It's all speculation. "Maybe there won't be a war", or "probably there won't be a war" - whatever happens, there is no way of deciding between those two views. And if there is a war it is likely that it will be claimed on the one hand that this is done on behalf of the UN, and on the other hand that it is done without the backing of the UN.

I doubt if safe havens are particularly important for an "organisation" made up of disparate cells. The analogy has been made with restaurant chains based on franchises. You get the Al Qaida franchise by carrying out a successful bombing or assassination. No need for a central command at all. What matters is having people who are ready to form those cells; and the important thing for ending terrorism is for that supply to dry up.

Anything which tends to increase the number of recruits to terror cells makes future terrorism more likely, regardless of what happens to governments like Saddam's.

I think the political changes in Eastern Europe had very little to do with the end of Baader-Meinhof and so forth. Cultural changes in the West took away whatever base they had in the West, and that was what mattered.