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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political activism > Terrorism, freedom fighters, armed struggle
The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was established in January 1913, as a militant expression of Ulster Unionist opposition to the Third Home Rule Bill. It built on the foundations of pre-existing paramilitary activity and, at its height in early 1914, reached a strength of 100,000. During the Great War the UVF provided the basis of the 36th (Ulster) Division and in 1920 the force was partially reformed to counter the I.R.A. threat to the new Northern Ireland state. Academic historians have tended to overlook Ulster Loyalism. This book provides the first comprehensive study of the UVF in this period considering in detail the composition of the officer corps, the marked regional recruiting differences, the ideologies involved, the arming and equipping of the UVF and the contingency plans made by UVF Headquarters in the event of Home Rule being imposed on Ulster. Using previously neglected sources, Timothy Bowman demonstrates that the UVF was better armed and worse trained, with the involvement of fewer British army officers than previous historians have allowed. He suggests that the UVF was quite capable of seizing control of Ulster and installing the Ulster Provisional Government in the event of Home Rule being implemented in 1914, but provided few benefits to the 36th (Ulster) Division and failed to reform in any meaningful way in 1920. This book will be essential reading for military and Irish historians and their students, and will interest any general reader interested in modern paramilitary forces.
This book assesses the effectiveness of Nigeria's counterterrorist policies against Boko Haram. It takes a critical review of the interventionist strategies adopted by the Nigerian government, highlights the motivations behind the choice of strategies, and proffers a deeper understanding of the factors responsible for the state's inability, thus far, to rid the country of terrorism. Specifically, it evaluates the NACTEST policy framework that guides the Nigerian state's counterterrorist strategies, which contains both hard and soft power approaches. Adopting historical and case study approaches which put the Nigerian state and occurrences of violent conflict in context, it takes cognizance of the politics of ethno-religious diversity which reinforce violent conflicts among groups and against the state, and reviews the socio-economic and political realities that led to the emergence and sustenance of Boko Haram. The volume concludes by suggesting practical policy options for combating Boko Haram and other similar armed insurrection. This book is appropriate for researchers and students interested in African politics, conflict, security, peace studies, terrorism, and counterterrorism, as well as policy makers and government departments dealing with terrorism and counterterrorism.
Without sensationalizing or providing the technical details that would result in a terrorist's handbook, the volume reflects the concerns expressed by experts from 12 states (including many from Slavic regions adjoining or aspiring to membership of the European Union). A range of vulnerabilities are highlighted that are usually neglected. Assessments that focus on the horrifying potential of bioterrorism directly targeting people are commonplace. This book is exceptional because indirect impacts on human health and welfare through challenge to the security of food supplies are the focus. These urgently need to be recognised and made subjects of planned investment to counter the threat. Examples of past state-sponsored and independent actions are discussed. The evolution of biological (chemical defoliant) systems for controlling plant growth with unambiguously humanitarian aims is shown to have resulted in a range of counter terrorist uses.
This is the first book to present a multidisciplinary approach to cyberterrorism. It traces the threat posed by cyberterrorism today, with chapters discussing possible technological vulnerabilities, potential motivations to engage in cyberterrorism, and the challenges of distinguishing this from other cyber threats. The book also addresses the range of potential responses to this threat by exploring policy and legislative frameworks as well as a diversity of techniques for deterring or countering terrorism in cyber environments. The case studies throughout the book are global in scope and include the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. With contributions from distinguished experts with backgrounds including international relations, law, engineering, computer science, public policy and politics, Cyberterrorism: Understanding, Assessment and Response offers a cutting edge analysis of contemporary debate on, and issues surrounding, cyberterrorism. This global scope and diversity of perspectives ensure it is of great interest to academics, students, practitioners, policymakers and other stakeholders with an interest in cyber security.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union the nuclear threats facing the world are constantly evolving and have grown more complex since the end of the Cold War. The diversion of complete weapon systems or nuclear material to rogue nations and terrorist organizations has increased and new nuclear powers (e.g. Iran, Korea, Pakistan and India) have further complicated global proliferation issues. The events of the past years have proved the necessity to reevaluate these threats on a level never before considered. In recognition that no single country possesses all of the answers to the critical scientific, institutional and legal questions associated with combating nuclear and radiological terrorism, the 2005 Workshop and this proceeding was structured to promote wide-ranging, multi-national exploration of critical technology needs and underlying scientific challenges to reducing the threat of nuclear/radiological terrorism; to illustrate through country-specific presentations how resulting technologies were used in national programs; and to outline the role of legal, policy and institutional frameworks in countering nuclear/radiological terrorism. One key outcome of this book is better understanding of the independent contributions from across the international community of the scientific and technological components and the legal, policy and institutional components to combating nuclear/radiological terrorism. The book can serve as a tool for communicating the outcomes of the workshop not only to the multi-national scientific communities engaged in combating nuclear/radiological terrorism, but also to those working at governmental and policy levels whose actions affect the directionsscience takes and how the technology is incorporated into country-specific national systems for combating nuclear/radiological terrorism.
