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Surprise and Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework

Daniel R. Morris a
a
Department of War Studies, King's College London, UK

Online Publication Date: 01 February 2009

To cite this Article Morris, Daniel R.(2009)'Surprise and Terrorism: A Conceptual Framework',Journal of Strategic Studies,32:1,1 — 27
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 The Journal of Strategic Studies
Vol. 32, No. 1, 1–27, February 2009

AMOS PERLMUTTER PRIZE ESSAY

Surprise and Terrorism:

A Conceptual Framework

DANIEL R. MORRIS

Department of War Studies, King’s College London, UK

ABSTRACT While terrorist attacks are, by their very nature, surprise attacks,
they are rarely studied as such. There have been few attempts to integrate
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knowledge and insight from the extensive bodies of literature on military surprise
attack and terrorism. This article proposes a framework for understanding the
relationship between the mechanism of surprise and the method of terrorism. It
seeks to situate the principle of surprise within the tactical and strategic logic of
terrorism in order to illuminate the role of surprise as the terrorist’s tactical
mechanism of necessity and his strategic weapon of choice. Applying this
framework to the 9/11 case will further illustrate the central role of surprise in
terrorism.

KEY WORDS: Surprise, Terrorism, 9/11

The surprise is, therefore, not only the means to the attainment of
numerical superiority; but it is also to be regarded as a substantive
principle in itself, on account of its moral effect. When it is
successful in a high degree, confusion and broken courage in the
enemy’s ranks are the consequences; and of the degree to which
these multiply a success, there are examples enough, great and
small.1
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, 1832

Terror struck into the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it
is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s
heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved. It is the

1
Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books 1982), 269.

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/09/010001-27 Ó 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402390802407392
 2 Daniel R. Morris

point where the means and the end meet and merge. Terror is not
a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we
wish to impose upon him.2
S. K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War, 1979

In the domain of war, adversaries have sought to capitalise on the

enemy’s surprise and fear since time immemorial. From simple ambush
at the tactical level to sudden war initiation at the strategic level, the
effects of successful surprise can bestow a significant advantage to an
attacking force. However, few actors in the history of warfare have
been as dependent on the mutually reinforcing effects of surprise and
fear as the modern practitioners of terrorism – a reliance born out of
both tactical necessity and strategic choice.
Surprise has always been an inseparable feature of terrorism.
Terrorism operates on the presumption that the victim will be
accessible and vulnerable precisely because the attack is unexpected
at a particular point in time and space. In other words, for an attack to
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be successful the victim must be taken by surprise. Without the element

of surprise, not only is the terrorist unlikely to succeed in his mission
but, once exposed, his freedom and very survival will be in grave
jeopardy. This point is not controversial. However, the relationship
between surprise and terrorism goes beyond the mere tactical.
Terrorism is first and foremost a form of psychological warfare. As
such, the primary weapons of the terrorist operate not on the body of
the adversary but rather on his mind. Surprise is one such weapon.
Unlike in the conventional military context, where surprise is usually
employed to maximise operational effectiveness by deceiving the enemy
as to one’s true intentions and capabilities, in terrorism surprise
assumes a much more central place in the tactical and strategic
repertoire of the terrorist. In this context, surprise is not merely a
vehicle to deliver the effects of a weapon upon the enemy. Instead, we
propose to look at it from the other way around – terrorists use the gun
and the bomb as delivery systems for the real coercive instruments in
their arsenal: surprise and shock. Used in this way, surprise itself
becomes a potent weapon. It has enabled relatively small groups of sub-
state actors to compel entire governments to action and ultimately
change the course of history. Whether terrorists have been strategically
successful in this regard is debatable, especially if we define success
narrowly as the full realisation of professed political aims. However,
their ability to alter the landscape of our security environment and
change the way people think and behave is undeniable.
2
S.K. Malik, The Quranic Concept of War (Lahore, Pakistan: Wajidalis 1979), 59.
 Surprise and Terrorism 3

This article explores the conceptual relationship between surprise

and terrorism.3 It seeks to demonstrate that terrorism cannot properly
be understood without an appreciation for the centrality of surprise in
the logic of the method. Applying this framework to the case of the Al-
Qa’eda terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC in
2001 (‘9/11’) will further illustrate the central role of surprise in
terrorism.

Terrorism and the Principle of Surprise

Tactical Necessity: Surprise as Operational Enabler
There are few operational principles of the terrorist attack so
overlooked and taken for granted as the element of surprise. It is often
disregarded as an issue worthy of mention perhaps because the function
of surprise in terrorism seems self-evident; indeed, terrorist attacks are
surprise attacks almost by definition. However, it is not entirely clear
precisely how surprise is used by design in the terrorist operation, nor
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do we fully understand how it works on that level. To answer these

questions it is helpful to examine the logic of special operations warfare
in order to understand how the few can attack the many and gain a
relative superiority over the adversary.

The logic of special operations warfare. While terrorism considerably

predates the emergence of modern special operations warfare, there is
overlap between the two with respect to the basic principles employed
to overcome the enemy’s superiority of force. A distinguishing feature
of both types of warfare is that they allow the adopter to overcome his
relative weakness and defeat a stronger adversary who is practising a
different art of war. Surprise constitutes but one of several principles of
the special operation and the terrorist attack but it is nonetheless an
essential one. In both types of warfare, surprise is a key operational
enabler.4
The logic of special operations is based on the notion that a small,
highly trained force can achieve a relative superiority over the enemy by

3
An earlier version of this framework was presented by the author in Gregory
B. O’Hayon and Daniel R. Morris, ‘Warning in the Age of WMD Terrorism’, in Peter
Katona, Michael D. Intriligator, and John P. Sullivan (eds.), Countering Terrorism and
WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorist Network (London: Routledge 2006),
51–68.
4
James J. Wirtz, ‘Theory of Surprise’, in Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken
(eds.), Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel
(London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2003), 104.
 4 Daniel R. Morris

controlling the key conditions of the engagement – or by bypassing

direct engagement entirely.5 Rear Admiral William H. McRaven,
commander of the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)
and a former Navy SEAL, identifies six essential principles of the
successful special operation: simplicity, security, repetition, surprise,
speed, and purpose. McRaven’s theory of special operations explains
how relative superiority is achieved through the correct application of
these six principles. According to McRaven, relative superiority can be
gained despite inferiority in numbers and firepower because the six
principles act together to reduce war to its most basic level, thereby
limiting the adverse effects of friction, chance, and the enemy’s will
to resist.6
The function of surprise in overcoming the latter characteristic of
war – a resisting opposition – is central to James Wirtz’s understanding
of surprise. For Wirtz, the enabling mechanism of surprise is a function
of its capacity to remove an active opponent from the battlefield,
thereby altering war’s nature as a duel. Surprise affords its adopter the
initiative, enabling him to commence the attack at a time and place of
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his choosing and strike before the defender realises that he is engaged in
combat. In its ideal form, then, surprise essentially allows the attacking
force to administer damaging blows upon an inactive adversary.7
This is, of course, a theoretical ideal. The suspension of war’s
dialectic is temporary, and rarely is it absolute in practice.8 This is one
reason why strategic military surprise attacks are often initially
successful but usually fail to deliver decisive victory to the surpriser.
Surprise tends to throw the afflicted off-balance only temporarily, and
unless this momentary advantage is capitalised on to the fullest, it is
unlikely that the surpriser will be able to defeat the inherently stronger
opponent. On the tactical level, however, the distance between theory
and practice narrows considerably, and the ideal type becomes
conceivable in reality. As Clausewitz put it, ‘In tactics the surprise is
much more at home, for the very natural reason that all times and
spaces are on a smaller scale.’9 Given that the principles of special
operations warfare coalesce to reduce war to its simplest form, it is

