International Security and the Liberal World Order--Fall '23

For this week’s post I will be responding to the article, “Critical Infrastructure Protection: Requirements for the 21st Century.” Published in 2015, this predicts and addresses the problems with the ever growing dependence on technology the United States and the world has.

The critical infrastructure consists of both physical and virtual systems that apply to a wide array of sectors for the United States. Certain sectors are crucial to our national security such as energy, transportation, communication, water, financial, and transportation. Any threat to these sectors can have a drastic effect on the American way of life. An attack on these would be a strategic and complex move by any adversary and has become common in the 21st century.

One of the most famous attacks in the 21st century was Stuxnet. This was a computer worm from 2010 that targeted the nuclear program in Iran. It was believed to be created by the United States and Israeli intelligence services who shares a common fear of Iran and their pursuit of nuclear armament. It was designed to destroy the centrifuges that are integral for the processing of uranium. It was estimated that Stuxnet set the program back by two years.

If we can do this to someone, it can be done to us. I believe this will be the future of passive aggressive warfare. If countries can successfully execute anonymous cyber attacks on infrastructure, trust among nations will suffer. It is crucial for the United States to lead the world in cyber defense so Stuxnet or worse does not happen to us.

“How Climate Change Is Fuelling the U.S. Border Crisis” looks at the massive influx of environmental refugees who are coming to seek refuge in America. Global climate change is another factor we have to look at when discussing international security, as migration crises and border security crises play into a country’s stability.  Climate change affects food security, and when people are unable to get food or even farmers are unable to work, as pointed out in the reading, they decide to move away. In a previous class, we  mentioned the United Nations many departments which includes the Environment Programme, a program that looks at the environment and it’s issues on a global scale. We also looked at the inefficiency or faults of the United Nations, which I would like to re-examine. When it comes to tackling global climate change and the increasing amount of environmental refugees, there is no better international organization to deal with this than the United Nations. The United Nations 1951 Convention gave definition and recognition of a refugee and their legal protection and rights. However, the terminology fails to recognize contemporary migrants, such as economic and environmental migrants. When we have people fleeing their country because  climate change has devastated the stability of their nation, we must recognize them and grant them rights.

Global climate change has disproportionately affected countries in the Global South, but it has also been increasing the frequency of catastrophic natural disasters in the West. We’ve seen multiple deadly hurricanes in the past decade, being more and more common. There’s also been frequent heatwaves in Europe, and the US, in major cities that were less likely to feel the warmth. This past summer felt like the hottest yet, with it being in the high 90’s at 8 pm at night. There seems to be a disconnect with environmental refugees especially with Americans, when we are one of the biggest carbon polluters, yet turn a blind eye to Global South countries who face deadly cyclones and similar extreme weather changes. These Global South nations are smaller carbon polluters, and are less prepared to deal with the increasing frequency of extreme natural disasters.

Countries like Tuvalu are sinking and have urged other nations to help them, as exhibited by a Tuvaluan politician, Simon Kofe, giving a global climate conference speech while standing in the now shallow sea to highlight Tuvalu’s sinking land. Meanwhile nations like China and the United States are using this to further their agenda, with increasing their military presence in the Pacific. Even when countries are sinking and people are facing displacement, the global powers are more concerned with spreading their influence across nations. When they could do this, by helping their allies and introducing policies that tackle climate change, which affects everyone. When we first discussed multilateralism, one of the solutions to return the US to its former global power was for them to rebuild their relationship with their allies and spread their influence. 

I wrote my research paper on modern terrorism and I learned quite a lot about it. For starters, political theorist David Rapoport describes the rise of modern terrorism to come in four waves. The first wave was anarchism, the second being fascism or ethno-nationalism, third being communism and now we are experiencing the fourth wave of religious fundamentalism. When it comes to nuclear terrorism, I’m pleasantly surprised that a major incident involving a WMD or a dirty bomb has yet to occur, but the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack grows more possible as rouge states manage to obtain nuclear material. For example, when ISIS captured Mosul, they stole nuclear material from the local university to propel their ambitions of making a dirty bomb.

Additionally, if Iran is allowed to create a nuclear bomb, I fear that they will distribute it to the vast network of terrorist groups that it controls. For this reason, I am highly against the idea of an Iranian nuclear deal with the United States. However, there may be additional complexities involved in that specific diplomatic situation that I am ignorant of. Regarding cyber terrorism, I believe that the implications of such attacks cause a great deal of psychological harm for the victims. The fact that terrorists use cyber warfare to acquire classified information, hinder economic progress, and dox individuals is a serious national security concern despite there not being many deaths or casualties.

Finally, I believe that a new form of terrorism has emerged as a branch of cyber terrorism; I call it psychological terrorism. This typically involves the use of the internet (specifically, but not limited to social media) to post grotesque videos of slaughter or aftermath thereof of a terrorist attack. This was commonly used by ISIS as they spread videos of barbaric executions. It is also being used by Hamas because they are sharing evidence of the atrocities they have committed against Israel on October 7th. I would also consider Hamas use of propaganda as psychological terrorism. The reason I make this claim is because they have effectively brainwashed some members of western society into believing that what they have done was not a war crime and even morally justified. They have even taken it a step further by getting some legacy media brands to unequivocally regurgitate any false information that is given to them by Hamas. Psychological terrorism has extremely terrifying effects, not only does it instill fear, but it may also turn the targeted population against each other; just as Hamas has turned hundreds of thousands of Westerners into antisemites.

Terrorism is the calculated use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. For decades, terrorism has been linked with muslim people, especially after 9/11. But I do not think that terrorists have any religion, only violence is their religion. I still wonder who are the masterminds behind each attack and what words they use to brainwash young guns in the name of “Zihad” that they forget everything and start man slaughtering drum rolls.

