Educating Supporters and Nullifying the Effects of Terrorism on Society: The Best Deterrent and Defense

Transcription

1 , pp Educating Supporters and Nullifying the Effects of Terrorism on Society: The Best Deterrent and Defense James Pattison 1, Hakkyong Kim 2, Sungyong Lee 3, 1 Dept. of Police Administration, Keimyung University 1095 Dalgubeol-daero, Dalseo-gu, Daegu, Korea James.Pattison@kmu.ac.kr 2 Dept. of Convergence Security, Sungshin Women s University 2, Bomun-Ro 34Da-Gil, Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, Korea Corresponding Author: pocol@sungshin.ac.kr 3 Dept. of Police Administration, Keimyung University 1095 Dalgubeol-daero, Dalseo-gu, Daegu, Korea pol3845@kmu.ac.kr Abstract. Terrorism is a malignant threat to healthy thriving societies that oppose the ideologies that drive the terrorists. Answers to the problem and threat of terrorism are three-fold: deterrence, resistance, and response. Resilience to terrorism-induced trauma holds the key to defeating the effects of terrorism as well as deterring future acts. Deterrence founded upon healthy target society response to it is the best way to understand and approach terrorism and to educate supporters of terrorism that terror is a failed method. Organized terrorists fall into 3 categories: supporters, ideologue practitioners, criminals. Dissuading the supporters is the key to deterring organized terrorism. Supporters lose interest in terrorism when the effectiveness of the approach becomes too costly or is ineffectual. Societies that are resilient are the strongest lesson to educate rational calculating supporters: terrorism fails to bring desired change in resilient societies. The challenge for societies is to strengthen individuals and institutions that make society resilient. Keywords: Resilience, Terrorism response, Education, Deterrence 1 Introduction: What are we talking about? Resilience building combines government preparation, personal edification and business savvy to increase society s ability to sustain a catastrophe and return to the business of life. Resilience is good for society and a rational response to terrorism capable of exposing terrorism as emasculated of its activist effectiveness and even counter-productive to the goals of the movers of organized terrorism. Resilience deters terrorism at the source. ISSN: ASTL Copyright 2016 SERSC

2 Terrorism is a world institution--an expected form of political participation: it brings attention to the politically disenfranchised. In much the same way that the code of the street defines conflict in American inner-cities, organized terrorism scares people into self-pity and mindsets destructive to their own cultures and activities (socially, economically, and politically). Israel is victim of chronic terrorist aggression. America s experience with terrorism has been sparse. Israel has mechanisms to compensate for acts of terror, normalizing it, giving terrorism less recognition and certainly less effect upon society [1]. Israel is resilient [1][2]. America is just now taking a lesson from Israel and building societal resilience to complement its war on terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security is developing efforts to bolster businesses and local governments to absorb major traumatic events and effects and recover quickly with minimal life or property loss and minimal disruption of the ordinary course of life [3][4][5][6]. This is the building of resilience. Deterring terrorism lies in demonstration to supporters of terrorism that the purposes for the use of terror are thwarted [7]. Resilience is a key to taking the terror out of terrorism. 2 Terrorism is Warfare Aimed at the Minds of People Terrorist organizations have no statehood or national boundaries. Terror attacks are fluid in method, changing more quickly than targets can adapt to them simple. Against this a nation-state has no standard defense [7] [8]. Physical destruction of countries is not the aim of terrorism. Nor is widespread destruction of lives or property its purpose. Terrorism is about changing minds, policy, or gaining recognition. Terrorists are successful when targeted people, out of fear, opt for changes in their culture, their societies, or their political systems, or otherwise concede something to the terrorist organization s design, if not to the organization itself [7]. A frightened public spends resources to understand, counter, and defeat outside threats; disrupts normal economic activity; and changes its attitudes toward perceived aggressor ethnicities. Any of these effects may be an aim of any single terrorist attack. 3 Social Psychology, individual to Societal, responds to Atrocity Hobfoll observed that when confronted with massively traumatic events members of a target society experience one of 4 trajectories (degrees of depressive responses to events): 1-resistant, 2-resilient, 3-chronic distress and 4-delayed distress [2]. Waxman adds that additionally acclimatization to chronic terrorism and reducing media coverage of atrocities allowed public to re-focus on life in general, and social resilience got stronger. Thus, with regards to terrorism, social resilience prevents terrorism from seriously disrupting the normal functioning of society. It means that a targeted population is able to cope with the threat of terrorism and not be intimidated or demoralized by it. Hobfoll suggested that the resistant and resilient best coped with chronic terrorism [2]. 166 Copyright 2016 SERSC

