Audrey Kurth Cronin is a professor of war and statecraft the U.S. National War College and also continues as a non-residential Senior Research Associate at Oxford. Before that, Dr. Cronin was Specialist in Terrorism at the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, where she advised Members in the aftermath of 9/11. She has taught at numerous other universities including Columbia, the University of Maryland and Georgetown, where her long-standing graduate course on terrorism was featured in the New York Times shortly after 9/11. In addition to her academic expertise, she has served periodically in the U.S. government, including positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. She regularly consults with agencies in both the Executive and Legislative branches. We were pleased to have the opportunity to speak with her two days after the death of Osama bin Laden to clarify the impact of his death.

Audrey Kurth Cronin: Well, first let me state that I’m speaking only for myself, as an academic.

Al Qaeda has many parts, so the term 'al- Qaeda,' is often overly broad, over-used and over-generalized. Every time we use 'al-Qaeda' to refer to this movement as if it were a seamless monolith, we give it more credit than it deserves. It is better to talk about al-Qaeda as being comprised of three levels: al-Qaeda the core, specific al-Qaeda affiliates, and local individuals inspired by the broader movement. The various parts aren't necessarily all working seamlessly with the core and, indeed, sometimes we find they are working at odds.

Beginning with the last, the third level, individuals in small cells or even on their own are responding to messages, images, blogs and chat rooms on internet sites. For them, “al-Qaeda” is more like a social movement, driving them to be inspired and even hatch plots, with sometimes tenuous operational links to the central organization.

At the second level, you have numerous affiliates, some of whom have been associated with al-Qaeda for a long period of time and some of whom are groups with quite distinct local agendas who have only adopted the al-Qaeda “brand” in recent years.

And then we have Al Qaeda central. With heavy military pressure on the core, including the recent campaign of drone attacks, we have seriously weakened the central leadership in the last 2-3 years especially. By killing bin Laden, we have greatly advanced that process by dealing a devastating blow to the core of al- Qaeda.

But you have asked what will happen as a result of “decapitation,” by which I mean the capture or killing of the leader of a group that uses terrorism. It is indeed a long-established way of damaging or ending a group—states often try to eliminate the central inspirational figure. The historical record shows that it works best with certain types of groups. And unfortunately, al-Qaeda does not match all the classic characteristics of those groups. First, groups that have ended by decapitation have generally been hierarchically structured. But, as I have explained, since 9/11 al-Qaeda has evolved through various stages, becoming more horizontal and layered. Second, groups that end through the capture or killing of a leader don't tend to have a clear succession plan. And Osama bin Laden was very careful to designate a successor and plan for the group's survival after him. Third, groups that end through decapitation tend to be younger than other groups. Having existed for at least 20 year, al-Qaeda is not young by the standards of terrorist groups: most struggle to make it beyond the average lifespan of 5-8 years. Finally, groups that end through decapitation have a strong cult of personality attached to their leader. Although bin Laden in his rhetoric insisted that the movement is not about him--that he expected to die and welcomed his own martyrdom, because the movement is much bigger than one person--Osama bin Laden has definitely developed a kind of cult of personality. So, from that perspective especially, this is a serious blow—though one not likely to END al-Qaeda.

Incidentally, looking at local groups and individuals, there's already a lively response to bin Laden’s death on the three to four thousand so-called ‘jihadist’ internet sites, chat rooms and blogs. On the whole, they are insisting that they are still dedicated to the cause and that bin Laden's death will not end of the movement.

AKC: Some of it is. But al-Qaeda the core has not been cutting edge on the use of technology in recent years. al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been more inventive, and they have their own followers and participants. And they will continue without bin Laden.

AKC: Anwar al-Awlaki has had a lot of connections and appeal with English speakers. He was, of course, implicated in the Major Nadal Hasan shootings at Fort Hood that killed thirteen people; Hasan was one of his followers. He also had a hand in the 2010 Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit by the “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. But his legitimacy in the Arab world is another story. He is not considered to be a trained Islamic scholar and lacks the bonafides that his English-speaking audiences sometimes attribute to him.

AKC: We [Americans] think he's a big deal -he's a threat to us and it makes sense that we judge his importance based on that. But, when you talk to people who are looking at this from an Arab perspective, he's not such a big deal. It is very unlikely that he could be a credible successor to bin Laden, for example.

AKC: Well, in the short-term we really do have to worry about the potential for anti-American, anti-Western retribution in the wake of these CT successes. It's not unusual to have a short-term increase in violence - and historical data bear this out - to demonstrate that a group is still alive and a force to be reckoned with. So, we will have heightened alerts, more potential attacks on Americans abroad, increased security at Embassies and in the United States, and so forth. This is not the time to be complacent. The threat is greater in this period immediately following bin Laden’s death.

