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Today

1. SAC results2. Holiday Homework – Discussion3. Cold War – Recap4. Terrorism

a) Definitionsb) Examples

Cold War

USA USSR‘The West’ ‘The East’Capitalist CommunistDemocracy Dictatorship

• End of WWII, power vacuum left with two major superpowers, USA and USSR.

• Partition of Germany (Berlin Wall)• Proxy Wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc)

End of the Cold War

• Gorbachov & perestroika, glastnost.• German reunificaiton in 1990, avoiding a

civilian uprising.• Bi-Polar to Uni-Polar world.• US troops stationed around the world.• Breakdown of state control in some areas of

the world leads to ethnic conflicts (Former Yugoslavia as an example)

Changing Nature of Conflict

• This is one of the main areas of study for this unit.

Terrorism

• Definitions

• There is NO ONE accepted definition of terrorism.

• Why?

Some definitions to consider…

• U.S. Department of Defence: "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." In other words, terrorism is violence designed to advance some cause by getting a government to change its policies or political behaviour.

Some definitions to consider…

• Iranian religious scholar: Ayatulla Taskhiri in a paper delivered at a 1987 international terrorism conference called by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, argued a definition of terrorism as “an act carried out to achieve an inhuman and corrupt objective and involving threat to security of any kind, and in violation of the rights acknowledged by religion and mankind." Countries, by this definition, can be guilty of terrorism.

Some definitions to consider…

• League of Nations, 1937: All criminal acts directed against a State intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or persons in the general public.

Some definitions to consider…

• Alex P. Schmid of United Nations Office for the Prevention of International Terrorism: Act of terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime.

Some definitions to consider…

• James M. Poland, professor of criminal justice at California State University: Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience.

Also…

• State v. Non-State based terrorism

1. What are some similarities and differences between these definitions?

2. Why does the US not recognise state based terrorism?