Excellent read

Gwynne Dyer: Terrorism 101 offers lessons in how to respond to ISIS

There was a time, as recently as 25 years ago, when military staff colleges around the world taught a reasonably effective doctrine for dealing with terrorism. Then it was forgotten, but we need it back. It would be especially useful in dealing with the terrorist state that has recently emerged in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

The doctrine was painfully worked out back in the decades of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when terrorism was one of the world’s biggest problems. Most of the time, the strategy worked, whether the threat was the urban terrorists who plagued most Latin American countries and a number of big developed countries, or the rural guerrillas who fought the governments in many African and Asian countries.

The key insight was this: terrorist movements always want you to overreact, so don't do it. The terrorists usually lack the popular support to overpower their opponent by force, so they employ a kind of political jiujitsu: they try to use the adversary’s own strength against him. Most domestic terrorism, and almost all international terrorism, is aimed at provoking a big, stupid, self-defeating response from the target government.

READ MORE: http://www.straight.com/news/743321/gwynne-dyer-terrorism-101-offers-lessons-how-respond-isis