In the longer term, there is a lot of internal discord in the al-Qaeda movement that will continue to undermine its viability. The United States isn’t really in the middle of that and shouldn't be. There are and will continue to be vigorous disagreements and disputes about such things as whether or not it is acceptable to kill Muslim civilians, what exactly it means to be a devout Muslim, who has the right to label another Muslim “apostate,” whether it's okay to damage the economies of Muslim-majority states, whether it is acceptable to cause discord among the umma, etcetera. Those debates are happening without the United States, and we need to let them play out without making the kinds of mistakes that draw the focus back on us. This is at its heart a fight about the future of Islam. But, yes this - the killing of bin Laden - is likely to cause additional fractures in the al-Qaeda movement.

AKC: They are lines through different planes. There are lots of other reasons for disagreement. Local interests are extremely different. Just because a group has al-Qaeda in their name doesn't mean they have the same ideas about what exactly they are doing and why. There is discord about whether to attack the so-called far enemy or near enemy, for instance. This was one of bin Laden's big pushes - to attack the far enemy as a means to gain followers and undercut the stability of what he considered to be illegitimate Arab regimes. But many of those potential followers observe that his strategy and actions have drawn more violence upon members of the Muslim community than anything else has. They have paid dearly for his actions. But anytime you are talking about a movement that tries to encompass so many different groups and local interests - it becomes an extremely messy picture.

AKC: I tend to be an optimist when it comes to the Arab Awakening. Of course, the people who come to power may not be the people we want exactly (for example in Egypt). But revolutions always take time. And I think the fact that Tunisia and Egypt have shown a path to revolution without major violence is incredibly important and instructive. But, I am not enthusiastic about the label 'pro-democracy' because it sets up unrealistic short-term expectations in the West. These movements are not necessarily going to result in our form of Western democracy - at least not anytime soon—and the term perpetuates an egocentric vision, rife with the potential for cultural misunderstanding.

AKC: Right. But that can be okay for a time. That's what I mean when I say I'm an optimist. Remember, it took the United States almost two hundred years (including a bloody civil war) to get to one person one vote. We must avoid the tendency to project Western liberal democracies upon states that may be evolving in unique ways. I prefer the concept of self-determination to “democratization.”

AKC: I think it's very clear that that's not what's going on. This is a clash within a civilization. It's clear that some elements have attacked a far enemy in order to help resolve a problem of governance and religious ideology within their civilization.

AKC: Yes. Let’s look objectively at who is paying the highest price. According to one study, between 2006 and 2008, ninety-eight percent of the victims of al-Qaeda-associated terrorist attacks were non-Westerners from Muslim-majority countries. That does not by any means imply that there's no threat to us, but this struggle certainly isn't all about us.

AKC: Zawahiri is the natural successor, a founding member and he's been the number two to bin Laden for a long time. He's primed and ready and has the voice, BUT he doesn't have the broad authority and respect or vision of bin Laden, or most important, the ability to unify disparate factions behind a generally cohesive message. Being an Egyptian, Zawahiri is also very oriented towards Egypt. With recent events in Egypt, al-Qaeda’s role was side-lined, which means that Zawahiri’s position was also further marginalized. Zawahiri is not bin Laden.

The answer to your second question is probably yes. I'm not sure whether Zawahiri is really going to be able to replace or follow bin Laden successfully. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula continues to be a concern, including Abu Yahya al-Libi (he's Libyan), who is talked about as a possible successor. Al-Awlaki - a lot of Americans talk about - but he's more of an English spokesperson than anything. Dangerous; but not likely to take over leadership of the movement.

AKC: Maybe. But Zawahiri has been putting out a number of messages and videos for years without our being able to track him down. Perhaps he and others will be putting themselves in more danger, but that's a question better answered by someone who is closer to tactical operations.

AKC: The operation to kill bin Laden demonstrates the effectiveness of counterterrorism that is based upon painstakingly-developed, long-term intelligence, the involvement of many kinds of actors (not just the military), and a clear focus upon targeting those who attacked us. Perhaps even more important than bin Laden’s death to the future of US counterterrorism will be what we learn from the large cache of information that has been taken from his fortified compound. I believe that exploiting what we learn from that cache is our best future CT opportunity. High-profile operations can be misguided or counterproductive without patient, careful, detailed spade work invested behind the scenes that resists the tendency to misread or gloss over the complexities of this movement.