Digital Commons Network^™

Much Ado About Cyber-Space: Cyber-Terrorism And The Reformation Of The Cyber-Security, Christian Pedersen

Pepperdine Policy Review

The threats residing in cyber-space are becoming well understood by policymakers and security experts alike. However, cyber-security defenses and strategies cannot solely be directed towards nation states, as non-governmental actors – such as transnational crime groups and terrorist organizations are becoming increasingly reliant upon internet technologies. Attacks on the digital components of the critical infrastructure, have the potential to unleash devastation on the United States. In a time when reliability and ethnicity of the National Security Administration, the Nation’s leading digital intelligence organization, are becoming increasingly questioned; defensive measures need to be improved to prevent future attacks and improve the …

Targeted Killings And The Interest Convergence Dilemma, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In the 1980s, Professor Derrick Bell posited a theory of interest convergence as part of his critical race theory work, arguing that the major strides forward in civil rights law and policy that benefited African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s only occurred because of the perceived benefits of those changes to white elites during that time. In Bell’s view, it was only at the point at which the interests of powerful whites converged with those of marginalized racial minorities that significant changes in civil rights law could occur.

Twelve years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, numerous …

The Role Of Counterterrorism Law In Shaping Ad Bellum Norms For Cyber Warfare, William Banks

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Cyber War And International Law: Does The International Legal Process Constitute A Threat To U.S. Vital Interests?, John F. Murphy

International Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Battlefield, Beyond Al Qaeda: The Destabilizing Legal Architecture Of Counterterrorism, Robert M. Chesney

Michigan Law Review

By the end of the first post-9/11 decade, the legal architecture associated with the U.S. government’s use of military detention and lethal force in the counterterrorism setting had come to seem relatively stable, supported by a remarkable degree of cross-branch and cross-party consensus (manifested by legislation, judicial decisions, and consistency of policy across two very different presidential administrations). That stability is certain to collapse during the second post-9/11 decade, however, thanks to the rapid erosion of two factors that have played a critical role in generating the recent appearance of consensus: the existence of an undisputed armed conflict in Afghanistan, …

From Afghanistan 1979 To Afghanistan 2001: How Three Current High School History Textbooks Frame The Origins Of The “War On Terror” Historical Analysis And Interviews With William Blum, Noam Chomsky And James Loewen, Michael Shawn Galli

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

This work examines how three current eleventh grade U.S. high school history textbooks report on the origins of the “war on terror.” The researcher chose one textbook from each of the three leading publishing houses that supply the high school market: Holt McDougal, Prentice Hall, and McGraw-Hill. The scope of the researcher’s inquiry covers the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the U.S. invasion in 2001. The nomenclature of the “war on terror,” Reagan’s “war on terror,” U.S. support for the Afghan Mujahideen, the Persian Gulf War, and the decision to invade Afghanistan are examined. Interviews with authors William Blum, …

The Transformation Of The Pkk (Kurdistan Workers' Party): Exploring Domestic, Regional, And Global Dynamics, Akin Guneri

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The main purpose of this study is to explore the underlying factors behind the political and ideological transformation of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since its foundation. Through the detailed analysis of the role of Turkey's internal versus external factors on the evolution of the PKK over time, this work finds that changing political developments in the Middle East were more influential than Turkey's shifting domestic political environment. Hypothesis testing revealed that the 1991 Gulf War, 2003 Iraq War, changing political dynamics of the Middle East following Syria's Arab Spring, and policy changes worldwide implemented after the 9/11 terrorist attacks …

Recognizing 'Game Changers' In Extrapolation Models: An Application To Counterinsurgency, Micah Dolcort-Silver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent empirical studies suggest insurgencies may be accurately described by aggregated extrapolation models, such that past behavior becomes the best predictor for future action. I argue that aggregated extrapolation models possess two flaws that make it a poor choice for examining insurgencies. First, aggregated extrapolation models ask the wrong question. The more interesting question is to ask when present action is no longer explainable by past behavior. Secondly, aggregate models mask changes that a phenomenon undergoes over time which are only revealed upon disaggregating the data. Starting with a model and findings provided by Neil Johnson, I use casualty data …

Social Construction, Informed Preferences, And Citizens' Support For U.S. Counterterrorism Policies, Aleksandar Jankovski

Open Access Dissertations

I hypothesize that U.S. citizens’ support for the counterterrorism policy of their government is, in the main, determined and explained by the various ways in which they have come to understand terrorism, security, and the history of U.S. engagement abroad. I test the hypotheses by way of an ordered probit model. The empirical findings lend support to the hypotheses.