This open access book brings together a range of contributions that seek to explore the ethical issues arising from the overlap between counter-terrorism, ethics, and technologies. Terrorism and our responses pose some of the most significant ethical challenges to states and people. At the same time, we are becoming increasingly aware of the ethical implications of new and emerging technologies. Whether it is the use of remote weapons like drones as part of counter-terrorism strategies, the application of surveillance technologies to monitor and respond to terrorist activities, or counterintelligence agencies use of machine learning to detect suspicious behavior and hacking computers to gain access to encrypted data, technologies play a significant role in modern counter-terrorism. However, each of these technologies carries with them a range of ethical issues and challenges. How we use these technologies and the policies that govern them have broader impact beyond just the identification and response to terrorist activities. As we are seeing with China, the need to respond to domestic terrorism is one of the justifications for their rollout of the "social credit system." Counter-terrorism technologies can easily succumb to mission creep, where a technology's exceptional application becomes normalized and rolled out to society more generally. This collection is not just timely but an important contribution to understand the ethics of counter-terrorism and technology and has far wider implications for societies and nations around the world.
What changes have the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 and the subsequent attacks in Europe brought to Western societies? In what ways have these events and their aftermath impacted on the relationships between Muslim communities and Western societies? This book explores the remaking of the relationship between Islam and Islamism, on the one hand, and security and securitization, on the other hand, by arguing that 9/11 and its aftermath have led to the opening of a new phase in Western and European history and have remade the relationship between Islam and governmental and societal approaches to security. The authors utilize case studies across the Western world to understand this relationship.
Immigration and its consequences is a substantially contested subject with hugely differing viewpoints. While some contend that criminal participation by migrants is the result of environmental factors found in the host country that are beyond the control of migrants, others blame migrants for all that is wrong in their communities. In this book, experts from Europe, the USA, Turkey and Israel examine recent developments in the fields of culture conflict, organized crime, victimization and terrorism, all of which intersect to varying degrees with migration and illegal conduct. While the essays further our understanding of a variety of issues surrounding migration, at the same time they illuminate the complexities of managing the challenges as globalization increases.
This book carefully and thoroughly analyses the legal questions raised by the phenomenon of terrorism, and past and recent efforts to fight it, from the perspective of international humanitarian law (IHL). The objective is to substantially contribute to a better understanding of the issues surrounding the content and applicability of IHL as it applies to terrorism as well as to analyse and contextualise the current debates on these controversial and critically important questions. While due heed is paid to doctrinal debates, particular emphasis is placed on the practice of social actors, particularly, although not exclusively, States. The analysis of their actual conduct as well as their expectations about the interpretation and application of the law is crucial to establishing an interpretive consensus on when and how IHL is relevant to regulate acts of terrorism. The approach of the book is analytical and discursive, rather than prescriptive. Thus the reader will find the relevant rules of IHL and other legal regimes as regards terrorism, but also the debates over their application, the contradictions in State practice and the impact these may have upon IHL's evolution and implementation. The aim is to provide legal practitioners, as well as those in military, political and academic circles, with a useful reference point. Hopefully the book will also prove useful to other readers who will find its content and easy-to-read style an encouragement to getting acquainted with a topical subject, traditionally thought to be reserved for legal specialists. This book was cited with approval by the US Court of Appeals in Salim Ahmed Hamdan v United States of America, 16th October 2012
The first major comparative study of the causes and consequences of violent conflict that integrates and addresses the issue of self-determination. The authors show that with violent conflict in the developing world as the critical issue for the twenty-first century, and conflict prevention a central security problem for both the developed and developing world, self-determination movements can only be understood, and conflict prevented, in the context of global economic and cultural forces, and of local responses to them.
'Cyber-War' provides a critical assessment of current debates around the likelihood and impact of cyber warfare. Approaching the subject from a socio-political angle, it argues that destructive cyber war has not yet been seen, but could be a feature of future conflict.
