Sociology

Should Great Powers Consider Terrorism to Be A ‘Considerable Threat’ To Global Order?
What is Modern Terrorism?
Before getting to understand the meaning of modern terrorism is it is important to try and understand what is meant by the word terrorism. The mention of terrorism usually elicits a lot of mixed reactions to different people. This is because; its definition usually differs from place to place depending on which side of the debate that one argues from. A terrorist in one perception can be viewed as a freedom fighter in another perception. Such contradictions are the ones which makes it impossible to have a single definition of terrorism. To coin up some of the definitions, terrorism can therefore mean the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence against civilians in order to attain goals which are political, religious or ideological in nature. This can be done through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear to people. (Aaron 19)

Modern terrorism can therefore be defined as the systematic use of hostile activities to create general fear in a population and thereby bring about a specific political objective with the use of modern technology of civilization and the network of Mass media, satellite TV. Such tools are mainly used to dissipate trauma imagery and disseminate fear to civilians.

Methods used by modern terrorists and their impacts
The modern wake of Terrorism began approximately during the second Half of the 20th Century. It is mainly rooted in Specific economic. Political and social conflicts. Though there is no clear time that indicates when the modern terrorism began, but there is one incident which experts indicate was the turning point. That incident occurred in March 20, 1995 during the Tokyo bombing where terrorists released e deadly nerve gas into the subway. The death toll in that tragedy was estimated at 10 and 5,000 injuries. The attack was mainly blamed on a religious terrorist group called Aum Shinrikyo.

Some of the methods that are used my modern terrorists involve great technologies which are usually backed up with worldwide networks and funded heavily.  They include methods such as the internet terrorism.  Also called cyber terrorism, internet terrorism came with the advent of modern high technologies including the computers which are more involved in the control of critical national infrastructure elements. In the advent of the Information Technology era complex national systems tend to pose a great risk for terrorists attacks. Such attacks are usually conducted using computer aided explosives. (Adams: 35) The internet has been linked to almost all the terrorist activities that have hit the world in the recent past. This is mainly because, the internet can be accessed anywhere in the world with little or zero regulation on what comes in and goes out. The internet has also billions of audiences all over the world meaning that a single message can reach all those people at a single time, unlike other mediums of communications. A scan conducted in the year 2004 revealed that there are thousands of websites which serve terrorists and their supporters.

The other method that terrorists use to accomplish their missions is through what is famously known as suicide bombing. Suicide bombing involves a person who has agreed to sacrifice his or her life to detonate a bomb which causes massive death and destruction in order to accomplish a certain mission for the sake of the organization. Suicide bombing has become extremely hard to deal with because there is no single way to identify them in advance unless there is a high technological investment in things like CCTV or bomb detectors. It is estimated that there are over 40% of active terrorist groups with people who are ready to volunteer to die for their cause. Other methods that they use include; assassinations, kidnapping and hijacking important people or even aircrafts.
( Acquaviva 87)

State actors of terrorism refer to coercive and violent activities which are directed by states to other states or other non-state actors. Non-state actors on the other hand refers to actors in terrorism activities who are not governments or states they include armed groups like the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) from Nigeria. They also include terrorist organizations such as the Al-Qaeda among others. Over the recent past most of the Non- state terrorist organizations have taken a religious twist with many of them launching attacks on countries like America and its allies who they perceive as anti-Islamic. Some of the major non-state actors of terrorism include the Al-Qaeda which is the largest terrorist group in the world today and it is led by Osama bin Laden. Others are the Taliban who are Located in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Islamist Jihad and the Alshabab who are factions of the larger Al-Qaeda Network. (Abuza 18) Some of the most brutal attacks that the world has ever witnessed have been executed by modern terrorists include: The 1974 September 8th where an explosion on the Trans World Airlines Boeing 707 in Greece killing 88 people, in 1983, A Lebanese suicide bomber attacked an American Marine Barracks in Beirut and killed 216 US soldiers, In August 1998, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed and 257 people were killed and 5,000 were injured. In September 11, 2001 Muslims extremists on a suicide mission hijacked four airlines and directed them to the word trade center and the pentagon. More than 2000 people were killed. Those are just but a few impacts that have been in the world over the last three decades only. Such attacks have greatly influence the actions of state actors. (AbuKhalil: 70) Most common reason that usually fire up state terrorism are usually championed by difference in ideology, political and even social factors the commonest forms of active state terrorism has occurred where democratic states go to war with non-democratic states which are mainly ruled by rogue leaders. A good example is Iraq under Sadam Hussein, Iran, and NorthKorea.(Dolnik2003)countries like the USA see such countries as threats to world peace and hence need to be controlled.

The nature of modern terrorism has changed over time from the old forms that the old terrorism had. First and foremost is that modern terrorism similarly to the old forms of terrorism, has been well planned and executed for example the September 11 attack on the twin towers was well planned.  This is because many people expected terrorism attacks to be conducted using weapons of mass destruction, but they used carefully planned simple tactics and operational surprise to affect one of the most deadly attacks in history. Modern terrorism usually has political motives which are accomplished using violent means for maximum damage and communicates a message to both their supporters and their enemies. (Aaron: 25)  

There are some differences that can be seen between new and old terrorism for instance the old terrorism were mainly politically motivated, this is because most of them seemed to support West Wing ideologies such as Marxism and Maoism and also Nationalism and separatism. Furthermore, the old terrorists were ready to negotiate this means that they promised to stop terrorism in exchange to concrete political compromises. This is not the case with modern terrorists. The old terrorist also did not feel any special esteem to religion on the contrary, to the new terrorists who fight in their gods’ name.

“So, the most striking difference of the "new" terrorists' attacks is the evolution of methods, put into use. Nerve gas attack in Tokyo and the use of civilian airliners as bombs on 11th of September prove that new terrorists will employ both traditional and unconventional means. As such, traditional methods to combat terrorism prove insufficient. This has created a new type of treat that is called "asymmetrical threat" (Rzayev 2005)

Asymmetrical warfare means a war between two conflicting sides which differ in military powers in a great way both tactically and strategically.( Crenshaw :77) Asymmetrical warfare is used to describe the conflicts that erupts in which the resources of two differing sides differs in essence and struggle and mainly attempt to exploit one another characteristics and weaknesses. Symmetrical warfare on the other hand is where two differing powers have similar military resources and power and usually rely on tactics that are overall similar with difference in  small details and execution/ terrorism can therefore be compared to both Asymmetrical and symmetrical warfare because, some terrorist organizations and states  usually apply similar tactics to effect their missions.
In conclusion, the world and more specifically the great powers need to consider terrorism to be a great danger to humanity. This is because a group of people rising up to put millions of innocent civilians in danger is unwarranted for even if it’s for a religious or a noble cause. The great powers and the world at large should therefore rise up and fight the common enemy which is terrorism and save the world from a possible apocalypse.