International Relations Commons^™

Scared To Give? A Look Into How Terrorism Affects The Flow Of Foreign Aid, Madelyn Jarjoura

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of formal ties to terrorism and its effect on foreign aid

from donor countries considered either democratic or not. I hypothesize that as more seats are occupied in a recipient country’s government by a known terrorist organization, the less total aid democratic donor countries will send to that country (vice versa for non-democratic donors). However, with stronger ties to terrorism, the more aid democratic donors will bypass through NGOs (vice versa for non-democratic donors). To test this, I used Hezbollah’s seats in Lebanon’s Parliament from the years 1995 – 2021 as a case study for …

Guns, Bombs, And Pollution: Unraveling The Nexus Between Warfare, Terrorism, And Ecological Devastation In Iraq, Hogr Tarkhani

The Journal of Social Encounters

Iraq's environment has experienced significant pollution and degradation, earning it the dubious distinction of being one of the most polluted and degraded regions globally, according to the Globe Pollution Review. The past three decades of armed conflict have exacted a heavy toll on the country, resulting in widespread human suffering, including countless fatalities, injuries, and a massive displacement of people. Amidst this death and destruction, the ecosystem has also endured severe damage, and its decline carries long-lasting implications.

The environmental crisis in Iraq has been worsened by the presence of extremist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) and various …

Chemicals And Creeds: Cbrn Weapon Use And Religious-Based Terrorism, Nikolai Apilado

Governance: The Political Science Journal at UNLV

General theories of terrorism typically focus on economic, social, or political factors that lead to terrorist acts. Conversely, chemical, biological, radiational, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons are rarely spoken of in academic literature. Yet, these weapons are still used by terrorists in some capacity. In this paper, I argue that religion is the primary factor that influences terrorists to pursue CBRN weapons as opposed to more secular-based terrorists. This is due to the fact that religious-based terrorists are not concerned with preserving their reputation or credibility among society, as well as being so blinded by their religion that they are willing …

The Future Of Françafrique: Neocolonialism In Africa And The War On Terror, Jovan Avila, Brennan G. Quinn

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

Françafrique refers to the complex system of political, economic, and military relationships between France and its former colonies in Africa, characterized by neocolonialism, paternalism, and corruption. This paper aims to analyze the history and future of French geopolitical activity in Africa, including its motivations, strategies, and impacts. We first establish the background of France’s complex relationship with Africa, beginning with French colonialism in the region and decolonization. Next, we look at the period of close ties France maintained with most of its former colonies in Africa throughout the late 1900s. Additionally, we discuss the effects on French and American geopolitical …

Why Islamism Failed In Syria, Ararat Kostanian

Journal of Terrorism Studies

The Arab Spring has not fulfilled the desires of millions of demonstrators in Middle East. The desires to see the expanded role of the civil society has been muted by the Islamists and particularly by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Article puts the focus on the failure of Islamism in Syria during the uprising for several reasons, such as the inability of the Muslim Brotherhood to shape a new leadership, and its rejectionist agenda that had nurtured skepticism by the opposition factions. Furthermore, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood had been unable to change its political motivation and kept insisted on shifting the …

The Path Of Securitization: Transformation Of Free Papua Movement (Opm) Terminology From Armed Criminal Groups To Separatist And Terrorist Groups, I Putu Hadi Pradnyana

Journal of Terrorism Studies

The purpose of this study is to analyze the pattern of securitization in Papua using the speech act framework. Regarding the response to the change in status or terminology of the Free Papua Movement or Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM) to the Separatist Terrorist Group. The Securitization Theory of the Copenhagen School defines security as a social construction and process, not as an objective condition. This contrasts with the traditional security studies approach which defines security in terms of the threat, use, and control of military force by state actors. This research will focus on the pattern of securitization of the …

The Us War In Afghanistan And The War Powers Act: A Natural Experiment, Burrell Fletcher V

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

How Can the War Powers Act of 1972 be Reformed to Increase the Chances of Winning Wars?

This paper examines the effects of the War Powers Act of 1973’s Authorisation for Use of Military Force (AUMF) system on the conduct of war, especially regarding the ongoing War on Terror. The War on Terror, began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks when President Bush invaded Afghanistan. Congress, using the War Powers Act, passed the 2001 AUMF in the weeks after the attacks. The 2001 AUMF has been used in twenty-two countries to justify anti-terror operations thus far (Savell, …

Where The Border Ends: How Reactive Policies To Terrorism Became Conduits For Drone Technology And The Enclosure Of Wealthy Nations, Arron Mitchell

