New terrorism Vs. Old terrorism
New terrorism is not really new, but there are some new trends in contemporary terrorism. David Tucker makes a judgment on this concept in his article, What’s new about the new terrorism and how dangerous is it? which was published in 2001 in the Terrorism and Political Violence journal. The main purpose of the article is to decide whether terrorism today should be called new and why (Tucker, 2001). Tucker also researches if today’s terrorist groups pose more of a threat than old groups (Tucker, 2001). One characteristic new terrorism has is networked groups. Tucker explains “the information revolution, by lowering the cost of communication, allows organizations to push functions outside of a controlling hierarchical …show more content…
While terrorist groups in the 1970’s to 1980’s were hierarchical, there were groups in the 1940’s that were networked similarly to the new terrorist groups today (Tucker, 2001). Tucker then goes on to explore lethality of new terrorist groups. Tucker uses a data table from Patterns of Global Terrorism from the U.S Department of State. One table that Tucker uses divides the casualties and fatalities from terrorism in a particular period by the number of incidents in that period (Tucker, 2001:4). The author warns that this type of data has certain inconsistencies how the number of terrorist attacks parallels to wars, crises, and other events may not be the beginning of a trend (Tucker, 2001: 5). Another characteristic of new terrorism is religiously motivated groups. Tucker finds that mass casualty attacks are not just a religious occurrence. In today’s society, we can see that “even if religiously inspired terrorists do not have political goals, politics will not leave them alone” (Tucker, 2001:6). Tucker concludes new terrorism is not actually new, and what is new is not more dangerous than old terrorism (Tucker, 2001). What makes terrorism today distinct is their adaptivity and their …show more content…
Karl Rethemeyer analyze what characteristics make terrorist groups more or less lethal. Their main research question was, “Why are some terrorist groups so much more lethal than others?” (Asal and Rethemeyer, 2008:437). The main findings of the article are that religious ideology, control of territory, size and alliance ties all make terrorist lethality go up (Rethemeyer 2008:443). In contrary, Tucker states that religious terrorism doesn’t make a group ‘new’ or more lethal (Tucker, 2001).They also found that groups with ethno-nationalist goals could be just as violent as religious groups (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008:438). Asal and Rethemeyer learned that the age of a terrorist group is not correlated with lethality (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008: 444). The three authors disagree about the lethality of religious terrorism but agree that the age of a group doesn’t affect lethality (Asal and Rethemeyer, 2008; Tucker, 2001). Therefore, the lethality of a terrorist group is not necessarily dependent on how ‘new’ or ‘old’ a group is. I agree with both Asal and Rethemeyer and Tucker that terrorist group lethality isn’t determined by age. Al-Qaeda’s beginnings were in 1988 which is fairly recent, yet they have proved themselves to be lethal. I also agree with the findings that alliance ties and control of territory increase lethality. Al-Qaeda has man alliance ties in the middle east including Abu Sayyaf and the Taliban. Finally, I concur with the hypothesis dealing with
New terrorism is not really new, but there are some new trends in contemporary terrorism. David Tucker makes a judgment on this concept in his article, What’s new about the new terrorism and how dangerous is it? which was published in 2001 in the Terrorism and Political Violence journal. The main purpose of the article is to decide whether terrorism today should be called new and why (Tucker, 2001). Tucker also researches if today’s terrorist groups pose more of a threat than old groups (Tucker, 2001). One characteristic new terrorism has is networked groups. Tucker explains “the information revolution, by lowering the cost of communication, allows organizations to push functions outside of a controlling hierarchical …show more content…
While terrorist groups in the 1970’s to 1980’s were hierarchical, there were groups in the 1940’s that were networked similarly to the new terrorist groups today (Tucker, 2001). Tucker then goes on to explore lethality of new terrorist groups. Tucker uses a data table from Patterns of Global Terrorism from the U.S Department of State. One table that Tucker uses divides the casualties and fatalities from terrorism in a particular period by the number of incidents in that period (Tucker, 2001:4). The author warns that this type of data has certain inconsistencies how the number of terrorist attacks parallels to wars, crises, and other events may not be the beginning of a trend (Tucker, 2001: 5). Another characteristic of new terrorism is religiously motivated groups. Tucker finds that mass casualty attacks are not just a religious occurrence. In today’s society, we can see that “even if religiously inspired terrorists do not have political goals, politics will not leave them alone” (Tucker, 2001:6). Tucker concludes new terrorism is not actually new, and what is new is not more dangerous than old terrorism (Tucker, 2001). What makes terrorism today distinct is their adaptivity and their …show more content…
Karl Rethemeyer analyze what characteristics make terrorist groups more or less lethal. Their main research question was, “Why are some terrorist groups so much more lethal than others?” (Asal and Rethemeyer, 2008:437). The main findings of the article are that religious ideology, control of territory, size and alliance ties all make terrorist lethality go up (Rethemeyer 2008:443). In contrary, Tucker states that religious terrorism doesn’t make a group ‘new’ or more lethal (Tucker, 2001).They also found that groups with ethno-nationalist goals could be just as violent as religious groups (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008:438). Asal and Rethemeyer learned that the age of a terrorist group is not correlated with lethality (Asal and Rethemeyer 2008: 444). The three authors disagree about the lethality of religious terrorism but agree that the age of a group doesn’t affect lethality (Asal and Rethemeyer, 2008; Tucker, 2001). Therefore, the lethality of a terrorist group is not necessarily dependent on how ‘new’ or ‘old’ a group is. I agree with both Asal and Rethemeyer and Tucker that terrorist group lethality isn’t determined by age. Al-Qaeda’s beginnings were in 1988 which is fairly recent, yet they have proved themselves to be lethal. I also agree with the findings that alliance ties and control of territory increase lethality. Al-Qaeda has man alliance ties in the middle east including Abu Sayyaf and the Taliban. Finally, I concur with the hypothesis dealing with