In the past, we have seen these terrorist organisations or states had access to highly advanced weapons like AK47, Eagle guns, hand grenades, suicide bombs. Interestingly, these terrorists or the young men and women are highly educated and belong to well to do families. They are so well organised and precise that their attacks are difficult to predict. Terrorism could grow much worse with terrorists’ access to biological and chemical agents as well as nuclear materials becoming more widespread. As I have mentioned earlier that organisations like Lashkar – E – Tayibba, ISIS employ highly educated and smart agents. However, recently number of terrorist attacks have declined. There could be two reasons behind it : 1 Governments have successfully identified and eradicated the king pins behind the attacks or the demands of these terrorists have been fulfilled. Nonetheless, there is no guarantee that they will not rise again.

Week 11

In our current era, terrorism has slowly switched forms from an organizational network in the 20th century to an independent “lone wolf” archetype of terrorism. The reading for this week’s class shows the disorganized structure of global terrorism and the access to the Internet and technology that make it increasingly difficult to pinpoint who would lead such attacks. Combs 201’s article gives insight into these trends and a hypothesis of what could lead to this category of terrorism.

The world is currently in the midst of the war on terrorism; however, this is not a war on one organization structure; splintered ideologies diverging from extremist groups decentralize the structure of these organizations. IDeologies are spread through the internet as propaganda and disinformation, calling for extreme attacks in solidarity with the terrorist group’s mission. These ideologies influence men, Women, and young adults to act as “lone wolves” and orchestrate independent terrorist attacks. Suicide bombings, car attacks, bombings, and chemical attacks have been seen all over the world. Terrorist organizations are more financed and increasingly loosely structured, allowing individuals to be inspired to spread pain without the explicit instruction of these organizations. With the improvement in technology and illustrative training manuals, the access to perform these attacks has a rising influence on large swaths of people, similar to a virus spreading. The Internet is a database that allows the terrorist organization to prop up different loosely linked websites, allowing its spread to be effective but decentralized enough not to be linked to a common source. One website may be shut down, and another may pop up almost immediately. These websites are also protected by firewalls and source protection, which are not necessarily found on Google or a search engine. Shutting down the internet is not a solution, as there are group chats, telegram chats, and spam links that help fund these structures.

The war on terrorism can be seen as a war on a virus, spreading and seeping into our lives. The recognition of that could help with deterrence and community support. Recognizing that these potential terrorists are within our community spreads awareness and empathy. Terrorism does not have an endpoint; however, more awareness and increased empathy for our common humanity could deter future disasters. There is no clear winner in these types of attacks, but there is a lot of pain and grief associated. As the article quotes, “The end doesn’t justify the means.

When talking about the possibility of a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons (or a dirty bomb), one of the readings for this week mentions that such an act was “long overdue”. That text was written some twenty years ago.
It might have been pure chance that has prevented a nuclear terrorist attack from happening until today. I do not believe that is the case, however.
For sure part of the explanation resides in the fact that the quality of intelligence related to terrorist acts has greatly improved since the beginning of the century. The scrutiny of financial transactions has also increased considerably (as well as the level of information/intelligence exchange between the various national security agencies and tax services). It is also true, on the other hand, that the collapses of the national governments of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Egypt gave rise to numerous new terrorist groups.
I do think there is another important element at play when we try to explain the absence of nuclear terrorist attacks: cost benefit analyses performed by terrorist organizations. The logistics and financial constraints of such an attack are very large, especially in the case of nuclear weapons. Most terrorist organizations (if not all of them) lack the technical expertise to manipulate such weapons – and the number of people and financial resources needed for such an operation would make it very hard to avoid detection by intelligence services. Even a dirty bomb would require important logistical resources (and would result in a much less “spectacular” act).
Another type of terrorist attack has become, unfortunately, much more common since the first years of the war on terror: coordinate attack by many small groups of terrorists (on even individual terrorists) using much more easily obtained weapons, such as rifles, machine runs or even automobiles and SUVs (that can be used to overrun pedestrians).The attacks in Paris are a good example of this type of practice. The Hamas attacks in South Israel follows more or less the same playbook. These attacks also take a long time to plan and might be detected by intelligence services. But they are much cheaper, and since they are perpetrated by small cells acting independently, much harder to prevent.

Individuals that become terrorists are based on trauma, poverty, lack of education, mental illness, ideological commitments, social networks or social bonds like friendships, family, or community connections. Terrorism in our times is a trend towards a level of resources, training, and ingenuity.(1)

In 2014, in response to concerns about ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ returning home, the UN passed the resolution 2178, defining the term and condemning violent extremism, expressing concern about the use of the Internet to incite others to commit terrorist acts and requiring countries to prevent the entry or transit of individuals believed to be traveling for terrorist related purposes. It also requires countries to prevent and suppress the recruiting and financing of foreign fighters.

 The Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “we must also tackle the underlying conditions that provide violent extremist groups the opportunity to take root.” Not all these individuals are ignorant. Some are educated and well connected, but for some their ideology drives them to extreme actions.

By using the Internet, the structure of international terrorist groups, is a flat organizational structure made up of many semi-independent cells capable of ascending attacks with little or no direction from or approval by a central leadership. Today Al Qaeda cells are operating in dozens of countries without always having direction from the central leadership. (ii) They do operational control by video messages with little or no direct contact by the organizations’ leader command. This decentralized organizational structure encourages the rise of local leaders and the general rise of the radical Islamic jihadist movement in various parts of the world. Since there is not one pole, the world gets complicated and decentralization makes things to go slower for the fighters of terrorism.

(i)(ii) Banks_Nevers_Wallerstein_2008_Chapter1, “Combating Terrorism.”