures. Although responsible political leaders have attempted to lower the emotional temperature of political disagreement, that will not be enough.
Assassins’ Motives
The motives of some would-be assassins are inscrutable or perplexing. John Hinckley, Jr. shot and nearly killed President Ronald Reagan because he was hoping that in so doing he would attract attention, especially from actress Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed. It is not evident that Hinckley had any political goals.
Hinckley was tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. And while some other assassins and would-be assassins might also be driven by the demons of mental illness, they need not be. Political violence can be rational, if evil. The history of the United States indicates that killing politicians—especially Presidents—can have dramatic consequences.
The most prominent example is the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Vice President Andrew Johnson was a Southerner and a Democrat, then the pro-slavery party. He joined Lincoln’s ticket to demonstrate unity and because he happened to oppose secession, even though he also held very different views from Lincoln on other matters. Following Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson ascended to the Presidency, where he weakened efforts to root out the slave system, including by vetoing key civil rights legislation.
True, Johnson could be deemed a failure. He was the first U.S. President to be impeached and only very narrowly avoided conviction in the Senate. Moreover, the country chose Union General Ulysses S. Grant in the next Presidential election, ensuring that Reconstruction would proceed, at least for a time. Nonetheless, Johnson’s nearly four-year Presidential term robbed the Reconstruction project of key momentum that could have transformed the country in numerous ways.
Would America have made earlier progress on racial justice if John Wilkes Booth had missed his target? If Yigal Amir had not assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, might Israelis and Palestinians have forged a lasting peace (or at least have avoided the worst of what they now face)? No one can say with any certainty.
History is a chaotic system like the weather, unfolding in ways that reflect both large-scale forces and path-dependent contingencies. World War I resulted from the preceding decades of great power competition and the fortuity of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.
That very uncertainty will sometimes motivate violence by extremists who have come to think that the status quo is intolerable. Faced with a choice between what looks like certain catastrophe and at least the possibility of a better path, some people who are sufficiently committed to their cause will conclude that it is best to roll the dice by killing key actors.
Prevention
No American President has been assassinated since the 1963 killing of John F. Kennedy, but every U.S. President and many Presidential candidates have faced genuine threats. That none of the attempts succeeded is partly a matter of chance, as the path of the bullets fired at Trump illustrates. It is also a matter of preparation and courage on the part of the Secret Service, which goes to extraordinary lengths to protect Presidents, former Presidents, candidates, and their families.
The efforts of the Secret Service are complicated by the widespread legal availability of firearms. To be sure, even in Japan, where firearms ownership is much more tightly restricted than in the United States, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was killed by an assassin’s bullet in 2022. And someone who is willing to commit murder to further their political aims will not likely be deterred by laws forbidding firearms possession. That said, a would-be assassin who can easily and legally obtain firearms is more likely to become an actual assassin than one who must go to great lengths to find weapons.
A would-be assassin’s weapon of choice is a gun, because it enables one who finds it difficult to penetrate the security measures that immediately surround the target to strike from a distance. Thus, the most effective way of reducing the risk of successful political violence would be to adopt effective gun control measures. After all, political violence is violence.
And that, ultimately, is the reason we will continue to see deadly and near-deadly political violence. A nation that tolerates the routine mass slaying of schoolchildren as the price of its precious freedom to bear arms will also apparently tolerate the occasional shooting of its Presidents and Presidential candidates.
