Combating Terrorism in a Globalized World.

摘要

This work by a group of students attending the National Defense University's National War College (NWC) was born of the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Following the attack, a group of 26 NWC students from various services, agencies, and backgrounds decided to apply their education and collective experience in an unconstrained manner to study this national security threat and develop a plausible strategy to combat it. Their time at the University had been intended to be one of study and reflection to prepare for leadership challenges ahead. Instead, they accepted a new challenge and managed to contribute to national security strategy even while continuing their course of study. Although much of their thinking is conventional wisdom today, it was novel in the immediate aftermath of September 11, and their original ideas spawned a more comprehensive government review of this threat. Consequently, the Student Task Force on Combating Terrorism was invited to participate in the Interagency Working Group that was drafting the National Strategy to Combat Terrorism. Many of their ideas and concepts were incorporated into the strategy. This paper reviews the nature and threat of global terrorism, examines potential global implications of such a threat if not confronted, and proposes a strategy to combat terrorism. Terrorists' objectives are to unite the Islamic world against the United States and non- Muslim cultures, obtain weapons of mass destruction for both their status value and coercive power, destroy Israel and remove infidels from the Middle East, and establish a new global order dominated by those possessing a radical view of Islam. The 3-D Strategy of Abolishment proposed here seeks to abolish terrorism by defeating terrorist groups wherever they exist, deterring future terrorist acts and their sponsors, and diminishing the underlying causes of terrorism. An extensive bibliography is included.