5
McRaven defines relative superiority as ‘a condition that exists when an attacking
force, generally smaller, gains a decisive advantage over a larger or well-defended
enemy.’ William H. McRaven, SPEC OPS: Case Studies in Special Operations
Warfare: Theory and Practice (Novato, CA: Presidio 1995), 4.
6
Ibid., 8–9.
7
Wirtz, ‘Theory of Surprise’, 103.
8
Colin S. Gray, Transformation and Strategic Surprise (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic
Studies Institute, US Army War College 2005), 9–10.
9
Clausewitz, On War, 270.
 Surprise and Terrorism 5

conceivable for the theoretical ideal of surprise to be achieved in

practice.
Sniper operations offer a quintessential example of how the
principles of special operations warfare work to reduce war to its
most basic level. The sniper uses the six principles of special operations
to strike with ruthless efficiency and surgical precision, eliminating the
target before he is able to react. The operation is still affected by the
forces of friction, chance, and uncertainty, and the element of danger is
ever-present, but surprise allows the sniper to essentially control the
basic conditions of the engagement. The duel – if it could even be
described as such – lasts only the length of time that passes from when
the sniper fires his/her weapon to when the bullet connects with its
target. If the sniper should miss the first shot, the element of surprise
is likely to be lost – to the grave detriment of operational success.
The other five principles are equally – some perhaps even more –
essential to success, but the element of surprise is a key enabler of the
special operation. Without it, there could be no special operations
warfare.
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Role of surprise in terrorist operations. Like most special operations,

the viability of the terrorist operation is predicated on the presumption
that the attackers will be able to plan, prepare, and execute the attack
without facing an active opposition. Surprise ensures that the
operatives will be able to gain access to the target and strike first
without prompting counter-action from the adversary. Unless the
object is to perish in a ‘final stand’ against the enemy, the terrorist
generally seeks to avoid the duel of war at all costs. In essence, the
operational art of terrorism is to wage warfare without combat.
Tactical surprise enables him to do precisely that.
The effectiveness of surprise on the tactical level should not be
overstated, however. Surprise has little value on its own and comes
with no guarantee of success. The four men who attempted to detonate
explosives on London’s transport network two weeks following the
successful attack on 7 July 2005 had the element of tactical surprise on
their side but their devices failed to explode. Surprise could not
compensate for apparent technical incompetence. As McRaven points
out, surprise is useless without the other principles: ‘What good would
it be to surprise the enemy, only to be ill-equipped to fight him?’10
In this particular case, the principle of repetition – the practice
of becoming expert in the skills and equipment necessary for the
operation – was apparently deficient and thus the operation failed,
notwithstanding tactical surprise. Without the element of surprise,
10
McRaven, Spec Ops, 19.
 6 Daniel R. Morris

however, the attackers would certainly have been thwarted before the
attack could reach the operational stage. In fact, without the
presumption of surprise the London operation could hardly have been
conceived at all. In the end, surprise made the attack possible, but
ultimately not successful.
In sum, while it is by no means sufficient for operational success,
tactical surprise is usually necessary for the avoidance of outright
failure. Surprise itself cannot deliver victory but it can create the
conditions necessary for an operation to be conceived and successfully
executed. In terrorism, the stark asymmetry of force capabilities
between the terrorist and the state necessitates the use of tactics that
bypass the dialectical nature of war from which the state derives its
overwhelming military advantage.11 Surprise enables the terrorist to
overcome this asymmetry by ‘pre-empting the duel that is war’, as
Wirtz puts it.12 Through the element of surprise, the terrorist seeks to
negate the state’s strengths and create the conditions to exploit its
weaknesses. Surprise is only one tactical principle of the terrorist
operation but it is nonetheless an essential one. Without it, terrorism
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would not only be foolishly impractical as a method, but virtually

inconceivable as a strategy.

Strategic Choice: Surprise as Strategic Weapon

That terrorists have the tactical advantage is not significant in itself.
Indeed, the capacity to harness the initiative and strike some vestige of
the state belongs, in theory, to virtually everyone. Nor is the capacity to
kill or injure unique or of any special importance. ‘Ordinary’ murder
rates dwarf the number who perish at the hands of terrorists. If
terrorism was simply about killing, it would likely be classed in the
former category, where the relatively low incidence rate would cause it
to all but disappear into obscurity. Terrorism, however, is intuitively
understood as something altogether different. Terrorism commands
attention, captures imaginations, and alters perceptions on a scale that
few other criminal activities could. Terrorism is able to achieve this
because of two critical characteristics: it is politically motivated and it
is psychologically directed.
Terrorism is more about propaganda than violence. Terrorists pose a
threat to society not simply because they kill people, but more
importantly because they threaten to kill people. Indeed, the threat of

11
Richard K. Betts, ‘The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of
Terror’, Political Science Quarterly 117/1 (2002), 30.
12
Wirtz, ‘Theory of Surprise’, 104.
 Surprise and Terrorism 7

terrorism exists more in the public imagination than in reality.

However, if an act of terrorism is able to influence perceptions and
alter behaviour, then terrorists may be able to reap strategic benefits.
To this end, the function of surprise may go well beyond that of a mere
tactical enabler. When the object is to maximise the psychological
impact of a terrorist attack and generate far-reaching effects, surprise
can become the terrorist’s strategic weapon of choice.