Who Will Tell The Story? Terrorism's Relationship With The International News Media, Katherine Eugenis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Terrorism feeds on an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. In order for a terrorist group to achieve its purpose, its activities must be known to a mass audience. Due to the often isolated nature of the conflicts in which they are involved, terrorists groups must attract and maintain the attention of the mass media, through which they access a broader audience and gain salience. This relationship begs the question: will less media attention lead to less terrorism as groups lose their audience and are forced to use legitimate means of enacting change? This thesis analyzes the pattern of media trends …

Breaking Terror's Bank Without Breaking The Law: A Comment On The Usa Patriot Act And The United States Financial War On Terrorism , Carrie L. Folendorf

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This comment will discuss the effect of abandoning our Constitution in times of crisis by discussing how Executive Order 13,224 and the USA PATRIOT Act infringe upon our fundamental First Amendment freedoms of association, and how they violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment by withholding notice and the opportunity to be heard. Part II will outline legislation which demonstrates how the United States has historically dealt with freezing the assets of designated terrorists, and will include a discussion of the provisions in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) and the USA PATRIOT Act …

Human Geography Without A Map, William E. Demars, Laurel Rosenberger, Jimmy Rogers, Trent Hardee

Arthur Vining Davis High Impact Fellows Projects

Course materials developed for a 9th grade course on human geography, focusing on human rights, terrorism, and globalization.

An Analysis Of The Effectiveness Of The Director Of National Intelligence (Dni) In Uniting The Intelligence Community, Bethany G. Pico

Senior Honors Theses

September 11, 2001 marks the date of the largest attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II. This event not only changed the lives of individuals who suffered intense loss but changed the course of American history in several ways. This paper focuses specifically on the changes in the intelligence community since the attacks. The attacks that 9/11 presented flaws in the system created demonstrating weakness as a direct result of the immense destruction that occurred. The thesis of this paper is to analyze, assess, and draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the …

Children Of Today, Leaders Of Tomorrow: The Overlooked Generation Of Jihad, Alyson C. Daum

Senior Honors Theses

This paper proposes that the United States has a moral obligation to care for the children whose lives are affected by terrorism and to ensure that they do not grow up aligned with the radical ideology of Islamic Fundamentalism. This paper examines the American sentiment towards Islam, what hinders her, despite all her resources and provisions, from investing in the future of these children and providing them with foreign aid. It suggests that as America falls further from her Christian traditions, she becomes less equipped to fulfill these moral obligations. Examined are personal accounts of both child-survivors and child-soldiers, accounts …

Developing A Game-Theoritic Analysis Of Terrorism, Matthew A. Love

Masters Theses

My research demonstrates the applicability of game theory to analyzing terrorism through consideration of multiple examples. These examples provide a foundation upon which further research involving the application of game theory to terrorism can be explored.

My research contributes to a growing body of literature, especially since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, in which it has been argued that terrorists are rational agents and, because of that, game theory can be usefully applied to an analysis of terrorism. My research further supports this conclusion.

Denial Of Territory To Terrorist Groups In Us Counterterrorism Strategy, Kenneth Anderson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This short (1500 words) policy briefing paper describes the strategic evolution of US counterterrorism policies to incorporate "denial of territory" strategies alongside existing strategies, particularly long-term, increasingly continuous surveillance by drones, and armed drone attacks, pursued as a counter-raiding strategy against terrorist groups. It argues that US counterterrorism requires not only a counter-raiding strategy via drone strikes, but also the ability to deny territory to terrorist groups. Denial of territory means two distinct strategies, however. One is to deny safe havens to terrorist groups; safe houses, compounds, training camps and bases -- the tiny slices of territory that are usually …

The Contemporary Face Of Transnational Criminal Organizations And The Threat They Pose To U.S. National Interest: A Global Perspective., Vesna Markovic

