{"id":39730,"date":"2018-06-06T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T23:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39730"},"modified":"2018-06-06T09:01:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T23:01:43","slug":"the-decades-and-generations-of-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-decades-and-generations-of-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"The decades and generations of terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the second decade of the modern age of terrorism, it\u2019s a clich\u00e9 to say that the struggle will last decades. But even if a clich\u00e9 is stale, it can express a major truth.<\/p>\n

So the clich\u00e9 leads to the truism that this fight is about generations, not just decades. The truism is also stale\u2014yet, equally, it\u2019s a statement of a big, enduring reality.<\/p>\n

Strategic and political attention is stretched because the new age of terrorism stands beside the resurgence of old-fashioned power politics.<\/p>\n

States compete against states as the non\u2011state actors attack the state.<\/p>\n

We should be getting used to this dissonance because it\u2019s been the discordant script of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

Getting ready for this year\u2019s 17th Shangri-La security dialogue, I was sorting through files and out dropped a copy of the speech that Singapore\u2019s then senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew<\/a>, gave to the first International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) conference in Singapore in May\u00a02002. It struck me that the way I\u2019d marked up that speech for news yarns in\u00a02002 was exactly how I\u2019d write similar news stories today (a news headline can be an attempt to make fresh what history has already written).<\/p>\n

For all that we\u2019ve been through, LKY\u2019s speech served as a working text for much of what was discussed at the weekend. Back in 2002, Lee reflected that US\u2013China relations were central to Asia\u2019s strategic balance:<\/p>\n

As a rising power, China cannot be expected to acquiesce in the status quo if it is against its interests. As the pre\u2011eminent global power, US\u00a0interest is in the preservation of the status quo. This fundamental difference of interests cannot be wished away. To be sure, China is no longer revolutionary and the\u00a0US has never been reactionary. Conflict is not inevitable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then LKY turned to what was then the just\u2011arrived globalised age of terror:<\/p>\n

A Muslim terrorist is more potent operating transnationally than a communist terrorist. Malayan communists (which included Singaporeans) would not put their lives in the hands of Indonesian or Vietnamese communists. An obstacle to co\u2011operation between communists was ethnicity and nationalism. But Al\u2011Qaeda and similar Muslim terrorists share a deeply-felt sense of Islamic brotherhood that transcends ethnicity and national boundaries. Militant Islam feeds upon the insecurities and alienation that globalisation generates among the less successful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it happened, I was not the only one who\u2019d been re\u2011reading LKY. During the inevitable session on terrorism, an intellectual luminary of the IISS, Francois Heisbourg<\/a>, predicted that Shangri-La conferences decades from now will still be arguing about terrorism. His question: \u2018Will we have the strategic patience to deal with jihadi terrorism?\u2019<\/p>\n

The discussion of the significance and implications of the siege of Marawi was a debate about the way the threat keeps morphing.<\/p>\n

In its annual regional security assessment<\/a>, IISS began the Marawi chapter:<\/p>\n

On 23 October 2017, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) announced that it had formally ceased military operations in the city of Marawi, after months of clashes with pro\u2011Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, militants who had captured the city on 23\u00a0May. Sporadic fighting continued until mid\u2011November. By the end of the 154\u2011day siege, some 1,132\u00a0militants, soldiers, police and civilians had been killed, while 400,000\u00a0local inhabitants had fled. Marawi was left in ruins.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

IISS offered these judgements:<\/p>\n