3 Hobfoll found that 22.1% of those he studied exhibited the resistance trajectory, 13.5% exhibited the resilience trajectory, 10.3% exhibited the delayed distress trajectory, and 54.0% exhibited the chronically distressed trajectory. By contrast Hobfoll also observed that a similar study was done in New York after the 9/11. That study noted an appreciably higher prevalence of resilience and resistance and suggested that the better results was due to the non-chronic nature of New Yorkers exposure to terrorism, as well as the individuals limited resource losses [2]. Regarding Israel s remarkable resilience to the 2nd Intifada, Dov Waxman noted, Despite being profoundly affected by terrorism, Israeli society was not demoralized by it, and in this respect Palestinian terrorism failed to achieve its aim [1]. 4 Creating a Resistant and Resilient Society Resistance and resilience to trauma are the ability of a society to absorb terrorist attacks with minimal disruption of its way of life [2]. These responses are fostered by various social institutions, cultural mores, and attitudes [1]. Resilience is (1) preventing, withstanding, and mitigating the stress of a(n) incident; (2) recovering to a state of self-sufficiency and at least the same level of health and social functioning after a health incident; and (3) using knowledge from a past [9]. Social resilience is a combination of social cohesion, social solidarity (which rises in times of threat), social trust (confidence in the system and each other), and patriotism (willing self-sacrifice in service to the whole). For individuals, America s American Psychological Association (APA) devotes resources to examining and educating the public about resilience. Resilience, says the APA, is not the absence of regret difficulty or distress, pain or sadness, but of adapting well following trauma bouncing back is an ordinary human process that can be bolstered by combining certain learnable behaviors, thoughts and actions [10]. The American Department of Homeland Security (DHS) working through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) publishes materials that enable infrastructural, business, and government adaptation to changing conditions, rapid responses and repairs, the ability to withstand disruptions and continue operations, and ensuring rapid recovery from particularly traumatic casualty [3] [4]. The two-fold end of building resilience in society is to eliminate the effects of terror atrocities, and deter future attacks. 5 Educating the Movers behind Terrorism Terrorism can be deterred. The most rational link in terrorist enterprises are the supporters who provide materiel, intelligence, strategy and tactics, safe haven and money to finance and maintain campaigns of terror and sustain terrorist operations [7]. These are the minds behind organized terrorist acts. Supporters encourage terrorism so long as the change they seek is attainable through violent activism. Supporters are deterrable due to the relative simplicity of their incentive structure [7]. Copyright 2016 SERSC 167

4 When terrorism is demonstrably disadvantageous to the overall goals of the supporters themselves, they seek other routes to attain their objectives. Education as to the particularly negative and counter-productive effects of terrorism on the achievement of supporters goals should appeal to the starkly rational approach to making change [7]. Resilience offers a two-fold benefit: preparing society to weather adversity; and illustrating the ineffectiveness of terrorism as a tool for bringing about supporters objectives. Strong reactions and aggressive resistance to terrorist activity in combination with resilience, amplifies the message to supporters that terrorism should be abandoned. 6 Conclusion Resilience-building holds greater promise for preparing society to sustain terrorist attack with minimal long-term disruption to its basic functions. Resilience building is a task for all of society to tackle at every level. Government is responsible for building strong infrastructure, providing security, maintaining infrastructure and competent emergency services for the population. Business is responsible for building strong systems and practices that well keep the national economy working in spite of terror disruption. Citizens are responsible for themselves, and through their selfgrowth, interrelations, citizen participation in faith organizations, schools, and civic groups for personal resilience development. And the success of a vibrant society, both socially and economically, supports resilience at all levels. Resilient societies are the best evidence of the failure of terrorism. Resilience is testament to its counterproductivity. References 1. Waxman, D.: Living with terror, not living in terror: the impact of chronic terrorism on Israeli society, Perspectives on Terrorism, 5(5-6), 1-26 (2011) 2. Hobfoll, S., Palmieri, P., Johnson, R., Canetti-Nisim, D., Hall, B., Galea, S.: Trajectories of resilience, resistance, and distress during ongoing terrorism: the case of Jews and Arabs in Israel, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77(1), (2009) 3. Department of Homeland Security, 4. Federal Emergency Management Agency: 5. Federal Emergency Management Agency: 6. Department of Homeland Security. National Preparedness Goals: 2. Ed., (2015) 7. Abrahms, M.: Deterring terrorism: a new strategy, Perspectives on Terrorism, vol., no.3, pp (2014) 8. Abrahms, M., Mierau, J.: Leadership matters: the effects of targeted killings on militant group tactics, Terrorism and Political Violence, ( 2015) 168 Copyright 2016 SERSC

5 9. Chandra, A., Acosta, J., Howard, S., Uscher-Pines, L., Williams, M., Yeung, D., Garnett, J., Meredith, L.: Building community resilience to disasters: a way forward to enhance national health security, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, (2011) 10. American Psychological Association, Copyright 2016 SERSC 169