After the tragedy of the eleventh September 2001, terrorism has become one of the most discussed and researched issues not only in the United States of America, but all over the world. Politicians and the military discuss reasons that lead to terrorism, as well as measures that should be taken to prevent it. This essay is aimed on analyzing an article devoted to the issue of terrorism and reasons for it. the article was written by Edward Newman in 2007. One can see even from the title of the article “Weak states, state failure and terrorism” the main reasons for terrorism. However, everything is not as simple as it may seem.
Some researchers state that terrorism occur only in weak countries. However, the author of the article tried to prove that every medal has its reverse. The point is that terrorism occurred and occurs nowadays even in strong countries. The author argues that the strength or weakness of a country is not an obligatory condition for terrorist groups. However, some scholars suggest that a weak country is the reason for fast development of terrorist groups. On the contrary, the author of the article argues that some terroristic groups are non-state or come from strong state. The main idea of the article is to prove that weak states and state failure are not the main reasons for terrorism, as some scholars used to think.
As every analytical article, the article written by Edward Newman has both weak and strong sides. The advantage of the article is that the author does not take any side. Edward Newman tries to be objective and look at the problem from different points of view. In the first part of the article Edward Newman presents evidence for weak state and state failure theory as the main explanation of terroris...
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...iously, there might be some people with terroristic points of view in strong states, but they are few and cannot damage much. Another weak point of the article is that Edward Newman did not present any logical strategy or theory based on his research. On the one hand, the article was analytical and did not mean to present something new. On the contrary, the author criticized the existing theories and did not present any solution. In my opinion, Edward Newman should have proposed a better way of collecting information for statistics. Although, there are several weak points in the article by Edward Newman, I think that the article is rather strong. The author presented clear evidence to support his point of view. Besides, he analyzed the works of others.
Works Cited
Newman E. 2007 Weak states, state failure and terrorism. Terrorism and Political violence. Routledge
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MacDonald, William “The American Nation a History, the Jacksonian Democracy” New York 1909: 67 – 88
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