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Traditional organized crime groups have consistently posed issues for la w enforcement; however, the contemporary TCOs present an even greater security risk and threat. TCOs thrive in countries with a weak rule of law and present a great threat to regional security in many parts of the world. Bribery and corruption employed by these groups further serve to destabilize already weak governments. These TCOs also present a major threat to U.S. and world financial systems by exploiting legitimate commerce, and in some cases creating parallel markets (“Transnational Organized,” 2011) . Finally, one of the most significant threats posed by contemporary …

Governmental Responses To Terrorism: Creating Costs And Benefits, Kenneth Klose

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis assesses four governmental responses to terrorism: conciliation, denial, legal restriction, and violence, each of which may be focused on an organization or its leaders. The theory makes predictions on the resulting frequency and severity of terrorism. Unless responses reduce an organization’s capacity or desire to attack, the frequency of attacks may be reduced, while the severity continues to increase. The theory is tested using a time series regression analysis of the effects of government action on terrorism in Algeria and the Philippines. In general, the results show that conciliation may led to increases in terrorism in the short …

Packaging Inspiration: Al Qaeda’S Digital Magazine Inspire In The Self-Radicalization Process, Susan Currie Sivek

Faculty Publications

Al Qaeda is today a fragmented organization, and its strategic communication efforts now focus largely on recruiting individuals in the West to carry out “individual jihad” in their home countries. One Al Qaeda–affiliated publication, Inspire, represents an unusual use of the digital magazine format and content for recruitment. This study examines the content and design of Inspire to determine how the magazine may advance the self-radicalization that it seeks to induce in its readers. This analysis finds that the magazine weaves together jihadist ideology, a narrow interpretation of Islam, and appropriations of Western popular culture to maximize the publication’s …

Book Reviews: Time Out Of Joint, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

(reviewing War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences by Mary L. Dudziak) American University, WCL Research Paper No. 2013-10 Abstract: The meaning of time in war is the topic of legal historian Mary L. Dudziak's 2012 book. This extended review essay (30 pp) considers both on its own terms of cultural criticism, and then from the standpoint of rationalist and realist critics. The book's overall cultural claim is that time in war is its own category and has effects and meaning in war independent of the considerations of security, liberty, and necessity in war that are often thought to …

Suicide Terrorism: Understanding The Mindset And Motives, Joshua Daniel Goss

Online Theses and Dissertations

Suicide Terrorism plays major roles in devastating and destructing cities and their people while communities try to fight the Global War on Terrorism. The devastation and destruction can either be focused on individuals or a certain infrastructure. There are two tactics of executing the acts of suicide terrorism; strapping explosives to their bodies and or steering some sort of transportation into a place of gathering. The methodology of this study is an auto-ethnography. The auto-ethnography is designed to find understanding of personal experiences using a qualitative method of study. Understanding the motives and mindset of suicide terrorist can be very …

Toward Comprehensive Reform Of America's Emergency Law Regime, Patrick A. Thronson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Unbenownst to most Americans, the United States is presently under thirty presidentially declared states of emergency. They confer vast powers on the Executive Branch, including the ability to financially incapacitate any person or organization in the United States, seize control of the nation's communications infrastructure, mobilize military forces, expand the permissible size of the military without congressional authorization, and extend tours of duty without consent from service personnel. Declared states of emergency may also activate Presidential Emergency Action Documents and other continuity-of-government procedures, which confer powers on the President-such as the unilateral suspension of habeas corpus-that appear fundamentally opposed to …

Incumbent Violence And Insurgent Tactics: The Effects Of Incumbent Violence On Popular Support For Guerrilla Warfare And Terrorism, Jonathan Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Insurgency has two main strategies, guerrilla warfare and terrorism, which should be treated as linked, but distinct, strategies. This thesis examines the role of incumbent violence in leading insurgents to select one, or both, of these strategies. It argues that incumbent violence can create support for insurgency by causing fear and a desire for revenge and reshaping the social structures of a community. It also argues that incumbent violence increases popular support for terrorism in particular by creating outbidding incentives and desires to respond in kind to civilian deaths and as a way of punishing norm violations against attacking civilians …

