从经济视角看国际恐怖主义

应用经济学的分析方法对恐怖主义这一人类社会发展进步的重大威胁进行系统分析, 可以对其做 出更加有效的解释。恐怖主义的产生有着深刻的政治、经济和社会根源, 其中包括现行世界经济秩序的不公平、富 国与穷国间的贫富悬殊、产权划分及利益分配的不平等等多种因素。成本收益理论、消费替代理论、社会价值理论 等在恐怖组织实施恐怖袭击时正越来越多的成为其决策依据。从恐怖主义对当前国际经济的影响来看, 能源安全 威胁增加、消费者信心下降、国际贸易交流下降等已成定局     

伊斯兰祈祷团再起波澜的原因探析

曾一度淡出人们视线的东南亚恐怖组织伊斯兰祈祷团(AJAI)再度掀起波澜,从2005年至今策划了一系列恐怖案件。为何一个重要首领被逮捕、受到重大打击的恐怖主义组织,在短期内又能死灰复燃?笔者认为根本原因在于其动态的网络系统、一体化的组织结构、丰富的资金来源与广阔的联系渠道。在上述分析的基础上,笔者尝试性地提出应对这一恐怖组织的政策性建议。     

论恐怖主义的社会解构

作为一种极端的解构力量，恐怖主义对于国际秩序的威胁和损害不仅在于通过制造恶性事件以破坏国际社会的安全稳定，更在于借助销蚀主流价值而削弱国际秩序的观念基础。因此，国际社会有必要将评估和应对恐怖主义的社会解构纳入反恐治理的基本范畴。其中，以“伊斯兰国”组织为代表的恐怖主义力量进行社会解构的行为策略，可以分为以动摇当代领土政治、颠覆主流生命伦理和创设替代政治秩序为主要构成的重释再造，以动员恐怖袭击、滋长恐怖气氛和催生仇恨敌对为主要构成的“木马”植入，以“黑色经济”“黑色宣传”和“黑色技术”为主要构成的反向利用。目前，国际社会的反恐路径注重结合预防恐怖主义的内向防御逻辑与打击恐怖主义的外向进攻逻辑。沿着这一思路，国际社会可以综合采取加强反恐实践中的逆向战略、修正反恐叙事中的敌意话语和联通反恐治理中的不同系统等多种举措以应对恐怖主义的社会解构。     

自杀性恐怖主义袭击的逻辑:博弈分析的视角

自杀性恐怖主义袭击系自杀行为与袭击行为是同一行为的恐怖主义行为,将其与自杀性恐怖主义进行概念区分,对其行为特征与互动机制展开博弈分析,有助于揭示其行为逻辑与过程逻辑,提出更有效的治理政策建议。通过信号传递、俱乐部模型、"烈士"市场等博弈模型,人们可以清楚地发现,借助信号传递、禁忌与献祭、外包、负责声明、筛选与过滤等一系列行为和机制,恐怖组织使自杀性恐怖主义袭击成为一项理性的策略选择和有效的"弱者的武器",并能通过原教旨主义极端化和发动全球"圣战"来对抗国际反恐打击。因此,加强国际反恐情报交流与合作、帮助治理失败国家提升公共物品供应能力、切断"烈士"市场赖以运行的条件和环节等措施便成为可行的治理政策选择。合理借鉴博弈分析的思路、方法和成果,展开本土化的理论研究,有助于提升我国的恐怖主义研究与治理能力,更好地维护我国的国家安全,为"一带一路"战略和西进战略顺利实施保驾护航。     

当前全球恐怖威胁新态势

当前,国际恐怖主义威胁在产生、演化和发展过程中表现出的全球化特征受到国际社会广泛关注.本文以2012年全球恐怖威胁指数为分析起点,总结近6年来全球以及各区域恐怖主义威胁发展趋势,分析全球范围内国家层面发生的典型恐怖袭击事件,并在此基础上对全球未来恐怖威胁发展态势进行预测.本文同时分析国际恐怖组织未来发展的一些新动向:第三代“基地”组织浮现,多目标联动战术取代“独狼”袭击,生化武器的使用苗头渐露等.     