The strategic logic of a tactical principle. To understand how surprise

can be used as a strategic weapon we must first consider the notion that
tactics and strategy constitute one another in a nexus of means and
ends. Tactical principles, though principally at home on the battlefield,
can nonetheless have their own strategic logic. Beyond the immediate
objectives against which they are directed, tactics can also serve a
strategic imperative that may or may not be functionally connected to
tactical goals. A terrorist operation to destroy an airplane, for instance,
employs some specific tactics to effect that goal. However, the strategic
impact of the attack is not derived from the loss of a single airplane and
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its passengers. The strategic effects are instead generated from the
psychological impact that the specific tactics induce on an intended
audience.
The fear that an attack invokes does not merely derive from
the outcome, but more importantly from the nature of the attack,
which is defined in large part by the specific tactics employed.
Terrorists can conceivably strike anywhere, anytime, and unexpect-
edly.13 Terrorism terrifies because the tactics that characterise the
method make the threat appear ubiquitous. It is the unexpected
nature of the terrorist attack that perhaps resonates loudest in
peoples’ minds; the fear the method induces is a function of not
knowing where, when, and how the terrorists will strike next. The
Greek Cypriot terrorist leader Colonel (later General) Georgios
Grivas explained how this principle was exploited during the British
occupation of Cyprus:

[O]ur strategy consisted in turning the whole island into a single

field of battle in which there was no distinction between front and
rear, so that the enemy should at no time and in no place feel
himself secure. The enemy never knew where and when we might
strike. . . . This strategy achieved the dispersal, intimidation and

13
Brian M. Jenkins, The Lessons of Beirut: Testimony before the Long Commission
(Santa Monica, CA: RAND 1984).
 8 Daniel R. Morris

wearing down of the enemy’s forces and especially serious

consequences resulting from our use of surprise.14

Cultivating the perception of a battlefield without bounds is intrinsic to

the logic of terrorism. As we will see later, it is also a central aspect of
Al-Qa’eda’s strategy.
Terrorists have yet to demonstrate the capacity to pose an existential
threat to a society. However, through the use of surprise tactics the
terrorist can create a climate of fear by undermining perceptions of
personal security. If the terrorist can strike anyone, anywhere, anytime,
then essentially everyone becomes a potential victim, everywhere is
dangerous, and every moment is potentially one’s last. The principle of
surprise thus lies at the heart of the terrorist’s coercive strategy, without
which the terrorist cannot hope to influence a target audience. Indeed,
if terrorist attacks were always expected, the impact would be
manageable to the point of mere inconvenience because people would
only need to adjust their routines around specific points in time and
space. It is therefore largely the capacity of the terrorist attack to
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surprise tactically that generates strategic impact.

The moral effect of surprise attack. The mechanism by which

surprise operates on the strategic level can be understood by examining
how surprise attack alters what Clausewitz described as the ‘moral
element’ – that is, the commitment of the people, the government, and
the military to resist the enemy’s will and persevere over him in the
conflict. The merits of surprising an adversary in battle have long
been recognised, not only for the physical effects on the battlefield
but, equally, for the capacity of surprise attack to deliver damaging
blows to enemy morale. Like surprise, terrorism is a method valued
for its capacity to both physically destroy and psychologically
dislocate.
As a method of warfare that operates almost entirely on the
condition of the mind, terrorism is fundamentally about capitalising on
the psychological effects that result from the experience of a terrorist
act – whether the act is experienced first-hand as a victim or second-
hand as a spectator via the media. The extent to which a terrorist attack
surprises and shocks an intended audience is directly related to the
violent and dramatic nature of the act. As a leader of the Japanese
United Red Army explained, ‘Violent actions . . . are shocking. We want
to shock people, everywhere. It is our way of communicating with the

14
Quoted in Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia UP
2006), 55.
 Surprise and Terrorism 9

people.’15 The desire to surprise and shock is one reason why explosives
have long been the terrorist’s weapon of choice. ‘These weapons, the
proletariat’s artillery, cause surprise, confusion, and panic among the
ranks of the enemy’, explained John Most, the late nineteenth century
German-American anarchist.16
The terrorist uses violent and shocking acts to cause what Sir Basil
Liddell-Hart described as the psychological ‘dislocation’ of the
enemy.17 The capacity to surprise and shock a significant portion of
society through discrete acts of violence is a hallmark of contemporary
terrorism largely afforded by the advent of mass media. In an age of
near real-time global media reporting, Sun Tzu’s once hyperbolic
mantra, ‘kill one person and frighten ten thousand,’ has assumed an
almost understated literal truth. An unexpected act of indiscriminate
violence can shatter presumptions of personal security for millions of
people, fundamentally changing the way people think and operate. This
effect is greatest when an attack surprises its audience by the very fact
of a terrorist threat where none was thought to exist. While terrorist
attacks often surprise by their method or timing, it is when perceived
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reality is suddenly shattered by the very existence of terrorism that the

moral effect is greatest. As will be discussed later, this was the type of
surprise experienced by Americans on 11 September 2001 and this
greatly contributed to the impact of the event.
Terrorists use fear as a coercive lever against a target population,
often as a proxy for influencing that population’s political leadership
and its policies. It is not so much the terrorist attack itself that produces
this fear and anxiety. Thomas Schelling reminds us that the art of
coercion ‘depends more on the threat of what is yet to come than on
damage already done.’18 Terrorist attacks that come with no promise
or potential for future strikes would unlikely serve the terrorist’s
strategic goals. As Clausewitz explained:

If our opponent is to be made to comply with our will, we must

place him in a situation which is more oppressive to him than the
sacrifice which we demand; but the disadvantages of this position
must naturally not be of a transitory nature, at least in

15
Quoted in Ibid.
16
John Most, ‘The Case for Dynamite’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Voices of Terror:
Manifestos, Writings, and Manuals of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Other Terrorists from
around the World and Throughout the Ages (New York: Reed Press 2004), 341.
17
See B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (Norwalk, CT.: The Easton Press 1992 repr. of 1954
orig.).
18
Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1966), 172.
 10 Daniel R. Morris

appearance, otherwise the enemy, instead of yielding, will

hold out, in the prospect of a change for the better.19

All terrorist attacks thus contain an implicit or explicit warning of more

violence to come, and often threaten an escalation in the tempo and
severity of attacks. The credibility of this threat is predicated on the fact
that terrorists have the capacity to surprise tactically; and the fear that
the threat induces is a function of not knowing where, when, and
how the terrorists will strike again. By creating a sense of vulnerability
in a target society through discrete acts of violence, the terrorist hopes
to capitalise on the effects of this perceived insecurity.

The effects of perceived insecurity. The moral effect of surprise does not
itself translate to strategic gains for the surpriser. On the strategic level,
what matters is how this moral effect manifests itself in the behaviour of a
target audience. Expressed a different way, the coercive value of a
terrorist attack depends on the attacker’s ability to alter a target
audience’s perceptions in such a way that it causes behavioural pre-
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ferences to change in a desired manner. Specifically, the terrorist attempts

to manipulate perceptions of vulnerability. He seeks to shatter an
audience’s sense of security and thereby force the adversary into a
situation where he must choose either to submit to the terrorists’ will or
live in a condition of heightened insecurity. However, individual measures
to cope with insecurity can have an attritional effect on social, economic,
and political life. Such measures often manifest themselves in some degree
of avoidance behaviour – a criminological concept that describes how the
fear of victimisation can lead to behavioural changes, such as the
avoidance of particular places or modes of transportation. The greater the
disruption to normal life, and the greater the harm resulting from that
disruption, the more oppressive the situation the terrorists place their
adversary in and, hence, the more coercive leverage they can wring from
an act of terrorism.
Measures to cope with perceived insecurity do not only take the form
of avoidance behaviour, however. Being placed in an intolerable situation
can also propel people to action in the hope that they may escape the
stifling effects of persistent fear and anxiety. Because most terrorists aim
to change an undesirable status quo, it is often the active response of an
audience to a terrorist attack that is of greatest importance for the
terrorists’ political goals. As terrorism is a form of coercion by proxy,
terrorists generally hope that their attacks will act as catalysts that
mobilise the public to pressure the government to change course.

