Cycle of Violence

The Cycle of Violence is the escalating sequence in which an atrocity prompts retaliation, retaliation inflicts further civilian harm, and that harm strengthens the anger and recruitment that make renewed violence more likely. In Noam Chomsky’s account, the cycle is not an unavoidable aftermath of terrorism: it is a political choice, sustained when governments privilege military reprisal over evidence, legal accountability, and attention to the conditions behind violence.

The Feedback Loop

The cycle begins when an atrocity creates a desire for vengeance. Chomsky warns that an extreme response can produce crimes as barbarous as those that first provoked retaliation, turning punishment into a new cause of grievance. The pattern is familiar, he argues, because the action and reaction do not end with the original perpetrators; they shape the circumstances in which further violence becomes possible.

The danger is especially pronounced when a response takes the form of a massive assault on Muslim populations. European leaders, Chomsky says, recognized that such an attack was precisely the reaction Osama bin Laden and his associates wanted: it could draw the United States and its allies into what the French foreign minister called a “diabolical trap.” In this logic, an adversary’s atrocity is followed by a response that appears to confirm the adversary’s account of conflict, widening the audience for further hostility.

The predicted consequences are not limited to the survival of a particular leader. Chomsky argues that even if Osama bin Laden were killed, a massacre of innocent people would intensify anger, despair, and frustration in the region and could move new volunteers toward the same cause. Killing him without credible evidence of his involvement, he warns, could also make him appear a martyr to many Muslims who themselves deplored the attacks. Death would not necessarily silence his influence: he notes that his voice could continue through tens of thousands of circulating tapes and interviews given before September.

Retaliation and Its Alternatives

Chomsky sets military reprisal against a different course: investigate, identify those responsible, and punish crimes through legal procedure while examining the fears and frustrations beneath them. The distinction is not between excusing atrocities and condemning them. It is between responding in a way intended to prevent their recurrence and responding in a way that risks stimulating another round.

His comparison with the Irish Republican Army bombings in London makes the choice concrete. Britain could have bombed Boston, on the theory that it was a source of funding, or infiltrated suspected networks and killed or transferred suspects to London. Chomsky calls such options criminally foolish. The alternative, in his account, would have been to confront the underlying fears without evasion and use legal process to bring criminals to justice.

He makes a similar comparison with the Oklahoma City bombing. Calls to bomb the Middle East followed the attack, but the investigation instead found a domestic plot connected to militias. The response was not to destroy Montana, Idaho, or the self-proclaimed “Republic of Texas.” Authorities sought the perpetrator, who was found, tried, and convicted; the response also included an effort to understand the grievances that might motivate such crimes and address the problem. For Chomsky, this provides a model of justice that seeks to prevent repetition rather than enlarge the field of retaliation.

He does not present the model as a universal formula detached from circumstances. The principles can, he says, be applied while attending to the particular conditions of each case. For the attacks under discussion, he considers them applicable: accountability and an examination of causes are alternatives to indiscriminate force, not a denial of the crime.

Evidence, Law, and Political Choice

The cycle is reinforced when governments treat military action as the default response before establishing responsibility. Chomsky argues that credible evidence matters especially if a suspect is to be killed or imprisoned; without it, the act risks strengthening the suspect’s standing among those who condemn the original atrocity. He also points to a wider legal route: action within the United Nations Charter and under the Security Council, rather than retaliation unconstrained by international law.

This emphasis on evidence accompanies his criticism of the phrase “war on terrorism.” Chomsky contends that the label becomes propaganda if the campaign does not actually target terrorism, and that Western powers could not apply their own official definitions consistently to their conduct. He argues that official definitions of terrorism and of low-intensity warfare are nearly alike, and treats coercion directed at civilians for political ends as part of state action as well as non-state violence. The point matters to the cycle: a system that names violence according to who commits it can condemn an enemy’s acts while leaving its own coercion outside the frame, making reciprocal escalation harder to recognize and interrupt.

His account also treats prior policy as part of the setting for later violence. In the 1980s, the CIA joined agencies from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, and elsewhere in recruiting, training, and arming extreme Islamist fighters for a holy war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Chomsky later describes the networks and other terrorist forces established by the CIA and its associates as continuing to pursue their own agendas. This history, in his argument, does not excuse attacks; it complicates any response that presents violence as arising without political antecedents.

Public Pressure and Escalation

For Chomsky, the cycle is shaped not only by state decisions but also by public pressure. Western citizens who want violence reduced must press major powers toward a different course and be willing to examine what lies behind atrocities. He rejects the claim that discussing those circumstances justifies terrorism, arguing instead that refusing such discussion can help perpetuate the pattern.

He also stresses the uncertainty surrounding the consequences of retaliation. Neither the public nor governments can know with certainty what their actions will produce, but plausible estimates point toward grave risks if reason, law, and treaty obligations are set aside. The public mood can influence what officials choose to do, so preventing escalation is not simply a matter of predicting government policy; it also involves contesting the demand for a punitive response.

The warning applies beyond the immediate military decision. Chomsky argues that a massive response could make Osama bin Laden’s cause more compelling to potential recruits, validate fanaticism at the expense of moderation, and help renew conflict between Arab societies and the West. The sequence turns on a political reversal: a response presented as security may increase the forces from which insecurity grows.

Afghanistan and the Strategic Aftermath

Chomsky applies this analysis to the 2001 bombing of Afghanistan. He says that the Bush administration was warned from the first days of the attacks by NATO leaders, regional specialists, and likely its own intelligence agencies that a large assault killing innocents would fulfill Osama bin Laden’s wishes. An offensive that killed Afghan civilians, he cautions, could rally additional volunteers to his network and to other forces whose origins he traces to the earlier U.S.-backed recruitment and arming effort. He observes that the warning eventually appeared to reach the administration, which chose another plan of action.

Yet he also interprets the bombing in strategic terms, distinguishing that interpretation from documentary proof. Without access to confidential records, he says it is reasonable to imagine that demonstrating U.S. power and warning other states formed a principal objective. He connects this reading to the establishment of substantial U.S. military bases in Central Asia for the first time, describing their importance for multinational corporations under U.S. dominance, access to regional resources, and the strategic position around the Gulf. Before the Afghanistan war, he notes, Diego Garcia had been the safest U.S. base in the wider system directed toward the Gulf; afterward, he argues, intervention was more readily facilitated.

He relates this expansion to a broader effort to consolidate military superiority and global dominance. During Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s visit to the United States, Abdullah urged greater attention to Arab reactions to U.S. support for Israeli repression. Chomsky recounts that U.S. officials answered that they did not care what he or other Arabs thought, and cites remarks describing the Afghanistan operation as far more forceful than Operation Desert Storm and as a demonstration intended to command respect. He compares this logic with the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained in terms of maintaining NATO’s credibility. In Chomsky’s analysis, such demonstrations of power can themselves feed the conditions for future conflict, even when presented as measures of deterrence.

The concept therefore links immediate retaliation to a longer political aftermath: civilian harm can deepen grievance and aid recruitment, while the expansion and display of military power can sharpen the conflicts in which further violence takes root. Chomsky’s proposed break in that sequence is not passive acceptance of atrocities. It is a different form of response—evidence-based prosecution, respect for legal and treaty obligations, and serious attention to the circumstances that sustain violence—chosen in place of a reprisal that risks reproducing its cause.