The threat to the U.S.

The Vietnam War had a major impact on the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The war helped to split the struggle for social justice at the very time that it was achieving its greatest successes. The factionalism over whether or not to support the war decimated the crusade for human equality.     

宗教对美国外交的影响

美国社会与宗教有着千丝万缕的联系,宗教的地位凸显,影响巨大.据不完全统计,10个美国人中有9个自称信仰上帝,美国历史上43位总统都是基督或天主教徒,其中39位是教会成员,其余4位也与教会关系密切.美国总统宣誓就职要把手放在<圣经>上,国会每届议会都要由牧师先祈祷再工作.     

Trends in Transnational Terrorism and Implications for U.S. National Security and U.S. Terrorism Risk Insurance Act

The unprecedented losses brought about by the attacks of 11 September 2001 have cast the issue of terrorism risk insurance into sharp relief. In particular, it has raised questions as to whether attacks on this scale are an insurable risk and the extent to which the private insurance industry is able and/or willing to price such risks independent of a Federal safety net. Although the Bush administration has committed to renew the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) to offset the human and materiel costs that might result from future cataclysmic terrorist strikes taking place on U.S. soil, it is not apparent that this legislative framework is relevant to the type of extremist contingencies that the United States is likely to face over the short-to-medium term. Any long-term solution to providing insurance in America will necessarily need to go beyond TRIA's existing framework by dropping the “foreign interest” designation for certified attacks; including some sort of supplemental program that includes mandatory coverage for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) assaults; and investigating ways to increase the take-up rates of terrorism insurance by lowering its cost to the customer. An oversight board mandated to evaluate the Act's performance and relevance to evolving terrorist trends would also be useful.     

Terrorism and the U.S. energy infrastructure

James DeFronzo, Revolutions &; Revolutionary Movements (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 336 pp. $59.95.

David Scott Palmer, Ed., Shining Path of Peru (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 271 pp. $45.00.

Stanley E. Spangler, Force and Accommodation in World Politics (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, August 1991).

James J. Wirtz, The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).

David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 260 pp. $35.     

Semi-Proxy Wars and U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy

On 4 February 2014, Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan (aka Al Qaeda Central) repudiated Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Ayman al-Zawahiri declared that al-Baghdadi and his newly formed Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) were no longer part of Al Qaeda's organization and Al Qaeda Central could not be held responsible for ISIL's behavior. It represents the first time that Al Qaeda Central has renounced an affiliate publicly. The announcement was driven by months of fighting between ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra, another Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. In fact, in Syria, Al Qaeda fighters are competing against each other for influence, as well as against other opposition groups, the Syrian regime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iraqi militiamen, and Lebanese Hezbollah. This chaotic, semi-proxy war is unlike any previous problem encountered, made even more challenging by the limited U.S. presence on-the-ground. More worrisome, this semi-proxy war also has spread beyond Syria. Similar dynamics have emerged in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon to a certain extent. This article argues that these dynamics necessitate a twist in U.S. counterterrorism strategy.