CIAO DATE: 08/2010
Volume: 8, Issue: 4
Fall 2009
Countering Air Terrorism (PDF)
Stanisław Zajas
Air terrorism is an international phenomenon, and one that is not at all new to the global scene: the first example of a politically-motivated jetliner hijacking happened in July 1968, and the first bomb attack on board a plane occurred in May 1949. Until 1967, the number of terrorist attacks directed against civilian aviation was minimal. From 1967-77, however, the frequency of these terrorist attacks increased rapidly.
U.S. Climate Change Policy: A New Chance for Leadership (PDF)
Samiksha Nair
U.S. climate change policy has been glacial in its progress over the past fifteen years, as its development has been subject to significant economic and political forces. Even though there has been a gradually narrowing global consensus in the great debate on climate change, a distinct impression exists that the United States, as one of the principal producers of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world, has delayed signing on to the leading international accords that seek to reduce and control their harmful effects.
Political Dimensions of the Northern Afghanistan Resupply Routes (PDF)
Gregory Gleason
A series of insurgent attacks in Pakistan targeting U.S./NATO supply lines took place during the latter half of 2008 and early 2009. As much as 75 percent of the cargo to support military operations and development programs in Afghanistan previously had been shipped through Pakistan, passing through a small number of precarious transport corridors, constrained by chokepoints and subject to disruption. As a result of insurgent attacks, carriage of supplies through the Khyber Pass along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was repeatedly interrupted for brief periods. These events in Pakistan shifted Allied attention from the southern routes to Afghanistan's northern access routes. The existing transit routes for supplies entering Afghanistan from the north passed across European and Eurasian countries and then through the Central Asian countries. This combination of port, air, rail, and road facilities came to be referred to within the framework of Afghanistan's normalization operations as the NDN-the "Northern Distribution Network."
P. Cornell
The past several years have seen a renewed interest in the confluence of energy security and national security policy. Defining the intersection between such wideranging policy areas has been predictably inconsistent, and highly dependent on respective national and agent-based interests. At both national and multinational levels, conflicting objectives and definitions have driven confused attempts to develop singular "energy security" policies within an international security context.
Russia's Asymmetric Wars in Chechnya since 1994
Martin Malek
Historically, symmetrical warfare was not the norm, but rather a European anomaly. Today's protracted low-intensity wars seem to point back towards the era of asymmetrical warfare. This development is obviously closely linked to the phenomenon of state failure in Third World countries, in southern regions of the former USSR, and in the Western Balkans.
Enhancing Diplomatic Effectiveness: A Common-Sense Risk Management Approach to Counter-terrorism (PDF)
Raphael Perl
This journal issue contains articles on air terrorism and the role of diplomacy in counterterrorism efforts. It examines US climate change policy and explores the relations between energy and national security. A contribution assesses the logistic aspect of military operations in Afghanistan, while a further article studies asymmetric warfare in the case of the Chechnya conflict.