PPPA Paper Prize

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1996) and the USA PATRIOT Act (2001) are two key examples of reactive policies enacted in response to terrorist attacks on American soil. Expedited passage of both pieces of legislation were reliant on the public’s support for government action in wake of recent atrocities. These acts gave particular attention to securing the nation’s borders, directing an increase in funding for Border Patrol in order to prevent future terrorist attacks. This essay will connect the increased funding for border security directed by Congress with the defense industry’s pursuit of funding and outlets for drone …

David Versus Goliath: The Power Of Weakness In Asymmetric Warfare—Lessons From History, Nicholas K. Petaludis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Under what conditions do violent nonstate actors (VNA) succeed against states? Why does David sometimes beat Goliath? Since at least the time of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars, the realist narrative in international relations measures power primarily in relative, coercive, and deterrent terms. Strong states should accordingly face fewer constraints and enjoy more options while pursuing their national interests. Unconventional warfare, and its subsets of terrorism and insurgency, should—given these circumstances, end in VNA failure. Sometimes, however, VNAs find success. By comparing the literature on historical and current case studies, I propose that a set of preconditions and two mechanisms …

Criminology And Violent Extremist Radicalization, Starlett Michele Martin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research on foreign terrorism became extensive in the United States while research on domestic terrorism and violent extremist radicalization was lacking. Despite the research that has been done, there was a lapse in scholarship analyzing terrorism radicalization and its relationship with criminology. The purpose of this general qualitative study was to analyze the perceptions of experts in terrorism and criminology about how factors of criminology can explain violent extremist radicalization. This study used two conceptual models of terrorism radicalization: (a) the staircase to terrorism and the (b) 4-stage model of the terrorist mindset. In addition, …

Racialization And International Security, Richard W. Maass

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Racialization—the processes that infuse social and political phenomena with racial identities and implications—is an assertion of power, a claim of purportedly inherent differences that has saturated modern diplomacy, order, and violence. Despite the field's consistent interest in power, international security studies in the United States largely omitted racial dynamics from decades of debates about international conflict and cooperation, nuclear proliferation, power transitions, unipolarity, civil wars, terrorism, international order, grand strategy, and other subjects. A new framework lays conceptual bedrock, links relevant literatures to major research agendas in international security, cultivates interdisciplinary dialogues, and charts promising paths to consider how overt …

Criminology And Violent Extremist Radicalization, Starlett Michele Martin

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research on foreign terrorism became extensive in the United States while research on domestic terrorism and violent extremist radicalization was lacking. Despite the research that has been done, there was a lapse in scholarship analyzing terrorism radicalization and its relationship with criminology. The purpose of this general qualitative study was to analyze the perceptions of experts in terrorism and criminology about how factors of criminology can explain violent extremist radicalization. This study used two conceptual models of terrorism radicalization: (a) the staircase to terrorism and the (b) 4-stage model of the terrorist mindset. In addition, …

Countering Terrorism On Tomorrow’S Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security And Resiliency (Nato Coe-Dat Handbook 2), Sarah J. Lohmann, Lucas M. Cox, Denise Feldner, Trevor P. Helmy, Frank J. Kuzminski, Marcus Mohlin, Aleksander Olech, Wuraola Oyewusi, Gabriel T. Raicu, Silke Ruhl, Sabrina Schulz, Máté Tóth, Megan A. Ward

Monographs, Collaborative Studies, & IRPs

Every day, malicious actors target emerging technologies and medical resilience or seek to wreak havoc in the wake of disasters brought on by climate change, energy insecurity, and supply-chain disruptions. Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield is a handbook on how to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in an era of emerging threats. The counterterrorism research produced for this volume is in alignment with NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept, which details how NATO Allies can transform and maintain their advantage despite new threats for the next two decades. The topics are rooted in NATO’s Seven Baseline requirements, which set the standard for enhancing …

Bureaucratic Resistance And The Challenge Of Implementing Asean Our Eyes: Case Study Of Jolo Church Bombing 2019, Chaula Rininta Anindya

Global: Jurnal Politik Internasional

Arus Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) memicu kekhawatiran dunia, termasuk negara-negara di Asia Tenggara. Pada tahun 2017, Indonesia mengajukan inisiatif “Our Eyes” untuk menciptakan sebuah wadah bagi negara-negara ASEAN untuk bertukar informasi intelijen guna memberantas kegiatan terorisme transnasional. Inisiatif tersebut kemudian diubah menjadi “ASEAN Our Eyes” (AOE). Tetapi, beberapa tahun setelah dibentuknya inisiatif tersebut, terjadi peristiwa pengeboman gereja di Jolo, Filipina. Inisiden tersebut menunjukkan hambatan untuk mengimplementasikan inisiatif AOE. Pelaku diidentifikasi sebagai Warga Negara Indonesia yang berhasil masuk ke Filipina berkat bantuan jaringan teroris lokal di Filipina. Idealnya, inisiatif AOE dapat mencegah serangan tersebut. Artikel ini akan mendiskusikan dinamika domestik di …

