This book provides a detailed application of identity theory to contemporary questions of extremism, radicalization and security. The analysis considers how identity forms a central aspect of notions of extremism and security in Western societies, as articulated both by political leaders, the media and the government. It also takes a close and critical look at counter-extremism policy in contemporary Western society. With its detailed and empirical approach to these questions, this book is an accessible and invaluable resource for academics, practitioners, policy-makers and general readers keen to establish a deeper understanding of the key societal security threats of the day.

Applying a rational choice perspective, this book presents a dynamic theory of the evolution of totalitarian regimes and terrorism. By demonstrating that totalitarian regimes rest on ideologies involving supreme values that are assumed to be absolutely true, the author identifies the factors that lead to totalitarian regimes, and those that transform or abolish those regimes with time. The author addresses different ideologies, such as National Socialism, Communism, and religious movements; examines numerous historical cases of totalitarian regimes; and develops a formal, mathematical model of totalitarianism in the book's closing chapter.

This book develops a conceptual approach to understanding the face of contemporary terrorism as manifested in the recent attacks in Mumbai and Paris. By analyzing the historical evolution of terrorism and by offering case studies on different forms of terrorism in South Asia and elsewhere, the authors shed new light on the political strategies behind terrorist attacks, as well as on the motivations of terrorists. The case studies explore the redefinition of terrorism by the Iranian Islamic revolution, the spread of terrorism in Sunni Islam, the national jihadism in Pakistan, anti-Semitism as a main factor behind fanatical terrorist ideologies, and the case of the Tamil Tigers. "Redefining terrorism is a dynamic story that provides readers with intrigue and clarity to the ever-evolving threats that we face as a nation and as a global community. The authors masterfully navigate through the intricate maze of global terrorism bringing an overwhelming dose of reality through his usage of real life, gripping experiences. Through this book military and intelligence analysts and policy makers alike will gain first-hand knowledge about not only what the world looks like today but a glimpse into the future."US Congressman Pete Sessions

This book examines how social media has transformed extremist discourse. Drawing on ISIS and their sophisticated use of social media platforms and PR concepts, it explores the ways in which the outfit was able to recruit, mobilise and spread fundamentalist propaganda in regions where it had little physical presence. One of the first studies to draw a link between international diplomacy, the rise of fundamentalism and public relations, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of defence and strategic studies, especially those working on ISIS propaganda, Middle East Studies, media studies, digital humanities, communication studies, public relations and international relations, as well general readers.

The threat of terrorism, if not adequately managed, is likely to increase exponentially. As terrorist groups' influence and networks spread globally, a concerted effort in counterterrorism strategy is critical to mitigating the threat they present. Governments facing the threat of terrorism are typically strengthening their law enforcement, military and intelligence capabilities, but more complex initiatives such as deradicalisation and terrorist rehabilitation are more time-consuming and less attention-grabbing and so tend to be neglected. It is all too easy to 'do' rehabilitation ineffectively or to simply ignore it altogether. This is unfortunate, as an effective rehabilitation strategy can yield dividends over the longer term. Every committed terrorist is a potential recruiter, whether in prison or at liberty, for more terrorists. Even in death, they can potentially be presented as martyrs. Conversely, successfully rehabilitated terrorists can be valuable assets in the public relations theatre of battle. There is no single, simple solution to the challenges of deradicalisation and rehabilitation, but this book places examples of best practice within a robust, but flexible, conceptual framework. It gives guidelines for establishing and implementing a successful deradicalisation or rehabilitation programme, derived from a series of empirical case studies of successful projects around the world. It sets out both the necessary and desirable facets of such a programme, identifying which areas to prioritise and where budgets can be best spent if resources are tight. The authors provide detailed case studies of each step to illustrate an approach that has worked and how best to replicate this success.

This book addresses contemporary debates on civil disobedience in Islam within the rich Sunni tradition, especially during the height of the non-violent people revolution in various Arab countries, popularly known as the Arab Spring. It illustrates the Islamic theological and jurisprudential arguments presented by those who either permit or prohibit acts of civil disobedience for the purpose of changing government, political systems or policy. The book analyses the nature of the debate and considers how a theological position on civil disobedience should be formulated in contemporary time, and makes the case for alternatives to violent political action such as jihadism, terrorism and armed rebellion.

