Overview

In recent years, senior policy officials have highlighted increased signs of convergence between terrorism and unconventional (CBRN) weapons. Terrorism now involves technologies available to anyone, anywhere, anytime, deployed through innovative solutions. This indicates a new and more complex global security environment with increasing risks of terrorists trying to acquire and deploy a CBRN (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear) attack. This book addresses the critical importance of understanding innovation and decision-making between terrorist groups and unconventional weapons, and the difficulty in pinpointing what factors may drive violence escalation. It also underscores the necessity to understand the complex interaction between terrorist group dynamics and decision-making behaviour in relation to old and new technologies. Unconventional Weapons and International Terrorism seeks to identify a set of early warnings and critical indicators for possible future terrorist efforts to acquire and utilize unconventional CBRN weapons as a means to pursue their goals.It also discusses the challenge for intelligence analysis in handling threat convergence in the context of globalisation. The book will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies, counter-terrorism, nuclear proliferation, security studies and IR in general.

Full Product Details

Author:   Magnus Ranstorp ,  Magnus Normark
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.570kg
ISBN:  

9780415484398

ISBN 10:   0415484391
Pages:   212
Publication Date:   13 January 2009
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Detecting CBRN terrorism signatures – challenges and new approaches Part I: The status of CBRN terrorism research 1. Defining knowledge gaps within CBRN terrorism research Part II: Al-Qaeda motivations/incentives for CBRN terrorism 2. WMD and the four dimensions of al-Qaeda 3. Al-Qaeda’s thinking on CBRN: A case study Part III: CBRN, capacity-building and proliferation 4. Indicators of chemical terrorism 5. Capacity-building and proliferation: Biological terrorism 6. Terrorism and potential biological warfare agents 7. Influence diagram analysis of nuclear and radiological terrorism Part IV: CRBN and terrorism: Dilemmas of prediction? 8. Approaching threat convergence from an intelligence perspective 9. Terrifying landscapes: Understanding motivations of non-state actors to acquire and/or use weapons of mass destruction 10. Conclusion

Reviews

The volume's editors have assembled an important collection of papers originally presented at a 2007 workshop on these issues, held at the Swedish National Defence College... the volume's essays attempt to develop a new methodological framework that encompasses both the technical factors contributing to a terrorist organization's ability to use such weapons and the motivational factors that might drive it to plan and conduct such attacks. - Joshua Sinai, 'Terrorism Bookshelf: Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counterterrorism', Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2012)

Author Information

Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies, Swedish National Defence College, Stockholm

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