Leader Type And Responses To State-Sponsored Terrorism, Arjun Banerjee

Doctoral Dissertations

State-sponsored terrorism (SST) has for long been used as a tool by countries to inflict costs on rival states without direct confrontation, as the latter risks inviting limited to full-scale war. The literature on SST has so far focused primarily on the motivations, facilitating factors, and the timing of state sponsorship. What has been insufficiently studied, however, are the responses of victim states to SST. Why does state response to SST vary spatio-temporally in different countries, under different governments, and even under different leaders of the same ruling political dispensation in a country? Under what conditions does a state respond …

The International Perception Of The Irish Republican Army And Chechen Insurgency, Henry Forteith

International and Global Studies Undergraduate Honors Theses

This purpose of this project is to examine how the labels used to describe the Irish Republican Army and Chechen insurgency changed after certain acts of violence. This paper begins by describing the history of imperial subjugation of Ireland and Chechnya, as well as examining the similarities between the actions and motivations of the IRA and Chechen insurgency. Then, to study the change in language to describe these groups, two searches were conducted into the New York Times and International Newsstream databases. The first search examined articles about the IRA and Chechen insurgency published between 1998 and 2009, while the …

Tactical Mistakes: Women's Role In Terrorism, Laura Daniel

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Since the 1970s, the word "terrorism" has become a well-known term. Almost two decades after 9/11, it has become a part of everyday vocabulary and, at times, dominates the news cycle. However, the faces we see associated with terrorism are mainly men. When talking of a training camp or a video claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks, women are not a part of the majority. However, women do play a significant role in terrorism. This article evaluates the history of women in terrorism and their positions in terror organizations, as well as the tactical mistake of overlooking women's role in global …

Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations: Pitfalls And The Way Forward, Huma Baqai, Nausheen Wasi

Faculty Research - Books

The new chapter in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations that will be written now will not be without its history, without national and regional frameworks, without continuities and discontinuities. Therefore, it is important and even urgent to rethink the past, current, and future relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan, if we want this new chapter to be less confrontational and harmful than some of the preceding ones. And in this regard the book in your hand, “Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations: Pitfalls and the Way Forward”, is highly relevant, and a very important contribution. This book has been edited by two eminent Pakistani academics, Dr. Huma Baqai …

Gender Inequality And Terrorism: The Impacts Of Female Empowerment On Domestic And Transnational Terrorism, Jennifer Dumas

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In the post-9/11 years, terrorism has emerged as an urgent issue with important national security and foreign policy ramifications. Within political science, terrorism research has likewise developed as a burgeoning subfield with the potential for significant contributions to policymaking worldwide. However, the literature has until recently generally neglected gender inequality as a structural antecedent to terrorism, despite studies which support a relationship between gender parity and conflict mitigation in other areas as well as increasing calls for the integration of gender measures into counterterrorism agendas and initiatives among scholars and policymakers. To address this gap in the literature, I introduce …

China, Xinjiang, And The Genocide Convention: The Fragility Of International Law, Lucy Kate Herron

Honors Theses

This paper examines China’s actions through the lens of the Genocide Convention to examine the whether the crimes of genocide are being committed against the Uyghur population. It contends that according to the Genocide Convention, China is committing genocide, and particularly through conditions, torture, and rape, against the Uyghur population. However, prosecuting a genocide in court would prove difficult due to China's laws and actions that can be used to defer accusations of genocide and problems with the Genocide Convention in the context of China and the Uyghurs.

Sovereign Authority And Rule Of Law: The Effect Of U.S. Use Of Torture On Political Legitimacy, Sydney Bradley

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Governmental sovereignty is created and maintained by mutual respect for the rule of law by the government and citizens. To maintain legitimacy, a government must act within the bounds of the contract that created it. Otherwise, the relationship founded by said contract would be nullified, as would the duties and obligations that flow from that relationship. Torture exemplifies an ultra vires act used by the United States to show the consequences of over-extended authority on political legitimacy and the rule of law. Founded on the philosophies of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and Christine Korsgaard, this research investigates the nature of …

Terrorism And Counter-Terrorism In Latin America: A Comparative Study Of Peru And Colombia, Reagan Shane

Global Tides

This paper investigates the counter-terrorism strategies employed against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Colombia and the Shining Path (SL) in Peru and analyzes the effectiveness of those strategies. It begins by exploring the foundation of each organization and its respective goals, organization and tactics. Using this information, it then explores the counter-terrorism strategies employed by the government of each country in which the organizations were operating to determine the effectiveness of those strategies and how the structure of the terrorist organization might change that effectiveness. The paper concludes that military strategies have only been somewhat effective in …

