After you became familiar with definitions, causes and origins of terrorism, its patterns and actors before and after 2001 and its current trends, you evaluated both counter and anti-terrorist policies. Putting it all in a broader context, what do you believe is the most pressing issue in terrorism today? 350 words please list references.
Lesson
Smart Government
Is the U.S. government ready to implement and manage intelligent national-security policy?
Last week, we began to examine anti-terrorism, a long-term effort whose goals are to reduce and eliminate terrorism all together. Our readings' authors emphasized the need for a more effective cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence and called for a major intelligence makeover. One of the tools to prevent terrorism is diplomacy, mainly the efforts to build coalitions.
The United states and its allies engage in frequent talks about building a global coalition against terrorism, but there are many political and practical constraints.
- The first problem is the most basic, which we covered in the first week of this course: defining terrorists. For many years, this proved to be rather intractable; the best reflection of this class was was the old cliche of "one persona's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." However inaccurate in reality, this attitude created significant problems in reaching agreements on common actions. Fortunately, more commonality in definition agreement has emergent in recent years. There is still no commonly accepted single definition of terrorism -- even within the US government -- but progress has been made within the UN and other non-state actors in at least agreeing on basic concepts.
- The second political constraint are varying perceptions of the threats to particular countries. Countries that do not view terrorist as a significant threat to their national interests have little incentive to join coalitions. In many ways, progress in this regard has been the proverbial "good news, bad news" situation. The bad news has been that terrorist groups have exponentially increased their areas of operations. The good news, however, is that this has focused more and more countries on the threat they face, and has motivated most government to increase their cooperation with others.
- The final political constraint is that other policy disagreements can limit or preclude cooperation on terrorism issues. The most obvious example of this currently is the international diplomatic response to ISIL and Syria's lasting and brutal civil war. Experience has already shown, however, that even countries that have major disagreements can put them aside (at least in large measure) to cooperate in the larger field of anti-terrorism.
There are also practical constraints in building anti-terrorism coalitions. Different countries have varying levels of capabilities and resources. Trying to meld what might be huge gaps between countries' abilities to contribute can be a significant diplomatic and practical problem. It should also be stressed that there are several forms of coalition. Although the US government seems to think of coalitions in military terms, this is not the most important part of anti-terrorism -- a long-term effort to prevent terrorism at its root. The political /diplomatic coalition is probably the most most basic, but it can become an important tool for gaining international legitimacy. There are also more functional coalitions that we have covered last week, such as, law enforcement, intelligence and financial. Not every country will (or should) actively participate in every form of coalition.
Coalition can be built on a bilateral, multilateral, regional, or international basis. In practical terms, multilateral or regional coalitions are the easiest to build diplomatically. Coalitions inherently are temporary and relatively informal, but they can evolve into formal, semi-permanent organizations. One aspect of building coalition is that that can make use of already existing treaty organizations and coalitions. These can involve political organizations (UN, EU, ASEAN), permanent military organizations, primarily NATO, humanitarian groups (Red Cross, UNHCR), economic and development agencies (UNDP, SADC, APEC) and transnational organizations, such as Interpol. Clearly, many of these groups will not amendable to suggestions that they are parts of an anti-terrorism coalition, but if dealt with properly, they can provide valuable resources and supporting roles in long-term efforts against environments supporting terrorism.
Finally, time can be the enemy of any coalition, including those involved in anti-terrorism. In can be difficult to maintain a coalition's legitimacy, given the almost inevitable difficulties and mis-steps can occur. Maintaining a focus on the essential mission can be a problem, with constant distractions, changes of governments, and public apathy or resistance. As we might be seeing in Syria, winning the war is very different from winning the peace. The long term program to support core strategies can be difficult to maintain.
Before we finish this chapter, we should repeat that an understanding of who the adversary is cannot be under-estimated. One finds it rather remarkable and quite daunting that fifteen years after the 9/11, not all policy makers do not fully understand the dynamics of today's evolutionary enemy. While the country toasts to success when a terrorist group leader is killed, other terrorist cells are busy preparing new scheming plots. In addition to the terrorist abilities to quickly regroup, the U.S. policy makers do not credibly differentiate between Islam and radicalism. If they wish to educate the world about terrorism and a need to go after its perpetrators, they must first of all recognize who the real enemy is. And the enemy is not religion; it is those who exploit it. True Islam does not preach terrorism. True Islam is one the most tolerant religions that preach justice, worship peace and deeply condemn mass murders and suicide bombings. Unfortunately, the United States can still appear, perhaps accidentally, portraying terrorism as a struggle against Islam.
While the Obama Administration has manifested a visible effort to reach out to the Muslim world and clear misperceptions about the U.S. attempts to reduce terrorism, the notion that the conflict is a religious one remains. It is a fact that violent radicalism is strongly associated with authoritarian Islamist movements that aim to restore its own version of the Arab world. After all, Bin Laden and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam. In order to undermine the radical movement and its authoritarianism, the United States in hopes to create a certain model of democracy and modernity to better provide for people's needs, became the main target. While many Muslim countries denounce the actions of ISIL, al Qaeda and its affiliates, the Western media does not provide enough coverage about those countries, which contributes to mistaken impressions about terrorists as well as about what Islam is to an every- day Muslim who lives and prays for peace and justice. The current administration has not effectively communicated to the Muslim world its support for those peace-loving Arab nations and its strong disapproval for anti-democratic totalitarian regimes. It is, therefore, imperative that the future U.S. President becomes consistent in his/her rhetoric on the terrorist struggle. She/He must repeatedly declare that that United States is indeed at war with terrorists, not at war with Islam.
Course Summary
We began our journey with an introduction and overview of terrorism, its definition, causes, origins and effect on U.S. national security. We also examined origins and causes of terrorism to argue whether economic hardship causes terrorism. After having reviewed terrorism before 2001, focusing on the beginnings of modern terrorism as well as state and passive sponsorship of terrorism, we scrutinized terrorism after 2001. More specifically, we uncovered how the attacks on the United States in September 2001 changed the 'face' of terrorism. During week four, we reviewed terrorist groups and organization, closely examining their goals, motivations as well as their structure and operations.
Next, we turned our attention to current trends in terrorism, in particular to new locations in states at the Horn of Africa and hotly- debated topic of cyber-terrorism and the lethal ISIL. Finally, in the last three weeks, we discussed various elements and theories of counter and anti-terrorism policy and their effects on the U.S. national security.
https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/it-takes-village-stop-lone-wolf