This book employs game theory to warfare and in particular to military operations. It aims at scrutinizing the validity of the two ideas that have governed the literature on war and warfighting: One is the Clausewitzian Fog of War, which suggests that he who is able to "see" through the gunsmoke and observe his opponent's moves before he has to commit to some strategy himself, should be able to gain an advantage over that enemy; the other is the tradition of understanding military conflict as a zero-sum game. Combined, these ideas seem to imply that war always gives rise to a second-mover advantage. This book questions the validity of this presumption at the operational level of military planning. It provides a simple but rigorous game-theoretic framework in order to analyse operational alternatives for a whole range of typical conflicts Western military forces are facing, including the most recent ones such as Anti-Access/Area-Denial and supporting host nations' counterinsurgency campaigns.

This book explores the impact and efficiency of Western intervention in African civil wars. Emphasizing the relational conditions to the study of interventions, it posits the importance of historical, institutional relationships not just in the decision to intervene but also in the process of intervention and its outcome. Drawing from case studies of American and European intervention in Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, and Mali, the author applies a multi-method research design to identify the role colonial legacy plays in shaping the success of interventions. Her analysis concludes that the relational context of interventions helps determine the likelihood of success and that not all states are appropriately equipped to intervene in all civil wars, which is not simply a function of defense spending on materials. This book thus speaks to both academics and policy-makers specializing in conflict resolution and conflict dynamics in modern African civil wars.

This edited collection brings together leading scholars to comparatively investigate national security, surveillance and terror in the early 21st century in two major western jurisdictions, Canada and Australia. Observing that much debate about these topics is dominated by US and UK perspectives, the volume provides penetrating analysis of national security and surveillance practices in two under-studied countries that reveals critical insights into current trends. Written by a wide range of experts in their respective fields, this book addresses a fascinating array of timely questions about the relationship among national security, privacy and terror in the two countries and beyond. Chapters include critical assessments of topics such as: National Security Intelligence Collection since 9/11, The Border as Checkpoint in an Age of Hemispheric Security and Surveillance, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Law Enforcement, as well as Federal Government Departments and Security Regimes. An engaging and empirically driven study, this collection will be of great interest to scholars of security and surveillance studies, policing, and comparative criminology.

This is a collection of interdisciplinary essays that examines the historical, political, and social significance of 9/11. This collection considers 9/11 as an event situated within the much larger historical context of late late-capitalism, a paradoxical time in which American and capitalist hegemony exist as pervasive and yet under precarious circumstances. Contributors to this collection examine the ways in which 9/11 changed both everything and, at the same time, nothing at all. They likewise examine the implications of 9/11 through a variety of different media and art forms including literature, film, television, and street art.

This edited volume critically assesses emerging trends in contemporary warfare and international interventionism as exemplified by the 'local turn' in counterinsurgent warfare. It asks how contemporary counterinsurgency approaches work and are legitimized; what concrete effects they have within local settings, and what the implications are for how we can understand the means and ends of war and peace in our post 9/11 world. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding recent changes in global liberal governance as well as the growing convergence of military and seemingly non-military domains, discourses and practices in the contemporary making of global political order.

This book examines the practice of transitional justice in the Solomon Islands from the period of the 'The Tensions' to the present. In late 1998, the Solomon Islands were plunged into a period of violent civil conflict precipitated by a complex web of grievances, injustices, ethnic tensions, and economic insecurities. This conflict dragged on until the middle of 2003, leaving an estimated 200 people dead and more than 20 000 displaced from their homes. In the time that has elapsed since the end of The Tensions, numerous-at times incompatible-approaches to transitional justice have been implemented in the Solomon Islands. The contributors to this volume examine how key global trends and debates about transitional justice were played out in the Solomon Islands, how its key mechanisms were adapted to meet the specific demands of post-conflict justice in this local context, and how well its practices and processes fulfilled their perceived functions.

War, nuclear weapons, and terrorism are all major threats to US security, but a new set of emerging threats are challenging the current threat response apparatus and our ability to come up with creative and effective solutions. This book considers new, 'non-traditional' security issues such as: transnational organized crime, immigration and border security, cybersecurity, countering violent extremism and terrorism, environmental and energy security, as well as the rise of external actors. The work examines the major challenges and trends in security and explores the policy responses of the U.S. government. By using international relations theory as an analytical approach, Fonseca and Rosen present how these security threats have evolved over time.