Do The Tactics Of Armed Groups Affect Organizational Behavior? The Case Of Kidnap For Ransom, Tyler Young

Theses and Dissertations

N/A

The Evolution Of United States - Central Asian Security Policy Post-9/11: Military, Terrorism, And Cyber-Security, Shamsuddin Karimi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rudyard Kipling once described and wrote about the Great Game as a way to outline 19^th century great power politics in the struggle for empire in Central Asia. While Kipling’s tale of spy-craft and espionage is fiction, the political philosophy behind the story has never lost relevance. The struggle for political dominance in Central Asia continued through the twentieth century in the Cold War as well as into twenty-first century after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Although the great power players may have changed over the past 120 years, the importance of Central Asia has not.

This …

A Case Of Mistaken (Ethnic) Identity: Rethinking Civil War Duration, Ethnic Saliency, Terrorism, And The Real Factors Discouraging Resolution, Angie Bittar

Senior Independent Study Theses

The field of political violence has consistently emphasized understanding the way that civil wars end, with less emphasis placed on the circumstances which elicit extended civil war duration. This analysis shifts the focus of study on to the internal factors of civil war, following the question: What are the domestic factors of civil war that cause some wars to be more durable and resistant to resolution than others? Building off of several prominent theories within the field of political violence and the anthropological study of ethnic saliency, I hypothesize that civil wars that are characterized as identity based will be …

Nature Of Home-Grown Terrorism Threat In Ghana, Mohammed Zulkarnain

Journal of Terrorism Studies

The present state of security in the West African sub-region raises important issues of the nature of home-grown terrorism (HGT) threats in Ghana. Most studies of home-grown terrorism have focused mainly on the psychological implications of terrorist acts. This paper examines the complexities of the Ghanaian state securities perceive the nature of the threat of home-grown terrorism in the country. Data was collected from representatives of the state security agencies using semi-structured in-depth interviews. Findings indicate that the threat nature of home-grown terrorism in Ghana varies but the most significant is the threat from the recruitment of Ghanaian Muslims by …

Liberalism Versus Fundamentalism: The Ideological Conflict Between Tocqueville And Qtub, Mary Catherine E. Morris

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

This paper seeks to conclude whether Qtub has successfully discredited the values supported by Tocqueville to draw more Muslims to support an increased role of religion in society and influence the majority of Muslims to conduct violent jihad. It is hypothesized that Muslims agree with Qtub that Islam must be increasingly influential in society, but the majority do not seek to increase its role through, or for the purposes of, violent jihad. Differing in their views on freedom and liberty, freedom of religion and separation of church and state, and man-made laws but agreeing on the negative effects of materialism, …

An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze women’s participation in terrorism under groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It will research the use of violence within terrorist organizations, perpetrated by female participants. What leads women to join groups like the Islamic State? There will be an analysis of the factors that attract women to joining terrorist organizations, in addition to the practices of recruitment that aid in their radicalization. There is a misconception that women who join the Islamic State lack education, which is seen as the sole reasoning for their radicalization or involvement. In reality, several reasons exist leading to their …

"The Aftermath Of Terrorism: The Islamophobic Rhetoric Of Donald Trump And Narendra Modi", Joshua Jonathan Somrah

Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the Islamophobic rhetoric of Trump after the 2015 San Bernardino Attack and the 2016 Orlando Nightclub Shooting with the Islamophobic rhetoric of Modi after the 2016 Uri Attack and the 2019 Pulwama Attack and to analyze how the Anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and Modi affected the lives of Muslims within their countries and abroad. I argue that Trump and Modi used Anti-Muslim language in the wake of the four terrorist attacks mentioned above for their own political agendas, which resulted in Anti-Muslim political decisions that affected the lives of many Muslims within …

Asymmetric Threats: Analyzing The Future Of Nuclear Terrorism & Cyber Attacks; The Value Of Deterrence Theory For Addressing The Challenges Of Nuclear Terrorism In The Age Of 21st Century Cybersecurity, Oliver Demmert-Shelfo

Political Science & International Studies | Senior Theses

Given the rapid development and ease of access to technology, the threat of extremist organizations utilizing cyberspace as a means to target critical American strategic infrastructure is of increasing concern. The risk posed by the acquisition of fissile material, sabotage, or use of a nuclear device by an extremist organization has been exasperated due to technological development outpacing strategy. Despite policy-makers’ attempts to protect the public from cyber-attacks and nuclear terrorism, the federal policies in place have failed to account for the continual evolution of technology and the gaps in security that this advancement brings. Through examining documents from congressional …