"Terrorism and the State" is a volume on the political economy of terrorism. Emphasizing the role of ideological systems in the definition of political violence, this book is theoretical, historical, and critical. It first presents and refutes the two most commonly expressed definitions of terrorism: the absolutist view, a simplistic picture of international deviance on the part of fanatics, and the liberal relativistic view, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Both views focus on the definition of behaviors rather than on the real relations of domination and subjugation embodied in the social structure. Neither view can be used as a vehicle when analyzing institutionalized forces of domination through fear. The author suggests that there is presently a double standard of terrorism, one for the state and the other for its opponents. Terrorism and the State reframes the terrorism debate. A historical review supports a revisionist position that places the issue in the context of global relations. Attention is given to the role of the media in the selective selling of international terrorism. Having established his framework, the author proceeds through the investigation of historically grounded cases to systematically analyze state terrorism: the coercive power of today's nuclear weapon state, global apartheid, terrornoia, settler terrorism, holy terror, and, finally, surrogate terrorism. "Terrorism and the State" develops its framework for the terrorism debate within the first three chapters: The Ideology of Terrorism, Terrorism and the State, and Mediaspeak: The Selling of International Terrorism. The remainder of this volume concentrates on historically grounded cases: The Real Nuclear Terrorism; Racial Terrorism: Apartheid in South Africa; Terrornoia and Zonal Revolution: The Case of Libya; Settler Terrorism: Israel and the P.L.O.; Holy Terror: Iran and Irangate; Surrogate Terrorism: The United States and Nicaragua
The book explores the global jihad movement and its emergence in
the latter half of the twentieth century. The book investigates the
nature and extent of this threat; traces its religious and
ideological roots; relevant history; the goals of the movement; who
is fighting jihad; how they end up in the movement; how it is being
funded and sponsored; and what nations, particularly the United
States, one of the movement's primary targets, are doing to counter
the threat. The book, intended for the general public, assumes that
the reader has only a minimal background of this compelling
contemporary topic. While the authors tried to avoid using academic
jargon, they have tried to source the book so that it could be used
in political science, international relations, and defense and
security studies courses.
Missing from many contemporary analyses of the causes of terrorism is any mention of the role of U.S. foreign policy, an examination of which is seen by some critics as inherently unpatriotic. Even less attention is paid to the role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gerteiny, who has lived in the Middle East and who has studied the region for more than four decades, does not shy away from such controversies. In this book, he discusses the seminal causes of contemporary transnational terrorism, particularly the grievances inherent in the persistent Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gerteiny examines state and anti-state forms of terrorism, and he carefully distinguishes between terrorism carried out in pursuit of national liberation by the Palestinians and the theologically driven jihadism that feeds on it. He considers anti-Western Islamism as being reactive to a U.S. Middle East policy inordinately influenced by the Zionist lobby. He reflects on Muslim and Islamist world views and assesses the U.S. reaction to terrorism after 9/11, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Israel's unchecked expansionism at the expense of Palestine and its suffocating grip over its population, carried out under the cover of U.S. protection, constitute ethnic cleansing in Gerteiny's view. This, and the ill-conceived U.S. strategy in the Gulf region, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the lack of communications with Syria and Iran are perceived by most Muslims as harbingers of an ongoing new "crusade." They constitute the main pernicious elements upon which the wider-reaching vengeful Islamist "theopolitical" jihadism thrives, ultimately threatening the spread of democracy, the survival of Israel in theMiddle East, and peaceful coexistence with the Muslim world.
This book makes a timely contribution to the analysis of nationalism and terrorism, and also the absence of terrorism. It proposes to analyse why Scottish, Welsh and English nationalism has never had as significant a turn to political violence as the case of Irish nationalism has. This will answer a question which is too rarely asked 'why do certain groups not turn to terrorism?' Nick Brooke makes an important contribution to debates on nationalism in the United Kingdom, as well as to debates on the relationship between nationalism and terrorism. Furthermore, the text provides complete narrative accounts of nationalist terrorism in Scotland, Wales and England, and considers how recent political developments impact the likelihood of further nationalist terrorism.
What can the analysis of violence and terror tell us about the
modern world? Why is violence often used to achieve religious,
cultural or political goals? Can we understand the search for the
extreme that increasingly shapes violence today?