First published in 2003, Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities remains one of the only books available to provide detailed information on terrorist methodology- revealing terrorist motivation, organizational structure, planning, financing, and operational tactics to carry out attacks. This fully revised and updated third edition contains the detailed analysis and history of prior editions with completely new case studies and information on new and emerging terrorist practices and trends. Updates to the third edition include: The newest geopolitical challenges and terrorism to emerge from the geopolitical climate post-Arab Spring Details on the newest attack tactics and procedures of al- Qaeda including al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, the Islamic Maghreb, and East and North Africa Lessons learned from recent terrorist operations and information gained from plots foiled by the FBI in the U.S. Current strategic factors and regional variables affecting global terrorism and regional insurgencies Potential points of failure in terrorist operations where plots can be most easily detected and disrupted The increasing trend of self radicalized, Internet- educated "lone wolf" operations, as demonstrated in the Boston Marathon bombing The rebirth of U.S. and European militia groups Written for counterterrorism practitioners who risk their lives to uncover planned attacks on civilian populations, this book will serve as a guide to train intelligence operatives, law enforcement entities, and military intelligence agents and soldiers to recognize and disrupt the various stages of developing terrorist plots.

This book examines the fascinating story of how the chief architects of realism (Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer) dealt with some of the most pressing political issues of our time through the lenses of fear. Pashakhanlou conducts the most comprehensive evaluation of their works to date, compromising of a meticulous analysis of 400 of their publications. As such, this book is an invaluable resource for practitioners, students and concerned citizens that seek to understand how three of the most influential International Relations scholars thought about the implications of fear at the global level. 'In this important book, the author gets to the heart of the underlying emotional condition on which so much rational political thought in International Relations is built. By uncovering the role of fear within the modern classics of realism, the book sheds light on the role that fear plays in producing otherwise rational decision-making.' David Galbreath, Professor of International Security, University of Bath, UK 'The role played by fear in Realist international theory is under-explored and poorly theorised. This book addresses this lacuna and provides a thorough and systematic analysis of the significance of fear in Realism. In doing so, Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou makes a major contribution to International Relations theory, and the 'emotional turn' in the study of contemporary international politics'. Adrian Hyde-Price, Professor of International Politics, Gothenburg University, Sweden

This book documents and highlights the Deobandi dimension of extremism and its implications for faith-based violence and terrorism. This dimension of radical Islam remains largely ignored or misunderstood in mainstream media and academic scholarship. The book addresses this gap. It also covers the Deobandi diaspora in the West and other countries and the role of its radical elements in transnational incidents of violence and terrorism. The specific identification of the radical Deobandi and Salafi identity of militants is useful to isolate them from the majority of peaceful Sunni and Shia Muslims. Such identification provides direction to governmental resources so they focus on those outfits, mosques, madrassas, charities, media and social medial channels that are associated with these ideologies. This book comes along at a time when there is a dire need for alternative and contextual discourses on terrorism.

This book offers an unprecedented account of the Serb Democratic Party's origins and its political machinations that culminated in Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. Within the first two years of its existence, the nationalist movement led by the infamous genocide convict Radovan Karadzic, radically transformed Bosnian society. It politically homogenized Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, mobilized them for the Bosnian War, and violently carved out a new geopolitical unit, known today as Republika Srpska. Through innovative and in-depth analysis of the Party's discourse that makes use of the recent literature on affective cognition, the book argues that the movement's production of existential fears, nationalist pride, and animosities towards non-Serbs were crucial for creating Serbs as a palpable group primed for violence. By exposing this nationalist agency, the book challenges a commonplace image of ethnic conflicts as clashes of long-standing ethnic nations.

This book examines domestic extremism and what is popularly referred to as radicalization. The fear of domestic extremism has been used to dismantle democracy and erect national security states throughout North America, Western Europe, and beyond. Yet, despite the enormous costs citizens have paid in the name of security, society has become less secure and less safe. In many respects, this situation has resulted from the misapprehension of the conditions that make the emergence of this threat probable. Kowalski focuses on the macro social relations and structures that make radicalization probable. As demonstrated through an analysis of the so-called Toronto 18-an extremist group arrested in June of 2006 for activities that contravened the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA)-macro social relations and structures served a significant role in creating the conditions through which the process of radicalization became probable. If a comprehensive understanding of the processes of radicalization are to be reached and effective counter-terrorism policies developed, then the consideration this book provides of greater macro social relations and structures that make the emergence of extremist subjectivities probable is needed.