Self-Defense Against Terrorists: The Meaning Of Armed Attack, Steven Ratner

Book Chapters

The last decade has witnessed increased recourse by states to military force to respond to terrorist attacks on their soil that have originated from abroad. A number of states -- including the United States -- have justified these military actions as lawful self-defense in response to an armed attack, as permitted under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. These claims raise multiple interpretive questions about the meaning of "armed attack" under Article 51 and of the various options that are allowed in response to one. This essay explores the contemporary understanding of an "armed attack" in terms of an …

On Familiarity And Defamiliarization In The Use Of Appropriated Material In Film, And Its Consequences On Narration : A Study Of Artavazd Peleshian's Our Century, Johan Grimonprez's Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y And Adam Curtis' It Felt Like A Kiss, Maureen Anderson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The text presented here is a study of the editing and appropriation techniques of three constructivist films and their affect on narrative: Artavazd Peleshian's Our Century, Johan Grimonprez's dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y and Adam Curtis' It Felt Like a Kiss. An analysis of these techniques is done through the lens of the Russian Formalists, Victor Shklovsky and Mikhail Bakhtin and their respective concepts of defamiliarization and familiarization. Attention is paid to formal analysis in relation to historical context.

Impact Of Gender Inequality And Religion On How States Experience Terrorism, Aneela Salman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation includes three essays that present a quantitative analysis of the policy implications of gender equality and religious attitudes as predictors of terrorism at the state level using a broad dataset. Essay one focuses on impact of gender equality, especially women's political empowerment on terrorism, both domestic and transnational. The second essay examines both gender equality attitudes and actual outcomes in social, economic and political spheres, to measure their effect on terrorism. The third essay analyzes the relation of religiousness in a society with incidents and lethality of terrorism. The overall findings of this thesis suggest that attitudes and …

Coercion, Persuasion, And Reflexivity In Major Counterinsurgency Wars, Stephen M. Pampinella

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the effectiveness of different counterinsurgency practices of states in 47 conflicts from 1945-2010. After discussing contemporary theories of counterinsurgency, it traces these theories to realist and liberal traditions of international relations to demonstrate how propose specific relationships with the civilian population as a means of ending social conflict. To evaluate these theories, I perform a Boolean analysis of counterinsurgency practices to determine which combinations of realist and liberal factors leads to counterinsurgent victory. Overall, I find that pure realist and mixed combinations are most likely to lead to victory, while pure liberal combinations fail to produce victory. …

India-Pakistan Relations: International Implications, Alka Jauhari

Political Science & Global Affairs Faculty Publications

India’s independence in 1947 from the British colonial rule and its subsequent division into two nations – India and Pakistan - has sowed the seeds of continuing conflict between the two countries since their independence. The partition of India was primarily based on the religious divide between the two communities – the Hindus and the Muslims. After India’s partition, the major issue of conflict between the two countries has been the Muslim dominated northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, currently a part of India. This bilateral conflict has had international implications over the years. Decades of conflict, which includes three …

Where Do Transnational Terrorist Organizations Operate? : The Impact Of State Capacity And Civil Conflict, Rebecca Noto

LSU Master's Theses

Despite overlapping explanatory theories for the occurrence of terrorism and civil conflict, these two phenomena have largely been studied in isolation. This study addresses this gap in the conflict literature by investigating the influence of state capacity and civil conflict on the presence of a transnational terrorist organization’s base of operations. It is postulated that weak state capacity provides the opportunity to organize while civil conflict increases this opportunity via the transmission of information on and the reduction in the state’s capacity to prevent organization formation. This hypothesis is then tested by estimating a logistic regression analysis for the years …

Drones And Cognitive Dissonance, Rosa Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There’s something about drones that makes sane people crazy. Is it those lean, futurist profiles? The activities drone technologies enable? Or perhaps it’s just the word itself–drone–a mindless, unpleasant, dissonant thrum. Whatever the cause, drones seem to produce an unusual kind of cognitive dissonance in many people.

Some demonize drones, denouncing them for causing civilian deaths or enabling long-distance killing, even as they ignore the fact that the same (or worse) could be said of many other weapons delivery systems. Others glorify them as a low-cost way to “take out terrorists,” despite the strategic vacuum in which most …