From Theory to Policy: The Four Waves and U.S. Counterterrorism

David C. Rapoport’s four waves theory has been leveraged, reinterpreted and refuted extensively by academics over the years. However, most have focused on Rapoport’s description of the waves at their crest. This article emphasizes the transitions. It examines the transition between Rapoport’s third and fourth waves as perceived by senior national security officials in the United States. It finds that policymakers, like Rapoport, understood terrorism as large-scale geopolitical phenomena. Nevertheless, U.S. officials’ interpretation of these phenomena was more nuanced than Rapoport’s wave theory suggests. Policymakers also did not view themselves as having much ability to affect the direction, momentum, or stagnation of terrorism’s waves. This perceived lack of agency constrained the amount of time, attention, and resources that policymakers were willing to devote to counterterrorism, as well as their willingness to take political and military risks.