Problems of Terrorism in the Modern World

Introduction

The general position of considering terrorism as a rare and relatively remote threat was challenged by the terrorist acts on the territory of the United States on September 11, 2001. The brutal incidents, having been committed on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the crash victims in Pennsylvania forced the International Society to confront a grim new reality: Terrorist Organizations had an appropriate resource for the implementation of catastrophic attacks almost in each place of our Planet, even without an arsenal of sophisticated weapons.

9/11 became the decisive moment for the whole world to be concentrated on the topics of national as well as international security.

The developments within the current period of World History prove that terrorism is considered to be the most important danger of the 21st century.

US State Department listed 44 terrorist organizations in 2008 (Goldstein and Pevehouse, 2011).

In modern times, Boko Haram, Tamil Tigers, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and especially “Islamic State” play very significant roles even in deciding the scope of the foreign policy of leading superpowers.

The aggressive policy of Russia against Ukraine and the World Democratic Community points to the existence of states on the World political map, that conduct the policy of State Terrorism against civilian – peaceful populations, and innocent people. Furthermore, those states, for example, Russia, fund and supports different terrorist groups and illegal armed formations. United Nations, by Resolution 39/159 “Inadmissibility of the policy of State terrorism and any actions by States aimed at undermining the socio-political system in other sovereign States”, condemns any actions of state terrorism (UN, 1984).

In general, Terrorism represents one of the most serious problems which not only has become aggravated at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century but also has appeared, in fact, among the main security threats, especially in its new forms, which have several new directions. It is caused, first of all, by the level of technological development and possibilities to impact the world, therefore large-scale terrorist attacks can be conducted by a small group of people or even by one person. Secondly, in the modern world, the potential range of terrorist organizations (national and cultural symbols, government buildings, places of big congestion of people, etc.) and also types of weapons which can be used are various. The third, modern terrorists, or, by U. Lakyyuer's definition, terrorists of an era of postmodern, together with other criminal structures look for allies in public institutions that lead to corruption. Considerable sums are spent on bribery of officials and also the intelligence agencies, which are designed to prevent illegal activity (Chitadze, 2022).

Figure 1.

Most brutal terrorist attacks. New York, USA, September 11, 2001.

Source: https://zeenews.india.com/world/9/11-attacks-new-york-marks-19th-anniversary-of-the-dreadful-terror-attack-2308932.html

Terrorism by itself is not a new phenomenon. It has been known since Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. In the 19th century, terrorism is connected with anarchical and also nationalist organizations. To estimates of several authors, for example, R. Kidder, terrorism becomes an international problem in 1960th years. In the 1970-1980th years, the world faced a surge in terrorist operations in Europe (Lebedeva, 2011).

Despite the long-time existence of the terrorism phenomenon, from the theoretical position, it is quite complicated to give a concrete and final definition to this negative event. The matter is that the same actions are considered at the same time by the different parties as terrorism from one side and freedom fighting from the other side. For this reason, the attempts to define terrorism within the UN (and various criteria offered by the USA, Great Britain, and other countries) in general have not been crowned with success (Chitadze, 2022).