The twin bombings in Brussels this week captured headlines and lit up social media networks, but the reality is that everyone is getting used to the idea that terror is an inseparable part of the European landscape. It’s news and it’s troubling, but it is less akin to a war or a natural disaster and more like a stock market crash or a coalition crisis –an inevitable part of life in the modern world, but one we can cope with and move on. “We have entered — we all feel it — in a new era characterized by the lasting presence of ‘hyper-terrorism,’” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told a security conference last month.

It’s not that France, which suffered two major attacks last year, is resigned to the violence. Since November, the country has been in a state of emergency, police have been given sweeping powers to arrest and investigate, bags are now checked at stores on the Champs Elysees and border checks have been reinstated. But when China’s stock market crashed last year, Beijing also acted to prevent it from happening again, although we – and presumably officials implementing the policies – know there’s nothing any government can do keep prevent market blowouts.

Europe can impose stronger border controls, improve intelligence coordination between countries, engage in the mass collection of personal data as America does and, as Europe’s right is demanding, block immigrants from Muslim countries. But as the experience of America and Israel demonstrate, the war against terror cannot be won until the enemy tires out. Both countries have poured resources into battling terrorism, and impinged on their citizens’ personal privacy. Yet the U.S. suffers lone-wolf violence on a fairly regular basis. Israel is expert at identifying and eliminating terror networks, but it has been enduring a wave of one-on-one stabbing attacks mostly by teenagers inspired by social media.

Europe’s problem right now is of a different order. The evidence of the bombings in Brussels bombings as well as the ones in Paris in November is that the continent is infested with sophisticated terror networks that count many members, enjoy enough support from the Muslim community to frustrate police efforts at gathering intelligence, and have accumulated expertise in encrypted communications and bomb-making. Exhibit A is that the French security officials hadn’t the slightest clue that a bombing attack was imminent November 13. Exhibit B is that in the days that Belgian police were conducting a manhunt across Brussels, the bombers were readying an attack.

The catch is that Europe might be able to do a better job at cracking down on organized terror, but as American and Israel have learned, the violence simply morphs into other forms.

Ensuring hysteria

Islamic State seems to have adopted a policy of serial attacks designed to not only to overwhelm police and medical personnel but to draw heightened media coverage and ensure the hysteria is deep and long-lasting.

The fact is, however, that until it entered the picture in the last two years, the incidence of Muslim terror in Europe was quite low – Madrid in 2004, London in 2005 and after a seven-year gap, some smaller attacks in France in 2012 and Belgium in 2014. Only now does it seem that relatively frequent serial attacks have become the order of the day, thanks to ISIS.

Open gallery view Windows blown out by the bombings at a Zaventem Airport terminal, Brussels, Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Credit: AP

But in its home base of Syria and Iraq, ISIS is in retreat. Its resources and its brand seemed to have peaked, so the pressure on Europe should begin easing sooner rather than later.

Does that mean Europe shouldn't bother to deal with the root cause of terror?

Of course, it should – if it knew what the root cause was and could solve it.

The fact is, no one really has a handle on this. The most popular explanation – particularly by those who loathe the idea of racial profiling and the invasions of privacy that are the inevitable consequence of the war on terror – is that it can be traced to the economic and social grievances of Europe’s Muslims.

However, even anecdotal evidence for economics as a root cause of terror has always been meager. From the days of America’s Weather underground, whose leaders accidentally killed themselves blowing up a parent’s luxury townhouse, to the billionaire Bin-Laden, terror has been a function of political and religious ideology, not economic deprivation.

A rare and recent study “Economic Growth and Terrorism: Domestic, International and Suicide” examined the links between economics and terror, but uncovered few. Looking at 127 countries from 1970 to 2007, it found that strong, steady economic growth did not deter the growth of political violence. Conversely, gaping socioeconomic gaps don’t fan the flames. “A well-functioning market economy based on quick-paced but steady economic growth is not necessarily a cure-all solution for growing terrorist threats,” author Seung-Whan Choi concludes.

Without a firm understanding of what is behind the terror phenomenon, it would be a fool’s errand to try and attack it. But at the risk of being too cynical, the fact is that we don’t need to, because Europe can all live with terror – so long as it’s not too frequent.

A big attack like Paris or Brussels causes short-term disruptions in economic life because people don’t go out shopping and tourists shun targeted cities, but the shoppers and sightseers eventually come back. A day after the Brussels bombings this week, European stock markets were already higher. It’s only when violence become endemic – think Northern Ireland in the 1970s or Israel at the peak of the Second Intifada – that terror really imposes a cost on the economy, and Europe is nowhere near there.

The warnings of Europe going down in flames amid a Muslim onslaught are the kind of hysteria that follows any traumatic event. Ignore them. Like Israel, Europe can live with some terror and pay little or no economic cost, just like it lives with stock market downturns and coalition crises.