American efforts have not been directed at addressing the roots of terrorism. To the contrary, the US has instead focused on fighting the symptoms of terror, which resulted in a highly offensive approach which directly fostered hatred towards the US among Islamic communities.
In four books from 1997 to 2008 Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined a comprehensive American foreign posture around the geopolitical grail of Central Asia. Since 1945 the United States has been largely defined as the first non-Eurasian thalassocracy to prevail in the Great Game, yet for how long?
Despite a considerable advantage in terms of manpower, weaponry, funding and logistics, the international military presence in Afghanistan has been unable to defeat the Taliban insurgency. In fact, it could perhaps be argued that the presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil has been the instrumental factor in allowing the Taliban to not only survive, but to expand and prosper.
The Rwandan genocide is probably the most intensive killing campaign in human history. The ethnic dimension of the Rwandan genocide was a result of a century of ethnic division, which was not characteristic of Rwandan society prior to colonial rule. One can conclude that a combination of historical events and an ideology of hatred contributed to the genocide.
Following the September 2001 attack on America’s ‘World Trade Centre’, the ‘causes of terrorism’ has been a subject of intense investigation and speculation. Despite the educated and generally wealthy backgrounds of the 9/11 hijackers, poverty has been cited by numerous world leaders and respected academics as a central and direct cause of terrorism in the twenty first century. However, recent studies have suggested that there is little or no direct causal link between poverty and insurgent terrorism.
The 1956 Suez War marked a new chapter in the development of Middle Eastern politics.The emergence of Nasserism in the Middle East after the Suez crisis sustains the idea that Egypt was the sole winner of Suez. The Suez War managed to bring into question the significant role of the Middle East in world politics, particularly in the Cold War context.
In the post-September 11th world international terrorism is synonymous with catastrophic violence and unprecedented threats to states. International terrorist groups, by their structure, makeup as non-state actors, logistical mechanisms and resources are inherently unpredictable. As we have seen in the bombing of Madrid and the ongoing violence in Iraq, terrorist groups have expanded beyond national boundaries and therefore have an unparalleled ability to strike globally. The common impression of the phenomenon of international terrorism is that it is ‘more dangerous or at least more difficult to counter’[2]than conventional, often nationalistic and politically-motivated, terrorism.
International Relations is currently facing a global religious revival. Tehran’s foreign policy reflects the pluralism of the regime’s political-theological discourse. Westphalian assumptions promote an ignorance of this pluralism and lead to the incorrect assumption that a theocratic Iran is incompatible with international stability.
Pre-negotiation allows parties to prepare themselves for the negotiation process whilst not being bound to any decisions or actions.
This essay will critically assess the normative and empirical elements of society, primarily on the international level, which lend themselves to the constructivist brand of theory, focusing largely on the impact of the socio-historical and socio-cultural on state behaviour. It will also address the importance placed on power by Realists and others holding the classical world view.
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