This edited collection aims to respond to dominant perspectives on twenty-first-century war by exploring how the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Wars on Terror are represented and remembered outside of the US framework. Existing critical coverage ignores the meaning of these events for people, nations and cultures apparently peripheral to them but which have - as shown in this collection - been extraordinarily affected by the social, political and cultural changes these wars have wrought. Adopting a literary and cultural history approach, the book asks how these events resonate and continue to show effects in the rest of the world, with a particular focus on Australia and Britain. It argues that such reflections on the impact of the Wars on Terror help us to understand what global conflict means in a contemporary context, as well as what its representative motifs might tell us about how nations like Australia and Britain perceive and construct their remembered identities on the world stage in the twenty-first century. In its close examination of films, novels, memoir, visual artworks, media, and minority communities in the years since 2001, this collection looks at the global impacts of these events, and the ways they have shaped, and continue to shape, Britain and Australia's relation to the rest of the world.

This book offers novel insights about the ability of a democracy to accommodate violence. In El Salvador, the end of war has brought about a violent peace, one in which various forms of violence have become incorporated into Salvadorans' imaginaries and enactments of democracy. Based on ethnographic research, The Violence of Democracy argues that war legacies and the country's neoliberalization have enabled an intricate entanglement of violence and political life in postwar El Salvador. This volume explores various manifestations of this entanglement: the clandestine connections between violent entrepreneurs and political actors; the blurring of the licit and illicit through the consolidation of economies of violence; and the reenactment of latent wartime conflicts and political cleavages during postwar electoral seasons. The author also discusses the potential for grassroots memory work and a political party shift to foster hopeful visions of the future and, ultimately, to transform the country's violent democracy.

This book examines memories of political violence in Chile after the 1973 coup and a 17-years-long dictatorship. Based on individual and group interviews, it focuses on the second generation children, adults today, born to parents who were opponents of Pinochets regime. Focusing on their lived experience, the intersection between private and public realms during Pinochet's politics of fear regime, and the afterlife of violence in the post-dictatorship, the book is concerned with new dilemmas and perspectives that stem from the intergenerational transmission of political memories. It reflects critically on the role of family memories in the broader field of memory in Chile, demonstrating the dynamics of how later generations appropriate and inhabit their family political legacies. The book suggests how the second generation cultural memory redefines the concept of victimhood and propels society into a broader process of recognition.

This book analyzes the origins and organizational structure of Islamic State (IS), examining its military triumphs and success in securing new recruits via social media. From its base in Iraq and Syria, IS has spread globally with 17 regional affiliates from Indonesia to Nigeria and sleeper cells in at least 60 countries, capable of atrocities like the Paris attack. To understand the threat of IS, this book explores its organizational structure and underlying ideology, and implications for Western efforts to attack the leadership of IS. The ways IS has grown by swiftly adapting its military strategy, developing creative forms of funding and efforts to win hearts and minds of locals are identified. The author highlights how the competing individual national interests between the Western military alliance and local partners have served to strengthen IS. With its ideology spreading ever further, this book warns of the looming violent confrontation between democratic and Islamist forces. This volume speaks to academics in international relations, security studies and strategic studies, policy-makers and interested parties.

This book begins with an account of the evolution of improvised explosive devices using a number of micro case studies to explore how and why actors have initiated IED campaigns; how new and old technologies and expertise have been exploited and how ethical barriers to IED development and deployment have been dealt with. It proceeds to bring the evidence from the case studies together to identify themes and trends in IED development, before looking at what can realistically be done to mitigate the threat of IEDs in the new wars of the twenty first century. The book suggests that the advance and availability of a combination of technological factors, in conjunction with changes in the nature of contemporary conflicts, have led to the emergence of IEDs as the paradigmatic weapons of new wars. However their prevalence in contemporary and future conflicts is not inevitable, but rather depends on the willingness of multiple sets of actors at different levels to build a web of preventative measures to mitigate - if not eradicate - IED development and deployment.

This highly original book suggests that the practices of Taliban and the American far right, two very significant and poorly understood groups, share common features. This commonality can be found in the philosophical basis of their ideological beliefs, in their comparative worldviews, and in their political practices. As Raja argues, the Taliban are much less the product of an irrational fundamentalism, and the radical right in America is much more the result of such a mindset, than Americans recognize. After providing a detailed explanation of his theoretical concepts and specialized vocabulary, the author develops a discussion of the subject in this brief but penetrating book. This is a book that should attract a wide readership among both academics and the general public.

This volume examines contemporary political relations between Turkey and the Middle East. In the light of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, the Syria Crisis, the escalation of regional terrorism and the military coup attempt in Turkey, it illustrates the dramatic fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy towards key Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The contributors analyze Turkey's deepening involvement in Middle Eastern regional affairs, also addressing issues such as terrorism, social and political movements and minority rights struggles. While these problems have traditionally been regarded as domestic matters, this book highlights their increasingly regional dimension and the implications for the foreign affairs of Turkey and countries in the Middle East.