State-Sponsored Terrorism Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Despite profound concerns over the growing lethality of terrorist acts committed by independent nonstate actors, far greater acts of destruction are possible when states assist terrorists. Indeed, many perceive that the most daunting threat facing society today is state assistance in terrorist acquisition of a weapon of mass destruction (WMD)—for example, a nuclear weapon.

A precise definition of state-sponsored terrorism is elusive because a universally accepted definition of terrorism does not exist. Nevertheless, most definitions of state-sponsored terrorism incorporate four features:

An action employing the deliberate use of violence or the threat of violence.
An action targeting noncombatants directly and indirectly. The former are the immediate victims of the act; the latter is the larger audience that the action is designed to intimidate, threaten, or coerce.
An action directly undertaken by a nonstate actor. While such a group is linked to and may be influenced by a state(s), it possesses a leadership and decision-making body that is separate from any state.
An action supported, in some fashion, by a state. Support can come in the form of financial backing, supplies, logistics, networking opportunities, intelligence sharing, training, diplomatic protections, physical basing of terrorists, or safe havens.

States have a long history of employing irregular forces to destabilize and intimidate their opponents. The primary advantage of using these forces is that they provide state officials with the ability to deny involvement in violent actions against their opponents. Some states have pursued the sponsorship of terrorism as a cheaper alternative to conventional armed forces. Weaker states also have used clandestine backing of nonstate actors as a weapon against opponents who possess stronger military and political power. When viewed through contemporary portrayals of terrorism—a term that only came into use in the last eighteenth century—some of these historical episodes fulfill many of today’s definitions of state-sponsored terrorism. Russia’s assistance to Slavic revolutionary groups in the eighteenth century is frequently portrayed as an antecedent to what is commonly referred to today as state-sponsored terrorism. The peak era of state-sponsored terrorism was the cold war, during which both superpowers—the Soviet Union and the United States—engaged in sponsorship of what many perceive to be terrorism. The former, along with some of its satellite states, most notably East Germany, funded, trained, and equipped terrorists active in Europe and the Middle East. In the 1970s, the United States financed right-wing terrorist paramilitary units in Chile as they sought to remove its leader from office. Similarly, in the 1980s, the United States offered extensive support to the Nicaraguan Contras who battled in opposition to the Sandinista regime. Most experts agree that some of the Contras’s actions are best defined as terrorism.

Following the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, state support of terrorism became more circumspect. However, important exceptions to this trend existed. Most important was the ruling Taliban government that allowed al-Qaida to base itself in Afghanistan from 1996 until late 2001 when both were ejected by U.S. military forces. Moreover, states such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Syria were accused of using violent proxies to pursue their goals on occasion throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century.

Western nations in 2010 continue to direct their concerns with state-sponsored terrorism toward Iran and Syria. Both of these states are thought to offer Hezbollah—a Shia Islamist organization based in Lebanon—financial support and weapons. Suspicions that Iran’s nuclear power program belies its true intent of fabricating nuclear weapons have led to concerns over its sponsorship of Hezbollah as well. Thus, despite an overall decline in state sponsorship of terrorism, apprehensions today primarily revolve around terrorist acquisition of a state-supplied WMD.

State sponsorship of terrorism has had a large impact on international security. It has been used to topple governments and weaken states. In the twenty-first century, fears that states would assist their terrorist clients in obtaining WMD have fueled U.S. governmental action designed to change governing regimes, most notably in Iraq in 2003.

Bibliography:

Blair, Charles. “Jihadists and Nuclear Weapons.” In Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Growing Threat, edited by Gary Ackerman and Jeremy Tamsett. New York:Taylor and Francis, 2009.
Kegley, Charles W., Jr., ed. International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.
Kemp, Geoffrey. America and Iran: Road Maps and Realism. Washington, D.C.: The Nixon Center, 1998.
Jenkins, Brian M. “Defense Against Terrorism.” Political Science Quarterly 101, no. 5 (1986): 773–786.
O’Ballance, Edgar. Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism, 1979–95: The Iranian Connection. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
Reich, Bernard, Jennifer B. Reich, and Michael Buczek. “State-Sponsored Terrorism.” In Gale’s History Behind the Headlines, vol. 5, 309–323. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2002.
Satloff , Robert B., ed. War on Terror: The Middle East Dimension. Washington, D.C.:Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2002.
Zimmerman, Tim. “The American Bombing of Libya: A Success for Coercive Diplomacy?” Survival 29 (1987): 195–214.

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