19
Clausewitz, On War, 104.
 Surprise and Terrorism 11

The consequences for government. The terrorist’s coercive leverage

is a function of his capacity to manipulate the political agenda of
government by placing the latter in a position where it is forced to
respond. The terrorist attack is an act of clear provocation – it not
only welcomes a response from the government, but loudly demands
one.20 Indeed, any attempt by the government to simply ignore the
terrorist would surely invite even more deadly attacks. The terrorist
seeks to provoke a government response for two principal reasons. The
first is for propaganda. The terrorist wants the government to
acknowledge his existence and recognise his status as an enemy of the
state. Forcing the state to acknowledge the terrorist as an adversary
essentially legitimates the terrorist’s claim that he is in fact a political
actor and not a mere criminal. This recognition is particularly important
for promoting the terrorist’s cause and for securing the support of his
supposed constituency.
The second reason is a decidedly strategic one. The terrorist often
hopes to push the government into taking counterproductive measures
that will ultimately undermine its position at home, disrupt its
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alliances, and weaken its standing and prestige. Acts of terrorism all
but assure a response from government because the method is designed
to challenge the state’s protective function. The terrorist attack is often
meant to demonstrate to the state’s citizens that their government is
incapable of protecting them.21 This strategy of undermining the
government’s position was articulated well by Russian revolutionary
Sergei Stepniak-Kravchinski in 1883:

The terrorists cannot overthrow the government, cannot drive it

from St Petersburg and Russia. But having compelled it, for so
many years running, to neglect everything and do nothing but
struggle with them, by forcing it to do so for years and years, they
will render its position untenable.22

The terrorist employs measures designed to place immense pressure on

the government to take decisive action to restore public confidence.
This pressure tends to increase as time passes without visible results. As
Stepniak-Kravchinski explained, ‘Every month, every week, of this
hesitation, of this irresolution, of this enervating tension, renders the

20
Alex P. Schmid, ‘Frameworks for Conceptualising Terrorism’, Terrorism and
Political Violence 16/2 (2004), 207.
21
Ibid., 207–8.
22
Serge Stepniak-Kravchinski, ‘Underground Russia’, in Voices of Terror, 93.
 12 Daniel R. Morris

position of their adversary worse, and consequently strengthens their

own.’23
Governments will often go to significant lengths to restore their
standing and demonstrate that the terrorist threat is under control. This
usually involves the imposition of enhanced security measures designed
to make it more difficult for terrorists to move and operate freely
amongst the people, but it is ultimately the people who incur the costs
of these measures. Thus, and with some degree of irony, the public’s
largely overblown perceptions of risk create self-imposed disruption to
normal routines (such as avoidance of travel), which then places
pressure on the government to respond by implementing security
measures that cause state-imposed disruption to public life (such as
restrictions on freedom of movement), which may then reinforce public
perceptions of insecurity. Indeed, this practice of provoking govern-
ment overreaction is a time-tested strategy of terrorism.
Terrorism thus presents an almost intractable dilemma for govern-
ments: efforts to enhance security are likely to cause disruption to
normal life while paradoxically fostering a sense of insecurity among
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the population. On the other hand, doing nothing, or too little to

address public fear will likely reinforce perceptions of insecurity and
highlight the impotence of government to protect its citizens. This is a
major strategic advantage of terrorism, which is, in part, afforded by
the terrorist’s use of surprise on both the tactical and strategic levels.
Through the strategic effects of surprise and shock, terrorists can have
an impact that would otherwise be unthinkable for small, clandestine
groups of sub-state actors. There is no better illustration of this than the
case of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the United States.

9/11 and the Logic of Surprise

Surprise as Tactical Necessity
Today we raid them; they will not raid us. The raid must take the
enemy at unawares. This is what the tradition has preserved of our
prophet’s teachings on war. It is a strong point that tips the scales
in war and confuses the enemy.24
Abu Sa’d al-Amili,
‘Learning Lessons from the Raids on
New York and Washington’ (2002)

23
Ibid.
24
Abu Sa’d al-Amili, ‘Learning Lessons from the Raids on New York and Washington’,
in Essays on the September 11th Raid (orig. pub. in Arabic by Majallat al-Ansar,
English trans. provided by OSC 2002), 43–4.
 Surprise and Terrorism 13

The 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington were

operationally impressive: creatively conceived, intricately planned,
and almost flawlessly executed. In less than two hours, 19 men
armed with knives managed to demolish the Twin Towers of the
World Trade Center, severely damage the Pentagon, destroy four
commercial airliners, and kill almost 3,000 people.25 Nevertheless,
the ingenious tactic of using passenger airplanes as guided missiles
reached its viability expiration date that very same morning. Indeed,
a modality such as this could probably work only once. The plot’s
genius lay in its novelty – in its capacity to take the enemy by
complete surprise. Once the capacity to surprise the enemy by this
mode of attack was eliminated, it was no longer viable. Surprise was
thus a critical element of the attacks as a matter of operational
necessity. In fact, without presupposing the surprise of the enemy,
the plot could hardly have been conceived at all. The plan’s
operational coherence was predicated on American unpreparedness
for this specific type of attack.
Unlike in the military context, where strategic surprise attacks
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almost always require an elaborate deception scheme to conceal the

attacker’s true intentions, the preparations for a terrorist attack
require no such cover. Al-Qa’eda did not need to conceal its intention
to target the United States. What was needed to preserve the element
of surprise was simply to deny the United States information that
would allow it to uncover the plot, or otherwise eliminate the
vulnerability that the plot was designed to exploit. To this end, Al-
Qa’eda compartmentalised information and operated a strict need-to-
know information protocol. Even among Al-Qa’eda’s senior leader-
ship, only a select few had full knowledge of the plot. The operatives
chosen to fly the planes had experience living in the West and would
therefore be less likely to rouse suspicion. Communications were
coded and funds were transferred to the operatives in ways and
amounts that were inconspicuous. Thus a sufficient degree of
operational security and tradecraft was practised in order to deny
US authorities the information that would be needed to prevent the
attacks. The attackers were able to board the planes on 11 September
with the element of surprise on their side.
The element of surprise was not only needed to board the aircraft,
however. Once on-board the airplanes, the hijackers would be
considerably outnumbered by the passengers and crew. Despite being
armed, the hijackers were simply too few in number to maintain

25
Wirtz, ‘Theory of Surprise’, 113.
 14 Daniel R. Morris

control of the aircraft in the event of a significant passenger uprising.