论预防性自卫与反国际恐怖主义

《联合国宪章》生效以前传统的国际习惯法理论承认在符合严格限制条件的前提下的预防性自卫。但是,《联合国宪章》生效后,对于《联合国宪章》第五十一条是否绝对地禁止预防性自卫,国际社会尚未达成一致。国际恐怖主义组织发动的恐怖袭击,如果达到可以被视为针对受害国的"武力攻击"的程度,则受害国可以行使自卫的权利。但是,如果受害国决定对国际恐怖组织的支持国实施预防性的武力自卫,则必须纳入到安理会的运作机制之下。     

试析普京政府怎样对付俄罗斯的恐怖主义活动

恐怖主义经过半个多世纪的蔓延，破坏性越来越大，原是恐怖活动“真空”地带的苏联东欧地区，目前恐怖暴力事件也不断发生，俄罗斯已成为新的恐怖活动热点，车臣恐怖势力的猖獗活动、国内魔鬼崇拜邪教的泛滥、高科技恐怖主义的危害都给俄罗斯的社会安全带来了极大的挑战。针对国际恐怖主义威胁度的增加，俄政府尤其是普京执政后的俄政府相继出台了一系列新举措，包括从民族凝聚力、拓击力度、军事科研、新闻媒介、外交渠道等方面着手出击，以对抗国际恐怖势力。     

恐怖主义动因理论解析

西方学者对恐怖主义诱因的理论解释大致可分为两个阵营:个性缺陷模式和社会学 习模式。社会学习模式和个性缺陷模式从行为主义和社会心理的角度分析了暴力行为(包括恐怖 主义行为)的起因, 对恐怖主义的动因具有一定的解释力, 但也有其局限性。9· 11事件后, 文明冲 突论和全球化理论因其对恐怖主义文化和经济根源的分析以及9· 11事件的验证而受到广泛关 注。鉴于恐怖主义产生根源的复杂性, 我们无法用一两种简约的理论来提供认知恐怖主义的路径。 但上述理论有助于我们全面解释和理解恐怖主义行为。     

亚洲的安全环境

当前,亚洲仍然受到日益严峻和复杂的安全威胁,恐怖主义问题仍然困扰东南亚地区。自从2005年10月1日在巴厘岛发生自杀性爆炸案以来,恐怖主义的威胁更大了。更为严重的是,随着2005年恐怖主义袭击事件的发生,很多新生的恐怖团伙出现了。据悉有些团伙是回教祈祷团组织的分支机构。恐怖主义网络在调整、在变化,把更棘手、更烦恼的问题摆在了世人面前。由于菲律宾和泰国南部的恐怖发生区一直得不到和平保障,这些问题显得更加复杂了。对于本区域的国家来说,为应付日益复杂的恐怖主义网络,关键的不仅仅是联合打击,而是互相帮助,共同寻求一条和平解决…     

《东盟反恐公约》签署以来东南亚反恐形势分析

2007年1月，东盟各国领导人在新加坡共同签署《东盟反恐公约》，决定简化司法调查及恐怖嫌犯引渡程序，并允许东盟各国执法机关和特工部门在该组织成员国境内实施反恐行动。《东盟反恐公约》签署以来，在有关各方的重拳打击下，东南亚地区反恐合作取得明显进展，恐怖袭击事件有所减少，多个国家成功挫败多起重大恐怖袭击图谋，许多恐怖组织接连遭到重创，地区安全局势逐渐恢复稳定；但是，从内外环境看，东南亚恐怖主义的根源没有彻底铲除，     

Competing to Kill: Terrorist Organizations Versus Lone Wolf Terrorists

Are organizationally linked suicide attacks deadlier than those launched by lone wolf terrorists? This article elaborates a perpetrator-based distinction among suicide terrorist attacks between organizations and lone wolf terrorists, who operate in the absence of a financially or physically supportive terrorist organization. The expectation is that terrorist organizations would serve as commitment tools that increase the loyalty of suicide bombers to their missions through material and non-material incentives. Findings demonstrate that when terrorist organizations are involved in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks, not only do they increase the lethality of these attacks but they also accentuate the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism. These findings suggest that despite the recent upsurge and concern about lone wolf terrorism, the lethality and security impacts of suicide terrorism continue to be driven by terrorist organizations.     

