Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

Terrorism is not what could be called a new phenomenon in the world. The end of the Cold War and globalisation, however, “have let the genie out of the bottle”. In this article the author analyses issues pertaining to the definition of terrorism, tendencies of the terrorist threat (particularly, causes of the growing fatality of terrorism), the impact of globalisation on the phenomenon of terrorism and opportunities and dangers behind the fight against terrorism in the globalisation age. The article claims that during the age of globalisation terrorism becomes popular not only as a means for an asymmetric fight against the stronger opponent of the world’s “evil” states; the fight against terrorism is more and more often used as a supplementary instrument in the external and internal policies of Western world democracies. Devoid of an agreement on what terrorism is, states, facing the pressure of foreign and internal interests and/or external pressure, have become used to exaggerating the appeal of the terrorist threat, which, in turn, creates a counterproductive effect and increases security stakes.