The hijackers thus needed to avoid such a battle at all costs. To reach
their intended targets in New York and Washington, they would have
to rely heavily on the principles of speed and surprise in order to
achieve and maintain relative superiority on-board the aircraft. This
meant deceiving the passengers into believing that cooperation was in
their best interests, and minimising the amount of time between the
point of takeover to target impact.
The fate of the fourth hijacked plane illuminates the importance of
surprise for the operational success of the 9/11 attacks, and how the
elements of friction and chance can cause even the most well-
planned operations to break down.26 The news of the other hijacked
planes crashing into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had begun
to reach passengers on-board United Airlines Flight 93 via mobile
phones. The revelation that the hijackers were on a suicide mission
dramatically changed the nature of the engagement on board the
aircraft. Suddenly faced with the prospect of certain death if they
remained passive, some passengers and crew attempted to retake the
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aircraft. Having lost the element of surprise, the attackers no longer

faced an inactive opposition and hence relative superiority was lost.
Unable to put down the passenger uprising, the hijackers were forced
to terminate their mission prematurely, crashing the plane in rural
Pennsylvania.
The success of the 9/11 operation hinged on two critical factors:
American unpreparedness for the method of suicide hijacking, and
Al-Qa’eda’s ability to place trained operatives on board US airliners.
Thus, to defeat US intelligence it was sufficient for Al-Qa’eda to
conceal at least two critical types of information from the enemy: that
pertaining to the attack modality (using commercial airliners as
missiles) and that pertaining to the identities of its covert operators.
The first simply required withholding information; the second required
tradecraft to conceal terrorist signals and transactions.27 These two
conditions afforded Al-Qa’eda the element of surprise, which enabled
the operation to succeed. However, it was the strategic effects of the
tactical surprise that ultimately made the 9/11 attacks much more than
just a national tragedy.

26
Ibid., 105.
27
See John P. Sullivan, ‘Terrorism Early Warning and Co-Production of Counter-
Terrorism Intelligence’, paper presented at the Canadian Association for Security and
Intelligence Studies 20th Anniversary Conference, Montreal, 21 Oct. 2005.
 Surprise and Terrorism 15

Surprise as Strategic Choice

The blow came as a surprise to everyone. This is the essence of the
Prophet’s wisdom and the soundest application of his advice: ‘War
is deception.’28
Abu Sa’d al-Amili,
‘Learning Lessons from the Raids on
New York and Washington’ (2002)

‘A great destructive act’, wrote Carl von Clausewitz, ‘inevitably exerts

on all other actions, and it is exactly at such times that the moral
factor is, so to speak, the most fluid element of all, and therefore
spreads most easily to affect everything else.’29 The destructiveness of
the 9/11 attacks was severe, but nevertheless local. However, the
emotional shock of the attacks swept across the country that Tuesday
morning like a tidal wave. The 9/11 event was as much an attack on
perceptions as it was against buildings. The strikes were designed so
as to maximise their moral effect and cause perceptions of reality to
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‘collapse’ under enormous psychological strain. Surprise was an

integral element of the 9/11 operation not merely by tactical necessity,
but strategic choice. Exploring the role of surprise to capture
attention, alter perceptions, and provoke a response will elaborate
this argument further.

Surprise to capture attention. Al-Qa’eda’s strategy is predicated on the

capacity to reach its intended audiences, and this capacity itself depends on
Al-Qa’eda’s ability to act. At any point in time there are countless
individuals and groups around the world wishing to publicise their cause.
Until they act, however, it is almost as if they do not exist; they need an
action that demonstrates the importance of their cause and their
unwavering commitment to it. With few exceptions, the American media
largely ignored Osama bin Laden before 11 September 2001. Even after bin
Laden’s organisation was implicated in several high profile attacks on US
interests on several continents, hardly any Americans would have been
aware of his existence, let alone hearing his message before 9/11. It makes
little sense to issue a threat that is not heard by the party one wishes to
compel. Similarly, a worldwide call to jihad will almost certainly fall on deaf
ears unless it is accompanied by a profound event of similarly global
proportions.
For Al-Qa’eda, securing an attentive global audience means
executing spectacular acts of violence that have far-reaching impact.
28
al-Amili, ‘Learning Lessons from the Raids on New York and Washington’, 42–3.
29
Clausewitz, On War, 97.
 16 Daniel R. Morris

Al-Qa’eda’s attacks are meant to both terrify and impress. This is why
Al-Qa’eda adopted what has become its trademark practice of
launching sophisticated suicide operations, often involving multiple
bombers, designed to inflict maximum casualties. As bin Laden
explained to journalist Abdel Bari Atwan in a November 1996
interview, ‘The nature of the battle calls for operations of a specific
type that will make an impact on the enemy, and this of course calls for
excellent preparation.’30 Similarly, in his 2001 book, Knights under the
Prophet’s Banner, Ayman al-Zawahiri explains: ‘The targets as well as
the type and method of weapons used must be chosen to have an
impact on the structure of the enemy and deter it enough to stop its
brutality.’31 In other words, the manner in which the enemy is attacked
is important in itself.
The 9/11 operation was designed not only to inflict mass casualties,
but to create a spectacle of violence so dramatic and unprecedented that
the entire world would be compelled to watch, polarising audiences by
their reaction: horror or jubilation. In other words, the United States
was attacked in a manner that was intentionally designed to surprise
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and shock so that Al-Qa’eda could communicate its message. As one

jihadist writer notes:

The power and significance of the raid on the US enemy lay not
only in the loss of life and property, but also in the political
message that the raid sent to the freedom-loving downtrodden
who yearn for freedom, dignity, and pride. . . . It was unexpected
and unimaginable. It struck a sudden blow at the [United States]
from an unexpected direction.32

As previously noted, the media acts as a relay between the

terrorist attack and the public, ensuring that the tactical surprise is
experienced collectively in a target society. Al-Qa’eda designed an
attack that, even if it had failed to destroy its targets, was all but
guaranteed to attract unprecedented media attention. Bin Laden
could hardly have asked for better coverage of the attacks.
Millions watched the second plane crash into the World Trade
Center in real-time – an unforgettable scene that would be replayed

30
Abdel Bari Atwan, ‘My Weekend with Osama Bin Laden’, The Guardian, 12 Nov. 2001.
31
Quoted in Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, Understanding Al Qaeda: The
Transformation of War (London: Pluto 2007), 55.
32
Abu Ayman al-Hilali, ‘The Real Story of the Raids on New York and Washington’, in
Essays on the September 11th Raid (orig. pub. in Arabic by Majallat al-Ansar, English
trans. provided by OSC 2002), 37.
 Surprise and Terrorism 17

over and over again by the media. If the real-time news coverage of
the attack was not Al-Qa’eda’s intention then they undoubtedly
learned something from the 9/11 experience. ‘The cameras of CNN
[Cable News Network] and other Western media dinosaurs under-
took the task of filming the raid and sowing fear in its aftermath’,
wrote Abu Ubayd al-Qirshi. ‘It didn’t cost al-Qa’ida a cent.’33
Thus the first challenge for any terrorist group is to capture and hold
the attention of an audience by creating media-worthy events. The
more dramatic and extraordinary the action, the more attention it is
likely to attract from the media and, by extension, the public and the
government. This is to say that surprise is a device that can expand
the media reach of a terrorist group by exploiting the natural
human attraction to the dramatic and the unorthodox. Al-Qa’eda
demonstrated their mastery of this principle on 9/11 by striking in a
way that was almost completely ‘unexpected and unimaginable’.
However, attracting attention was not an objective in itself but rather
a means. The purpose of attracting attention is, first, to alter
perceptions.
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Surprise to alter perceptions.

