Success Quote by Jurgen Habermas

Habermas lands a double insult that’s meant to sting: global terrorism isn’t just morally abhorrent, it’s strategically unserious. Calling it “extreme” for its “lack of realistic goals” strips away the romantic myth of the insurgent with a coherent program. The violence, in this framing, doesn’t fail because it’s outgunned; it fails because it’s untethered from achievable political ends. That’s a pointed Habermasian move: he measures politics by its capacity to translate claims into reasons, demands into negotiable outcomes. Terror, by contrast, becomes anti-politics - an eruption that refuses the grammar of public justification.

The second clause sharpens the diagnosis. “Cynical exploitation” shifts attention from ideology to method: terrorism as opportunism aimed at the stress points of modernity. “Complex systems” evokes airports, financial networks, media ecosystems, supply chains - the infrastructural web that makes liberal societies efficient and, therefore, fragile. The subtext is uncomfortable: modern life’s sophistication creates its own hostage situation. You don’t need mass armies when you can trigger cascading disruption by striking nodes that symbolize safety, mobility, and trust.

Context matters here. Habermas is writing from a post-9/11 Europe anxious about security states, cultural backlash, and the legitimacy of Western power. By insisting terrorism has no “realistic goals,” he’s also warning democracies not to dignify spectacle with overreaction. The real battle, he implies, is over whether fear can push societies to abandon the deliberative norms that give them moral authority in the first place.