The American "War on Terror" has not only mobilized our military and law enforcement communities, but also our publishers and printing presses. The literature on international security and terror has, to offer an awkward metaphor, exploded in the roughly four years since September 2001, and now nourishes a variety of new or substantially reorganized university and research programs in Homeland Security, WMD Terror, Politics and Religion, and Regional (especially Middle East and South Asian) Studies. But compared with this avalanche of incisive and often argumentative readings on the American dimension of terror, discussions of other countries' experiences and perspectives remain more modest in number and scope. This volume of comparative essays was conceived as a partial remedy to the literary lacuna.

This book offers a thoughtful analysis of the international and domestic political impact of the global war on terrorism through the prism of US security relations in the wake of 9/11. Focused on regional and country-specific responses and consequences, the book considers the change and continuity in the international system.

The 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington prompted a "global war on terror" that led to a significant shift in the balance of executive-legislative power in the United States towards the executive at the expense of the Congress. In this volume, seasoned scholars examine the extent to which terrorist threats and counter-terrorism policies led uniformly to the growth of executive or Government power at the expense of legislatures and parliaments in other political systems, including those of Australia, Britain, Canada, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, and Russia. The contributors question whether the "crises" created by 9/11 and subsequent attacks, led inexorably to executive strengthening at the expense of legislatures and parliaments. The research reported finds that democratic forces served to mitigate changes to the balance of legislative and executive power to varying degrees in different political systems. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of Comparative Government Politics and International Politics.

Numerous democratic nations have been singled out by NGOs for brutality in their modus operandi, for paying inadequate attention to civilian protection or for torture of prisoners. This book deals with the difficulties faced when conducting asymmetric warfare in populated areas without violating humanitarian law.

This book offers a valuable study of the nature and development of terrorism in all its forms in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Powerfully argued and thought-provoking, "Terrorism and Global Disorder" examines whether the world changed as a result of the events of 11 September 2001. It argues that the significance of the assault on America has been overstated and that terrorism with a global reach is best seen as a consequence of other, more fundamental changes. The author contends that the development and global outreach of terrorism stem from the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the superpower hegemony, aided by the spread of international technology and communications. He also examines the consequences of the political exploitation of terrorism and underlines the dangers created by the politicization of counter-terrorism for partisan purposes. Above all, this stimulating book attempts to place terrorism - now a word full of nuance and meaning and denoting a phenomenon which occupies so much government time and money - within the context of history and current affairs. It is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the causes and nature of terrorism.

This edited volume is an innovative analysis of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, security and counter-terrorism policy, specifically within the context of ending the now infamous War on Terror. The book adopts a comparative approach, analysing change and continuity in US foreign policy during Obama’s first term in office vis-à-vis the foreign policy of the War on Terror, initiated by George W. Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Despite being heralded as an agent of change, since his election in 2008 Obama has faced criticism that his foreign policy is effectively the same as what went before and that the War on Terror is still alive and well. Far from delivering wholesale change, Obama has been accused of replicating and even reinforcing the approach, language and policies that many anticipated he would reject. With contributions from a range of US foreign policy experts, this volume analyses the extent to which these criticisms of continuity are correct, identifying how the failure to end the War on Terror is manifest and explaining the reasons that have made enacting change in foreign policy so difficult. In addressing these issues, contributions to this volume will discuss continuity and change from a range of perspectives in International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of US foreign policy, security studies and American politics.

Averting Global War examines major regional disputes and conflicts throughout the world as they impact upon both American domestic and foreign policy. These include: The ongoing "war on terrorism"; NATO enlargement to Russian borders; US intervention in Iraq; US confrontation with Iran; the feud between Israel and the Palestinians; the widening "zone of conflict" from Central Asia to sub-Saharan Africa; the global ramifications of North Korea's nuclear program and China's claims to Taiwan; Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" and the "war on drugs" in Latin America, the domestic socio-political effects of Latin American immigration upon the US. The book's goal is to articulate an irenic American strategy intended to resolve, or at least transform, a number of these disputes and conflicts so as to prevent them from further "deepening" or "widening"--and to avert the real possibility of major power confrontation involving both clandestine and overt methods of warfare.

The book presents a timely assessment of both the human rights costs of the 'War on Terror' and the methods used to wage and relentlessly continue that War.

Considers the principal members of Coalition of the Willing in Afghanistan &Iraq: the United States, Britain & Australia. Despite significant cultural, historical and political overlap, the War on Terror was nevertheless rendered possible in these contexts in distinct ways, drawing on different discourses, narratives of foreign policy, identity.

Terrorism cannot be treated as a monolithic threat. Moreover, as much as we may wish to focus on the terror tactics and terrorist means, we cannot overlook the ends. In fact, good policy can only be crafted with an understanding of the terrorist strategy; that is, how terrorists integrate their means to secure their goals, given their perception of the security environment. The groups covered in this book change and evolve. While their governments must take aggressive actions to secure their populations against attacks, those governments that recognize the real grievances can simultaneously take action that addresses those grievances. This two-pronged approach simultaneously bolsters state legitimacy across the ethnic and majority populations, while demonstrating state effectiveness regarding insecurity. The authors argue that the best way for states to win legitimacy vis-a-vis terrorists is by adhering to liberal democratic values, cooperating with other states, and applying prudent counterterrorist tactics. Inter-state cooperation, which affects domestic and foreign policies, requires some convergence of political cultures among those cooperating states. This book begins by analyzing five hotspot situations and their regional effects: the Basques in Spain, the ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, the Kurds in Turkey, the Chechens and Russia; and the Palestinians, Israel, and a future Palestinian state. These cases shed some light on how we should understand, characterize, and categorize terrorism, and they provide insights into the concepts of political legitimacy, liberal democracy, political culture, and political community. As the United States assesses its homeland defense posture, it must resist any temptation to weaken its liberal democratic values, and, as a superpower, it must encourage other states to adhere to liberal democratic values as well. Liberal democracy is a security imperative in today's global security environment.