Al-Qa’ida took the enemy by surprise with the raids on New York
and Washington. Roles were reversed, and the enemy was thrown
into confusion by the event. He was left looking for explanations,
a prisoner of his reactions. The mujahidin were in motion, moving
the battle along, a powerful factor in their favor. This is the secret
of the United States’ fear of al-Qa’ida. Al-Qa’ida has hit on the
correct method for fighting and defeating the United States, God
willing.34
Abu Ayman al-Hilali,
‘The Real Story of the Raids on
New York and Washington’ (2002)

Within the above passage from a 2002 jihadist essay one can identify
three different ways in which surprise was utilised on 9/11. The author
highlights the obvious tactical advantage afforded by the element of
surprise: with the enemy paralysed by the shock of surprise, the
attackers faced little active opposition, allowing them to remain ‘in
motion, moving the battle along’. The two other ways are less obvious,

33
Abu Ubayd al-Qirshi, ‘The 11 September Raid: The Impossible Becomes Possible’, in
Essays on the September 11th Raid (orig. pub. in Arabic by Majallat al-Ansar, English
trans. provided by OSC 2002), 22.
34
al-Hilali, ‘The Real Story of the Raids on New York and Washington’, 31.
 18 Daniel R. Morris

but equally important. One is the link the author draws between
surprise and fear. Al-Qa’eda induces fear in its enemies precisely
because its attacks are unexpected and shocking. The third way is
related to the second, but the target audience here is not the enemy. By
defeating US intelligence and surprising its government, Al-Qa’eda was
exposing America’s vulnerability. By means of dramatic demonstration,
it was sending a message to Muslims everywhere that the US could be
successfully challenged on its own soil. The following paragraphs
elaborate on these two important ways that surprise was used to alter
perceptions.
Al-Qa’eda’s coercive credibility depends on fostering a perception in
the enemy that the threat it presents is a ubiquitous one. Al-Qa’eda
cultivates this perception by striking in unexpected ways and from
unexpected directions. Following its 2004 attack on a residential
compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Al-Qa’eda released a long
statement reiterating its strategy. ‘As we explained earlier’, the
statement reads, ‘this war is based on a strategy to widen the
battlefield. The entire world has become a battlefield in practice and
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not in theory.’35 The first point is true but the latter is clearly
hyperbole – the Al-Qa’eda network certainly does not have unlimited
reach. However, what matters for Al-Qa’eda’s strategy is that this
notion – the theoretical possibility for terrorists to attack anywhere and
at any time – is accepted within the enemy’s society as a reality. This
illusory belief is predicated, in large part, on the basis that Al-Qa’eda’s
attacks are invariably surprise attacks.
The 9/11 attacks were designed to foster this perception in the
American public in order to undermine perceptions of security and
influence behaviour. The attacks literally came from out of the blue and
without warning. The implicit message that was conveyed by the
manner in which Al-Qa’eda struck was that nowhere was safe; Al-
Qa’eda demonstrated that they could reach Americans whether in the
air, on the ground, in their grandest buildings, and even in their
fortresses. This message was convincing because Al-Qa’eda had the
element of surprise on its side. As one writer put it, ‘The skillful
execution of the raid sent a message to the enemy that the mujahidin
are capable of responding in kind and striking the enemy where he lives
and in ways he cannot imagine.’36 The same theme of striking

35
‘The Operation of 11 Rabi Al-Awwal: The East Riyadh Operation and Our War with
the United States and Its Agents’ (orig. published in Arabic by the Center for Islamic
Studies and Research, English trans. provided by OSC 2003), 15–16.
36
Sayf al-Din al-Ansari, ‘The Raid on New York and Washington: A Generic
Description’, in Essays on the September 11th Raid (orig. pub. in Arabic by Majallat al-
Ansar, English trans. provided by OSC 2002), 15. [Emphasis added].
 Surprise and Terrorism 19

unexpectedly in ways the enemy cannot imagine was highlighted by bin

Laden in an April 2006 audio message: ‘We have also destroyed edifices
[towers] in the United States. So, can you deny such a clear thing? We
have invaded you by the wings of death, and this has never occurred to
you.’37
People implicitly understand that if terrorists can strike unexpectedly
and are willing to die in the process there is little preventing them. Al-
Qa’eda demonstrated on 9/11 that its motivation to kill Americans was
absolute and its capacity to do so in large numbers was proven. From
the perception of Americans, future surprises were inevitable. Indeed, a
Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) News poll taken one month after
the attacks revealed that 88 per cent of respondents thought it likely
that the United States would be attacked again by terrorists within a
few months.38 The fact that such attacks did not materialise in the
months after 9/11 would have done little to assuage American concerns
about terrorism; the surprise on 11 September was such that Americans
realised they could no longer presume to be safe from attack, nor could
they presume to know what Al-Qa’eda was capable of pulling off
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next.39 At least some jihadists appear to have understood this. The

attacks ‘put fear in the hearts of Americans everywhere,’ observes Abu
Ubayd al-Qirshi. ‘Warnings of impending jihad attacks have taken a
murderous toll on the nerves of the US masses, who do not understand
why their vast military apparatus has failed to stop these attacks.’40
Al-Qirshi’s point about the United States’ inability to prevent the
attacks reflects another important way that surprise is used to alter
perceptions. Al-Qa’eda’s strategy of widening the battlefield involves
inciting Muslims to unite and attack the Americans wherever they are
until their forces are driven out of ‘all the lands of Islam, defeated and
unable to threaten any Muslim.’41 However, from Al-Qa’eda’s
perspective, a significant obstacle was the defeatism that had overcome
the Ummah – the global community of Muslims – after decades of
humiliation, oppression, and occupation. Al-Qa’eda wanted to
demonstrate that the United States was a ‘paper tiger’, that its
unrivalled military power and intelligence capabilities were but

