The New Terrorism: Anatomy, Trends and Counter-Strategies (Regional Security Studies)

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington represented a true watershed in world history. It marked the most horrifically spectacular demonstration of the critical features of the new terrorism, including: sheer lethality; the unmistakably religious dimension; the peculiar networked organizational structure; greatly enhanced striking power; and a degree of continuity with previous secular, nationalistic forms. Small armed groups using low technology are able to make nonsense of the massed might of nations and their sophisticated conventional, nuclear and planned missile defense schemes. To examine the new dimensions of terrorism, a conference was organized in Singapore in late March 2002 that brought together a number of leading experts from a wide range of backgrounds from America, Europe and Asia, and the key findings are presented in this volume under the following headings: Anatomy of the New Terrorism; Terrorist Trends and Patterns in the Asia Pacific; Islam and Terrorism: Southeast Asian Perspectives; and Formulating Counter-Strategies.