Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 104 - Aug 2020): Security Studies

Military and civilian organizations in the past have attempted to understand culture and the cultural environment of conflict zones through anthropology. While there is a small and growing number of studies examining the use of anthropology for counterinsurgency, no studies have compared the Anglo-Saxon ABCA Armies' approaches to understanding cultural factors for counterinsurgency and civil-military operations.Crisis of Cultural Intelligence: The Anthropology of civil-military Operations thus represents a timely investigation into a number of issues regarding the past and present relationship between militarized anthropology, settler colonialism, and Indigenous militancy and the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which has internationalized the claim of encapsulated nations for equal rights. Covering issues such as the use of militarized anthropology in the Vietnam War and the controversial Human Terrain System (HTS) program used in Afghanistan, this book addresses the need for constructive and informed discussions about the nature and function of cultural data collection and analysis for counterinsurgency, peace-building, and conflict prevention operations.Crisis of Cultural Intelligence: The Anthropology of civil-military Operations is particularly important today, as cultural values and heritage continue to inform civil-military interventions of intrastate armed conflict amongst the people. Following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book will provide some insights into how militaries will now need to look ahead and consider the types of conflicts they may become involved in.

eBook Price : $98

How can we use psychology and the behavioural sciences to aid law enforcement to better identify violent extremists? What can we learn from past attacks to ensure that our society is more prepared? How can societies deal with tension after these attacks?Violent extremists are evolving, constantly honing their strategies to out-manuever the 'good guys'. Faced with the quandary, challenges, and responsibilities of ensuring the safety of the society, practitioners and policymakers have to take decisive steps to respond and mitigate the impact of an attack. However, the daunting task of countering violent extremism is still plagued by the lack of basic understanding of the phenomenon.This book, Learning from Violent Extremist Attacks: Behavioural Sciences Insights for Practitioners and Policymakers, attempts to fill a gap in the extant literature by offering a behavioural sciences approach to integrate our understanding of the threat of violent extremism, with knowledge drawn from diverse fields, such as psychology, sociology, history, political science, technology, and communications to identify the lessons learned and provide scientifically defensible interventions and approaches for both the practitioners and policymakers.

eBook Price : $188

The Rohingya Crisis aims to analyse communal violence in western Myanmar and highlight its transnational security implications. Based on ethnographic research in the Bangladesh-Myanmar borderland, the book analyses the complex often-contested narratives of the dynamics of communal violence and the role of various actors in this conflict. The Rohingya Crisis argues that the communal violence in western Myanmar has cascading security ramifications for South and Southeast Asia, and cautions that continued violence in the Rakhine state might lead to an escalation of transnational crime and militancy in the region. The political dynamics in Myanmar intersects with a rapidly evolving terrorist threat landscape in the Southeast Asian region, presenting an unenviable challenge of managing the Rohingya Crisis.

eBook Price : $95

This book explores the process of terrorists behavioural analysis, starting from the social-psychology profile of terrorists to the development of constructed risk assessment tools. Most of the research for this book was conducted with the cooperation of the Intelligence Department of the Israeli Prison System, where qualitative in-depth interviews with leaders of terrorist organisations in prisons around Israel were conducted by the author. Once the social-psychology profile was established, the next development would be the forming of terrorist risk assessment tools, to allow for better observation and practical management of the problems.This book hopes to fill in gaps in the literature relating to the psychology of terrorist groups' leaders in prisons by analysing the main aspects of their social, professional, and personal lives, as well as their attitudes and perceptions. The book will also cover the practical aspects of risk assessment that can be established from such social-psychology profiles, along with the relevant tools that has been developed in recent years, and hopes to better inform counterterrorism initiatives and policymaking, as well as improving methods of communication, counterterrorism, and conflict resolution.

eBook Price : $148

For more than 150 years, Nationalist, Populist, Marxist and Islamist terrorists have all been remarkably consistent and explicit about their aims: Provoke the State into over-reacting to the threat they pose, then take advantage of the divisions in society that result. Faced with a major terrorist threat, States seem to reach instinctively for the most coercive tools in their arsenal and, in doing so, risk exacerbating the situation. This policy response seems to be driven in equal parts by a lack of understanding of the true nature of the threat, an exaggerated faith in the use of force, and a lack of faith that democratic values are sufficiently flexible to allow for an effective counter-terrorism response. Drawing on a wealth of data from both historical and contemporary sources, Avoiding the Terrorist Trap addresses common misconceptions underpinning flawed counter-terrorist policies, identifies the core strategies that guide terrorist operations, consolidates the latest research on the underlying drivers of terrorist violence, and demonstrates how a comprehensive and coherent counter-terrorism strategy grounded in respect for human rights and the rule of law is the only truly effective approach to defeating terrorism.

eBook Price : $228