In his first formal response to the events of September 11, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush sought to reassure a nation abruptly and harshly confronted by one of the most horrifying and formidable threats of our age: terrorism. What is terrorism? Common understanding of this term is far too vague, broad, and simplistic. Terrorism is widely characterized, for example, as the “weapon of the weak,” as “violence for effect,” or as “violence for political purposes.” Terrorism may be all of these things, but so are many other forms of violence. Further obscuring the issue is that far too many...

A number of recent developments in global politics have helped shape an entirely new type of global system. These developments have led to the replacement of the old global order by a new global disorder, the emergence of which illustrates the important principle of change in global systems. In order to grasp the nature of that change, it is first necessary to understand: (1) the basic types of global systems, and (2) the basic types of global actors which populate those systems.

Global systems have traditionally been classified according to the number of system “poles,” or power centers, which exist...

The thorough transformation of the global system roughly parallels the dramatic evolution of terrorism. Just as nation-states once functioned as supreme actors dominating a highly structured global order, the typical terrorist organization once operated within the clearly defined borders of a single nation-state. Since the first rumblings of the new global disorder, however, nation-states have had little choice but to grudgingly and awkwardly share the global stage with relatively new types of actors. One such new type of actor is the transnational organization, and one of the most significant examples is the transnational terrorist organization.

The transformation of the old...

The new global disorder is rich with irony, paradox, and contradiction. On the one hand, the dawning of the twenty-first century has been hailed as a period of increasing “globalization.” On the other hand, the advent of the millennium is condemned as an era of renewed “tribalization.” Globalization is the technological and cultural shrinking of the global community, leading to the presumed emergence of some broad form of global identity, or even global citizenship. Tribalization, on the other hand, is the fragmentation of nation-state populations along relatively narrow ethnic, religious, or other such “tribal” lines.

In his provocative and highly...

The september 11, 2001, suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are nothing less than the bloodiest terrorist outrage in world history. Most Americans, and many citizens in much of the rest of the world, hoped, and reasonably expected, that the end of the cold war and the dawning of a new millennium might bring forth a safer and more peaceful world. In point of fact, however, we now dwell in a far more dangerous and violent global environment. Throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ethnoterrorism has brought frequent horrors to the world. Yet religious...

The march 20, 1995, chemical attack against the Tokyo subway system was a watershed event in the history of terrorism. This single terrorist act aroused a new kind of collective horror from which, it seems, no one is immune. Granted, this was by no means even close to being the most deadly of recent terrorist attacks. Nor, for that matter, was the Tokyo subway attack the first instance of chemical terrorism. Nevertheless, the Tokyo incident, and the anthrax attacks of late 2001, have compelled us all to grudgingly accept an entirely new perspective—not merely toward terrorism, but toward our...

It is excruciatingly difficult to “conclude” a book about a global threat now unimaginably more ominous than when writing on that very book began. Yet that is the situation facing the author of the book which you now hold in your hands. As the new year of 2004 commences, the worldwide threat of transnational terrorism seems like the crest of an immense new wave of global disorder. On September 11, 2001, the world’s sole superpower experienced the horror of a vicious war waged against—and within—her own homeland. The final death toll—3,056 lives lost in New York City,...