37
‘Full Version of Bin Ladin’s 23 April [2006] Audio Message’, English transcript
provided by OSC (27 Apr. 2006). [Emphasis added].
38
Cited in Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Terrorist
Threat (London: John Murray 2006), 179.
39
I am grateful to Robert Jervis for providing this observation in comments on an
earlier draft of this article.
40
al-Qirshi, ‘The 11 September Raid: The Impossible Becomes Possible’, 20.
41
Osama Bin Laden, ‘Jihad against Jews and Crusaders: World Islamic Front Statement
[1998 Fatwa]’ (23 Feb. 1998).
 20 Daniel R. Morris

elaborate deceptions. Thus, the very fact that the Americans were taken
by surprise was itself an important message meant to awaken and
inspire Muslims to answer the call of jihad.
Sayf al-Din al-Ansari captures the essence of this message and puts it
in plain language for his readers: ‘A small group destroyed symbols
meant to last for eternity, and they did so with an operation that
surprised everyone. They made the terror that the United States inspires
a thing of the past. . . . After September 11 everything is possible.’42
Other jihadist writers have drawn similar conclusions. Abu Ayman al-
Hilali writes, ‘It was a blow to the credibility and competence of the
famed security and intelligence agencies and their legendary status in
the US and global imagination. They were revealed as weak and
ineffective against the mujahidin.’43 Abu Ubayd al-Qirshi notes that the
9/11 operation represented ‘a clear failure on the part of the US
intelligence agencies that used to strike fear into the hearts of so many
people. The [US intelligence] agencies with their enormous budgets
could not stop 19 mujahidin armed with knives who used the enemy’s
own weapons against his economic and military installations.’44
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In sum, the principle of surprise played an important role in altering

perceptions in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qa’eda’s exceptional
use of the element of surprise is one of the keys to its coercive credibility
in the eyes of the enemy. Undermining public confidence in the capacity
of the intelligence services to prevent such attacks leaves them feeling
that future surprise attacks are inevitable. The flip side to this is that the
surprise of the enemy can be used to boost the morale and confidence of
the sympathetic audience. ‘Surprises will continue to gladden the hearts
of the believers and sadden the enemies of God, with sudden strikes and
covert planning and execution’, writes al-Amili.45 By revealing that US
intelligence is neither all-seeing nor all-knowing, Al-Qa’eda was at once
demonstrating the possibility of resistance and providing a powerful
model for its praxis.

Surprise to provoke a response.

Our ultimate objective of these painful strikes against the head of
the serpent was to prompt it to come out of its hole. This would
make it easier for us to deal consecutive blows to undermine it and
tear it apart. It would foster out credibility in front of our nation

42
al-Ansari, ‘The Raid on New York and Washington’, 9.
43
al-Hilali, ‘The Real Story of the Raids on New York and Washington’, 31.
44
al-Qirshi, ‘The 11 September Raid: The Impossible Becomes Possible’, 21.
45
al-Amili, ‘Learning Lessons from the Raids on New York and Washington’, 44.
 Surprise and Terrorism 21

and the beleaguered people of the world. A person will react

randomly when he receives painful strikes on his head from an
undisclosed enemy. Such strikes will force the person to carry out
random acts and provoke him to make serious and sometimes
fatal mistakes. This was what actually happened.46
Sayf al-Adl, Al-Qa’eda military commander (2005)

When attacked unexpectedly, human beings instinctively react in one of

two ways: we either fight or flee. However, the nature of the 9/11
attacks was such that neither option was immediately available to
Americans. There was nowhere to run because the attacks took place at
home; there was no one to fight because the hijackers died with their
victims. The absence of any claim of responsibility made the attacks
that much more provocative. War had been initiated against the United
States but from an undisclosed enemy; Americans did not understand
who was waging war against them, let alone why. Americans were left
with an overwhelming sense that something profound had to be done,
but unsure as to what that something should be. President George W.
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Bush probably summed up the national mood that day when he

remarked to Vice President Dick Cheney as the crisis was still
unfolding, ‘We’re at war . . . somebody’s going to pay.’47
The incredibly surprising nature of the strikes put the US
government on the political defensive. The credibility of the Bush
administration, the intelligence services, and the military were all
suddenly on the line. The fact that the attacks came as a complete
surprise to Americans threatened to undermine public confidence in
the capacity of the government to protect them. The government was
thus placed under enormous pressure to take decisive action to restore
public perceptions of security. The attacks on New York and
Washington were so provocative that to not respond with force was
virtually unthinkable, not to mention politically untenable. Moreover,
the attacks suddenly forced the government to think differently about
national security threats – catastrophic threat scenarios once thought
too remote to warrant real attention took on new meaning after the
unprecedented surprise of 9/11. By striking hard and unexpectedly
against Americans at home, Al-Qa’eda all but assured the response it
was hoping for: the initiation of a US military adventure in the
Muslim world.

46
Quoted in Peter L. Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of Al-
Qaeda’s Leader (New York: Free Press 2006), 309.
47
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks Upon the United States (New York: Norton 2004), 39.
 22 Daniel R. Morris

9/11 and the Concept of Strategic Surprise

It is an excellent strategic surprise. The American intelligence
services were caught by a surprise that they had not considered.
. . . It is a surprise that has results. This surprise led to a shock in
the American consciousness [and] led to a radical change in the
perception of American Security.48
Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah,
The Myth of Delusion: Exposing the American Intelligence, nd

It is debatable whether 9/11 came as a strategic surprise to the US

government. As with most cases of strategic surprise attack, there
was some degree of strategic warning communicated to decision-
makers prior to 11 September. ‘The September 11 attack was not a
scales-falling-from-the-eyes revelatory event’, argues former US
government official Paul Pillar. ‘The essential facts about al-Qaeda,
what it was doing in Afghanistan, its relationship with the Taliban,
and most of all its deadly intent to inflict more harm on the United
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States were all well known and the subject of repeated and accurate
analytical production by the intelligence community.’49 There is
empirical support for this view.50 Indeed, Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet testified publicly in February and March
2001 that bin Laden and his network constituted ‘the most
immediate and serious threat’ to the United States.51 This was an
unusually clear statement of strategic warning by the most senior
official in the US Intelligence Community.
However, while Tenet and other officials in the US government may
have been convinced that a major terrorist attack was imminent, the
American public could hardly have imagined what was in store for
them on 11 September 2001. Before the attacks, the vast majority of

48
Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah, The Myth of Delusion: Exposing the American
Intelligence (orig. published in Arabic by al-Maqreze Center, English translation
provided by OSC nd ), 4.
49
Paul R. Pillar, ‘Metaphors and Mantras: A Comment on Shultz and Vogt’s
Discussion of Terrorism, Intelligence, and War’, Terrorism and Political Violence 15/
2 (2003), 149.
50
See, for instance, Paul R. Pillar, ‘Good Literature and Bad History: The 9/11
Commission’s Tale of Strategic Intelligence’, Intelligence and National Security 21/6
(Dec. 2006), 1022–44.
51
‘Statement by the Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet for the Senate
Armed Services Committee 7 March 2001’, 5www.senate.gov/*armed_services/
statemnt/2001/010308gt.pdf/4.
 Surprise and Terrorism 23

