Midterm Assignment: The Evolving Terrorist Threat

Midterm Assignment
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Midterm Assignment
1 According to the "The Evolving Terrorist Threat:" article by Joshua Sinai, several examples of the types of warfare terrorists generally employ to achieve their objectives were listed. What were they, and how does each empower the terrorist?
Conflicts, military power, economic supremacy, socio-cultural changes, and technological advancements trends in the international community have contributed to the evolvement of terrorist tendencies. According to Sinai, terrorists are changing their attack approaches due to the application of competent countermeasures against terrorism. Consequently, evolving terrorist threats have changed emergency management and prevention caused by terrorism. Sinai (2007) has expounded ways that terrorists have adopted to accomplish their objectives.
Notably, terrorist organizations apply different warfare tactics to maximize the set objectives. For instance, Sinai has highlighted the convectional low impact that includes the use of military practices like bombing s and shooting. The low impact warfare has undergone changes through training and radicalization of the military that has already undergone training. According to Sinai (2007), these attacks have few victims and could be used against soft targets. Radicalization has led to mass shootings in churches, schools, or public transit buses. These attacks can be used in creating awareness, testing loyalty among potential terrorists, or targeting specific targets.
Sinai (2007) has also expounded on conventional high impact attacks as part of evolving warfare. Chemical energy is used in the application of conventional weapons like cluster munitions, missiles, and bombs. Convectional high impacts weapons have been applied in most terror attacks to cause mass deaths and damages. An example is twin tower attacks in New York and train station attacks in Europe.
Lastly, weapons of mass destruction have also been explained in Sinai's article. These weapons include radiological, nuclear, biological, and chemical. Importantly, continued research has facilitated the evolution of weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, security and specialized care should be emphasized while handling weapons of mass destruction due to their potential for mass destruction.
2 According to Gerstein, the general agreement now exists that terrorists are "rational" actors. Their actions may not be understood by their victims or the governments and law enforcement agencies that attempt to deal with these threats, but they are far from random irrational acts. Choose a side of this argument and support it with a minimum of three different references.
Terrorism can occur from different perspectives, including religion, state, domestic, international, and ideology. Terrorists have set objectives that lead to their actions. For instance, political ideologies can be used to facilitate terrorism whereby terrorists are used to airing their views. According to Nalbandov (2013), politically rational terrorism has occurred in most regions whereby political ideologies are the main c...