CIA Chief Sees Unrest Rising With Population
[Quote:]
Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday.
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The CIA director also predicted a widening gulf between Europe and North America on how to deal with security threats, including terrorism. While U.S. and European officials agree on the urgency of the terrorism threat, there is a fundamental difference — a “transatlantic divide” — over the solution, he said.
While the United States sees the fight against terrorism as a global war, European nations perceive the terrorist threat as a law enforcement problem, he said.
“They tend not to view terrorism as we do, as an overwhelming international challenge. Or if they do, we often differ on what would be effective and appropriate to counter it,” Hayden said. He added that he could not predict “when or if” the two sides could forge a common approach to security.
Gee, I wonder how the Red Army Faction, Red Brigade, November 17th Group, the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, ETA, Action Directe, and several others are doing. Dear Hayden, the “when or if” is simple: start realizing which approaches actually work.
The examples you cite are all cases of citizens turning against their own state. This is not the terrorism that the U.S. fears (even though we’ve seen some of it, but from isolated individuals), so it’s not clear that the solutions applied elsewhere are obviously applicable when you fear terrorism that originates abroad.=
methods and means used by the criminals/terrorists are similar even if motive is not, so I don’t really see why the same thing won’t at least make some inroads. Funding also was external in case of all the groups I mentioned, sometimes by a nation state (the USSR) sometimes by individual donations (IRA). Also, the police investigations into London and Madrid worked out pretty well.