Alessandro Orsini. Anatomy of the Red Brigades: The Religious Mind-Set of Modern Terrorists

ABSTRACT

Those who study terrorism are familiar with the claim that suicide attacks are the most lethal form of terrorism today. Suicide attacks kill more people on average than non-suicide attacks, thereby justifying why terrorist organizations use this costly method of attack and explaining in part why suicide tactics have proliferated. However, extant empirical support for this claim is largely insufficient, focusing only on macro-level analysis of lethality data. Using data from the Global Terrorism Database, this study examines variation in lethality among suicide and non-suicide attacks based on geographic location, attack type, and target/victim type. It also introduces a new metric—the lethality ratio—to measure costs and benefits of attacks in terms of lives lost. It finds that, although suicide tactics are generally more lethal than non-suicide tactics, they also come at greater costs to the organization. This analysis also finds behavior that is inconsistent with the premise that terrorist groups are focused on maximizing lethality while reducing costs in all cases; that despite certain advantages, suicide attacks may remain a suboptimal tactic from the perspective of the terrorist group; and that additional criteria may help explain why suicide tactics are used.     

More Bang for the Buck: Media Coverage of Suicide Attacks

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence that suicide attacks systematically draw more media attention than non-suicide terrorist attacks. Analyzing 60,341 terrorist attack days in 189 countries from 1970 to 2012, I introduce a methodology to proxy for the media coverage each one of these attack days receives in the New York Times. Suicide attacks are associated with significantly more coverage. In the most complete regression, one suicide attack produces an additional 0.6 articles—a magnitude equivalent to the effect of 95 terrorism casualties. This link remains robust to including a comprehensive list of potentially confounding factors, fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. The effect is reproduced for alternative print and television outlets (BBC, Reuters, CNN, NBC, CBS), but remains weak for Google Trends (worldwide and in the U.S.), a more direct proxy for people’s interests, and is non-existent for C-SPAN, a television station dedicated to broadcasting political discussions directly. Thus, the media appears to cover suicide missions in an extraordinary fashion, which may in turn explain their prominence among terrorist organizations.     

The Ancient Fire: Religion and Suicide Terrorism

Does religion lead to greater destructiveness from suicide terrorism? And if so, how does it influence this form of political violence? Recent analyses of terrorism point to the significance of religion, but are divided as to whether religion itself matters, or certain types of religious terrorist groups are actually driving suicide terrorist violence. This article draws on social movement theory and recent work in the study of suicide terrorism to argue that religion influences the severity of suicide terrorist attacks as an ideology groups use to justify their struggle and gain public support. This effect occurs regardless of a group's goals or organizational nature. The theory is tested using a generalized estimating equation to account for multiple attacks by several groups. The study finds that the religious ideology of a group greatly increases the number of deaths from a suicide attack, even if varying group motivations and structural factors are taken into account. The article helps to clarify the effect of religion on contemporary terrorism, contributing to the study of both terrorism and religion and politics.     

“New Terrorism” = Higher Brutality? An Empirical Test of the “Brutalization Thesis”

This article focuses on the so-called “brutalization” of terrorism. The brutalization thesis as part of the larger theoretical concept of “new terrorism” argues that “new terrorism” is more brutal than “old terrorism.” Many scholars claim that the 9/11 attacks mark the beginning of a new era of terrorism that has lifted international as well as domestic terrorism to a new level of violent brutality. Others argue that this process had already started in the early 1990s. After discussing possible ways to operationalize a brutalization of terrorism, for example focusing on suicide bombings or terrorist attacks against soft targets, this article tests the empirical credibility of the brutalization thesis regarding both potential starting points. Data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) shows that only three out of nine indicators increased significantly during the 1990s, partially backing the idea of a general brutalization, whereas increasing numbers of suicide attacks and beheadings after 9/11 support the notion of a qualitative change in terrorism and its brutality connected with the idea of maximizing media and public attention. Yet, these developments are regionally limited and the brutality of this “new terrorism” exceeds the levels known from the zenith of “old terrorism” in the 1970s and 1980s in only a few cases.     