Americans did not know they were at war, let alone who they were at
war with. The American public was undoubtedly taken by
complete surprise on 9/11. If we were to rely on the traditional
understanding of strategic surprise, which is based on the conditions
of intelligence warning and political response, then the surprise
experienced by the American public on 11 September would be of
little, if any importance to the analysis. However, adopting such a
narrow understanding of strategic surprise attack in this context would
risk overlooking the main reason why terrorism is most often directed
against civilians, and would certainly miss the point of the 9/11
operation.
There is nothing to suggest that there was any conscious effort on the
part of Al-Qa’eda to impose the condition of strategic surprise on the
US government or its intelligence services on 9/11. There would have
been little advantage in doing so; in fact, the whole point of Al-Qa’eda’s
coercive strategy is to make the enemy clearly understand the threat it is
facing. Al-Qa’eda did not need to lure the United States into a false
sense of security in order create a vulnerability to exploit. There was, in
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other words, no need for strategic deception of the American

government or its people. Indeed, the successful suicide attack on the
destroyer USS Cole at Aden in October 2000 was executed while
preparations for 9/11 were well underway – bin Laden was clearly not
attempting to hide his hostile intentions. American unpreparedness
was, in fact, self-imposed. The false sense of security that was pervasive
in America prior to 9/11 was simply exploited by Al-Qa’eda to great
effect.
Thus, questions about precisely which government bodies or
officials were taken by surprise on 11 September are
now largely academic. Regardless of what the government or
the Intelligence Community knew or understood about the nature of
the Al-Qa’eda threat before 11 September 2001, the attacks were,
as far as the American public was concerned, a monumental
strategic surprise. From Al-Qa’eda’s perspective, this is the only
kind of strategic surprise that mattered. It is important to understand
this surprise as strategic because it was used by Al-Qa’eda as a weapon
that was directed against the United States’ centre of gravity: public
opinion.

Conclusion
‘A [grave] danger of the future’, Robert Kupperman warned in 1982, ‘is
the probability that unconventional incidents will have a much greater
impact than they perhaps warrant and will be allowed to resonate until
they eventually fractionate some of our important stabilizing social and
 24 Daniel R. Morris

political structures.’52 The events of 11 September 2001 convincingly

demonstrated that this danger had become a reality. Terrorists have
shown it possible for the shock generated by the unexpected actions of
19 individuals to rival that produced by an attacking army, air force or
fleet – a demonstration that did not go unnoticed by terrorists the world
over, not least on bin Laden himself. As bin Laden stated in a
September 2007 video address to the American public:

America has the largest economic power and the strongest and
most modern arsenal. It spends on this war and its army more
than the entire world does on it armies. It is the superpower that
influences the world policies, as though the unjust veto were its
exclusive right. Despite all of this, 19 young men managed with
God’s help to cause it to deviate from its course. Talk about the
mujahidin has become an integral part of your leader’s speeches.
The effects and signs of this are obvious.53

Al-Qa’eda’s effective use of surprise on both the tactical and strategic

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levels is of central importance for understanding how the organisation

was able to carry out the operation and how the attacks were able to
generate the ‘effects and signs’ to which bin Laden proudly refers.
This article has presented a framework for understanding the
relationship between surprise and terrorism. As a method of irregular
warfare, terrorism is wholly dependent on the mechanism of surprise in
order to overcome the state’s overwhelming military advantage. As
Colin Gray observes, ‘surprise is an ironbound necessity for the tactical
success of terrorism’.54 However, surprise is also an important principle
on the strategic level. As a form of psychological warfare, terrorism
depends on the fear the method induces in a broader audience. This fear
is a function of the inherently unexpected nature of the terrorist threat,
which injects an element of ‘reasonable doubt’ in peoples’ held
assumptions of personal security. If surprise itself is one of the
terrorist’s principal weapons, then no one can be certain how, where,
or when the next attack will come – the only certainty is that it will
eventually come. Consequently, the public tends to fear future attacks
that may be well beyond the terrorists’ capabilities. This has the effect

52
Robert H. Kupperman, Debra van Opstal, and David Williamson Jr, ‘Terror, the
Strategic Tool: Response and Control’, Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science 463/1 (1982), 35.
53
‘Message from Usama bin Ladin to the American People’, original video production
by Al-Sahab (English transcript provided by OSC 11 Sept. 2007).
54
Gray, Transformation and Strategic Surprise, v.
 Surprise and Terrorism 25

of promoting what is essentially a tactical problem to the level of a

strategic threat. Therein lies the key to Al-Qa’eda’s coercive strategy.
The 9/11 case reveals an important dimension of surprise that may be
unique to terrorism. Just as terrorists often communicate different
messages to different audiences, the surprise of a terrorist attack can be
directed simultaneously at different audiences and for different effects –
both negative (punitive) and positive (inspirational). In addition to its
role as a weapon to undermine public perceptions of security and
confidence in government, surprise may also be employed to awaken
the sympathetic audience in order to embolden it, demonstrate the
enemy’s vulnerability, and provide a model for defeating him. In some
cases, the positive application of surprise may in fact be the more
important of the two, particularly when the attacker’s strategy depends
– as al-Qa’eda’s does – on inspiring others to follow its example and act
independently against the enemy.
Two points need to be stressed. The first is that the strategic use of
surprise in terrorism is notably different from strategic military
surprise. In the military context, strategic surprise is equated with a
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failure of intelligence or a failure of political response to intelligence

warning. It is a condition imposed – often through the use of strategic
deception – on the political and military leadership of a country in
order to enable the concentration of the attacker’s forces at the decisive
point. In other words, military attackers use strategic surprise in order
to enable tactical surprise and win the decisive battle. Terrorists
obviously do not use surprise in this manner. In terrorism, the logic is in
fact reversed: terrorists use the tactical surprise of the attack to enable
the effects of surprise and shock at the societal level in order to realise
strategic goals.
The second point is that this model does not necessarily reflect the
strategy of all terrorist groups. As we have argued, surprise in terrorism
is a tactical mechanism by necessity, and a strategic weapon by choice.
While all terrorists must employ surprise on the tactical level or face the
certain prospect of being thwarted by the authorities (or, for that
matter, the intended victims themselves), the strategic use of surprise
remains an option for the terrorist. However, those groups that
consciously harness the fear-multiplying effects of surprise and shock
arguably pose the greatest threat to democratic societies. Robert
Kupperman and colleagues were prescient when they predicted a
quarter century ago, ‘While amateurs may continue to rely on time-
tested tactics, such as sky-jacking or embassy seizures, imaginative
professional terrorists will alter their methods to ensure surprise, panic,
and genuine disruption.’55 In this technological age, the gap between
55
Kupperman, van Opstal, and Williamson Jr, ‘Terror, the Strategic Tool’, 28.
 26 Daniel R. Morris

amateur and professional terrorists is closing, and with each successive

terrorist ‘spectacular’ the bar is being raised. As such, the terrorists’
reliance on surprise as a strategic weapon may become increasingly
prevalent.

Acknowledgments
This article has benefited from the advice of various individuals,
especially Joshua A. Geltzer, Michael S. Goodman, Gregory O’Hayon,
and John P. Sullivan. The author also wishes to thank Professor Robert
Jervis for providing invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this
article.

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