恐怖主义具有哪些本质特征？
暴力性或破坏性；政治性或社会性；恐惧性或心理战；
宣传性或宣扬性；违法性或刑事犯罪性；
。
暴力性或破坏性
恐怖主义的一个最本质特征就是暴力性。离开暴力就难以说恐怖主义。在当代世界，使用暴力威胁的行为也被越来越多的国家与学者纳入恐怖主义的范畴。因为暴力威胁往往是一种严重的破坏性行为，很多暴力威胁行动的危害不但不亚于一般的暴力恐怖主义行动，而且甚至远远超过一般性的暴力行动。此外，随着针对计算机的恐怖活动的兴起，人們也越来越多地将这种新型的非暴力的破坏活动纳入恐怖主义范畴。
政治性或社会性
恐怖主义的政治性或社会性是它区别一般性经济或刑事暴力犯罪的主要标志之一。如果某种暴力或破坏活动没有目标，仅仅是为暴力而暴力，那么它就不构成恐怖主义，而只能是一般性的经济或暴力犯罪；只有具备某种政治或社会目标，它才可能构成为恐怖主义。
应当看到，随着恐怖主义的日趋蔓延，当代世界的恐怖主义业已从高政治性的恐怖主义中逐步分化出一类旨在追求社会目标的低政治性的恐怖主义。
恐惧性或心理战
恐怖主义就是通过使用暴力或暴力威胁来制造恐怖气氛，对更为广泛的社会大众造成心理压力，使其产生恐惧心理。恐怖主义的真正目标往往并不在于特定的实际打击对象，而是在于影响更为广泛的社会大众，或影响国家的政策。
恐怖主义的恐惧气氛的形成，往往在于恐怖主义发生的突发性和难以预测性。
宣传性或宣扬性
恐怖主义的另一重要特征就是寻求使恐怖主义行动的效果或恐怖分子“事业”影响的最大化，引起社会的广泛注意。
违法性或刑事犯罪性
恐怖主义的违法性表现在：一是非法使用暴力或暴力威胁，二是恐怖主义行动往往造成不同程度的危害社会的后果，从而违背法律。至于是否构成犯罪行为，则要视情节轻重而言。
恐怖主义与战争（如游击战、美国向广岛与长崎投掷原子弹、9·11后美国发动的阿富汗战争和伊拉克战争等）有何区别？
恐怖主义与战争手段一样，都是通过暴力手段使所打击的对象屈服于自己的意志。但是，两者又有所不同。
定义:
·The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives (FBI).
·The Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience (US State Department).
·The use or threatened use of force designed to bring about political change (Brian Jenkins).
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil doer;
Nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
—Dostoyevsky作者: bbcc 时间: 06-2-10 10:59
第二章 早期恐怖主义回溯
Even though the word Terrorism originated during the French Revolution and the Jacobin Reign of Terror (1792-1794), individual acts of terror-violence can be traced back at least to the ancient Greek and Roman republics. By definition, the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. was an act of terrorism in so far as a modern political assassination is defined as terrorism.
Tyrannicide, the assassination of a political leader (tyrant).
Aristotle (384-322 B.C, Greek philosopher)
Aristotle pointed out the necessity of killing the unjust ruler. For him, a tyrannical ruler was considered a pathological departure from the desirable forms of governing authority.
Cicero (106-43 B.C, Roman statesman)
Cicero stated that “it is a virtue to kill” tyrants ,and that they “should be erased from human society”
John of Salisbury (1110-1180, English bishop and author)
He wrote that a tyrant “oppressed the people by rulership based upon force.” By ruling in this manner, “it is plain that it is the grace of God which is being assailed.” Therefore, he concluded, “it is just for public tyrants to be killed and the people thus set free for the service of God.”
“He who usurps the sword is worth to die by the sword.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, French writer)
Social Contract Theory (the existence of a social contract between a people and their government )
Anarchism（无政府主义）
Anarchism is the doctrine that opposes established political authority in all its forms. Anarchists view life as a moral drama in which the individual is arrayed against the state and all the oppressive instruments of coercion that they associate with government—bureaucracies, courts, police, the military, and institutions of private property and religion. They seek liberation from these and all forms of external constraint on human freedom. The anarchist is antipolitical, antitechnological and antieconomic. Thus anarchists are essentially foes of capitalist as it keeps government merely to protect their bourgeois interests and mmmanage their affairs.
( Contending Theories of International Relations )
The era of modern terrorism is usually said to have begun in the nineteenth century with the rise of Russia’s People’s Will.
Perhaps the most prominent proponents of individual and collective violence as a means of destroying governments and social institutions were the Russian anarchists, revolutionaries within Russia who sought an end to the Czarist state of latter nineteen century.
In the writings of two of the most prominent spokesmen for revolutionary anarchism, Bakunin and Nechaev, one finds philosophies often echoed by modern terrorists. Bakunin, for example, advocated in his National Catechism (1866) the use of “selective, discriminate terror.”
With the creation of the People’s Will in 1879, political assassination of a wide range of targets began to become a normal form of political protest, becoming part of an intense cycle of terror and counterterror. This revolutionary group believed that terrorism should be used to compromise the best of governmental power, to give constant proof that it is possible to fight the government, and to strengthen thereby the revolutionary spirit of the people and their faith in the success of the cause.
社会革命党 (Social Revolutionary Party) (1901—1908)
the Russian revolutionaries took special pains to avoid endangering innocent bystanders. For instance, the poet Ivan Kalialev, who assassinated the Grand Duke Sergius on the night of February 2, 1905, had passed up an opportunity earlier that evening to throw the bomb because the Grand Duchess and some of her nieces and nephews were also in the Grand Duke’s carriage.
It is quite easy to note the blending of revolutionary and terror-violence during this time. The assassination of Czar AlexanderII in 1881 and First Minister Peter Stolypin in 1911 were incidents that produced periods of counterterrorism ( in the form of state repression ). This repression probably accelerated the revolutionary movement responsible for those assassinations. Thus, the the terrorist acts of assassination, inspired by brutal repression in the czarist state, provoked further state terrorism, which in turn inspired revolutionary movement to further acts of violence.
George Kennan, commenting on the rising tide of terrorism in Russia during the last half of the nineteenth century, explained the relationship of state and revolutionary terrorism in this way: “ Wrong a man…deny him all redress, exile him if he complains, gag him if he cries out, strike him in the face if he struggles, and at the last he will stab and throw bombs.”
Still, while some of the seeds of more widespread and random terror-violence were sown in the revolutionary and anarchistic movements of the late nineteenth century, by the beginning of the twentieth century, terror-violence was still principally directed toward political assassination. Between 1881and 1912, at least ten national leaders had lost their lives to assassins.