This timely treatise introduces an innovative prevention/preparedness model for cities to address and counter terrorist threats and events. It offers theoretical background, mixed-method research, and tools for creating a resilience-based response to terrorism, as opposed to the security-based frameworks commonly in use worldwide. The extended example of Milan as a "resilient-healthy" city pinpoints sociological, political, and economic factors that contribute to terror risk, and outlines how law enforcement and emergency management professionals can adopt more proactive measures. From these observations and findings, the author also makes recommendations for the professional training and city planning sectors to address preparedness issues, and for community inclusion programs to deter criminal activities in at-risk youth. Features of the coverage: Summary of sociological theories of terrorism The Resilience D model for assessing and managing urban terrorist activity Findings on resilience and vulnerabilities of terror groups Photo-illustrated analysis of neighborhoods in Milan, describing areas of risk and resilience Virtual ethnography with perspectives from native residents, recent immigrants, and security experts Proposals for coordinated communications between resource agencies The Other Side of Resilience to Terrorism will hold considerable interest for students, stakeholders, practitioners, and researchers. It makes a worthwhile text for various academic disciplines (e.g., urban sociology, crisis management) as well as for public agencies and policymakers.
Over the last decade, asymmetric warfare and terrorism have become prevalent threats to the United States. National security, today more than at any other time, demands decision-making under uncertainty. The issues presented in this book demonstrate that the value of planning depends on how well the USA can prepare for a perpetually unpredictable future. Each chapter examines pertinent management, leadership, and accountability issues related to U.S. national security and places readers at the centre of difficult decisions. Although the cases collected in this volume revolve around policy questions, they also illustrate more general policy dilemmas and are designed to stimulate new ideas. Endorsement: A] diverse and rich set of cases that explore many of the new challenges that confront U.S. national security policymakers today. Drawing on a team of established scholars and experienced practitioners, this book provides both an assessment of new threats and challenges and a case-based examination of decision-making processes... a compelling argument for the case-study approach and a fruitful blending of academic and practitioner perspectives and approaches. and decision-making processes as well as to our grasp of the security challenges of the 21st century. - Robert H. Dorff, Ph.D., Professor of National Security Policy and Strategy, and Chairman, Department of National Security and Strategy, U.S. Army War College.
When we think "terrorism," our minds conjure up dramatic and horrifying images of hijackings, suicide bombings, assassinations and various other forms of brutal carnage. Placing terrorist acts within a historical context, this book helps us understand the causes, dynamics and outcomes of terrorism.Providing a concise history of terrorism since the French Revolution, the author considers the relationship between terrorism and warfare, crime, technology globalization and the state. He investigates the meaning of the word "terrorism" and shows how the definition and practice have both evolved over time. Throughout, he considers what motivates terrorists and what they hope to accomplish.Written by a pioneer in the field, Terrorism: The Present Threat in Context offers a practical assessment of domestic and international threats to security. This book will help anyone concerned about terrorism learn to evaluate the risks in a rational way, devoid of the hysteria that so often dominates the subject.
American civil-military relations have profoundly changed from the interwar years that comprised the post Cold War era. This book describes the intense mobilization of American society in the Global War on Terrorism coupled with trends in progress before 9/11. With its focus on maximizing civilian casualties, terrorism has been uniquely able to arouse the popular emotion and make us rethink the use of military force.
This book examines both brigandage and irredentism in Greece since the War of Independence, tracing the intimate links between the two, their impact on Greek politics and statecraft, and their influence on the modern Greek state. It also served as a safety device which defused explosive situations. Unable to prevail over illegitimate group violence, the state tried to divert it into two generally acceptable channels - irredentist activity, and the incorporation of brigands into paramilitary units - giving it a semblance of legitimacy and rendering its activities less dangerous to the security of the state. Eventually the characteristics and values of brigandage itself and those who practised it became the predominant features of the modern Greek state and society, albeit wearing a mantle of Western respectability. Based on a wide range ogf sources, this study aims to separate reality from myth in examining the forces and factors involved in turning brigands into national heroes.
This book provides a multidisciplinary commentary on a wide range of religious traditions and their relationship to acts of violence. Hate and violence occur at every level of human interaction, as do peace and compassion. Scholars of religion have a particular obligation to make sense out of this situation, tracing its history and variables, and drawing lessons for the future. From the formative periods of the religious traditions to their application in the contemporary world, the essays in this volume interrogate the views on violence found within the traditions and provide examples of religious practices that exacerbate or ameliorate situations of conflict.
The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon raised numerous questions about American and international aviation security. Former Director of Security of the International Air Transport Association Rodney Wallis suggests that the failure to maximize U.S. domestic air security, which left air travelers vulnerable to attack, lay largely with the carriers themselves. He contends that future policies should parallel the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization. Wallis considers the Aviation and Transportation Security Act adopted by the U.S. Congress in the wake of September 11 and offers a modus operandi to the FAA that would enable them to maximize the benefits this legislation provides to air travelers. This important work reviews past government reactions to the threat posed by air terrorism and questions whether these were effective responses or merely window dressing. It also includes practical advice for air travelers on how to maximize their own security when flying on international routes by monitoring airport and airline security for themselves. |
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