Security Versus Liberty in the Context of Counterterrorism: An Experimental Approach

A critical question in counterterrorism studies concerns the extent to which governments adequately balance the continual provision of individual rights and freedoms with the appropriate level of national security when faced with a terrorist attack. We experimentally assess this tradeoff utilizing a 2 × 2 × 2 between-groups factorial design, manipulating (a) the extent of terror-related threats, (b) the level of invasiveness of subsequent counterterrorism policies, as well as (c) the terror context: transnational and domestic. The results provide evidence that the public is more willing to accept greater reductions in civil liberties under a greater threat of terrorism only when the perceived effectiveness of those policies to prevent future acts of terrorism is high. Furthermore, we find these results to be specific to the context of a transnational terror threat. This suggests that the public will be unwilling to accept reductions in civil liberties when the source of the attack is domestic, regardless of the level of threat or how effective subsequent policies may be in preventing future attacks.     

Nuclear Terrorism: What Can We Learn from Los Alamos?

ABSTRACT

The international security community is increasingly concerned about the nexus between indiscriminate terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear technology and materials. Many nuclear terrorism threat assessments focus primarily on terrorist motivations to employ an atomic bomb, the availability of nuclear know-how and technology, and the opportunity for clandestine organisations to acquire fissile material. Scholars and experts, however, often neglect to elaborate on the challenges for terrorist organisations in organising and implementing the construction and detonation of a crude atomic bomb. This will most likely be a complex project. This article will therefore explore the organisation of such an endeavour. To be precise, we will highlight the impact of the organisational design of the terrorist group. The organisational design determines the division of tasks and how coordination is achieved among these tasks. It therefore has a strong impact on the functioning of any organisation, especially an innovative and complex terrorism project. Building on a case study of Los Alamos, we inductively infer that terrorist organisations face an inherent effectiveness-efficiency trade-off in designing a nuclear armament project.     

Framing terrorism: geography-based media coverage variations of the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid and the 2009 twin suicide car bombings in Baghdad

Written media mould how civil society perceives acts of terrorism. In employing different framing techniques, news articles develop a unique narrative that influences how readers comprehend an attack. Past studies of the relationship between the media and terrorism ignore how media portrayals of terrorist attacks vary based on the attacks’ geographic location. By comparing two similar terrorist attacks, one that occurred in the West – Madrid, Spain – and the other in the East – Baghdad, Iraq – the paper seeks to explore how media coverage of terrorist attacks that occur in different geographic locations varies. Employing news frame analysis reveals how coverage of the 11 March 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid differs from the 25 October 2009 double suicide bombings in Baghdad. Coverage of an attack on a Western nation compared to one on an Eastern nation contributes to Islamophobia and exacerbates an us–them mentality. Simply accepting information published in news articles at face value inhibits forming rational conclusions about the nature of terrorism.     

Toward an Analytical Model of Suicide Terrorism—A Comment

In this comment, I offer an alternative model for describing and explaining suicide terrorism. The model offers three stage: a) decision making among elites of terrorist organizations, b) individual motivations of the perpetrators and c) the organisational process of recruitment, socialization, and launching of the terrorist.     

Collective Security and Non-State Actors in Eurasia

International security cooperation usually takes one of two forms. A classical collective security organization is designed to promote international security through regulating the behavior of its member states. A defensive security organization is designed to protect a group of states from threats emanating from a challenging state or group of states. Both forms of security cooperation bind states to act in concert with respect to threats presented by other states. The emergence of non-state actors such as terrorist or extremist organizations challenges traditional forms of collective security. Threats from political extremism, terrorism, and outlaw organizations have grown in visibility during the past decade in the countries of Eurasia. The terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing global war on terrorism have given added impetus to the Eurasian inter-state cooperation in confronting non-traditional threats and challenges from non-state actors. Bearing in mind the theory of collective security, this article analyzes threats posed by non-state actors with respect to Eurasian collective security organizations including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures, and the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization. The article concludes that the effectiveness of these organizations at achieving stated objectives depends upon their capacity to adopt new criteria of effectiveness.