Allison Halpin's List: HWC 650 RESEARCH PROJECT

• insurgency is a movement - a political effort with a specific aim
• The ultimate goal of an insurgency is to challenge the existing government for control of all or a portion of its territory, or force political concessions in sharing political power.
• Terrorism does not attempt to challenge government forces directly, but acts to change perceptions as to the effectiveness or legitimacy of the government itself.

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• A relatively new term for terrorism has been coined, new warfare.

• A terrorist act is a political act or is committed with the intention to cause a political effect.

• Modern nation-states did not exist in their present form until 1648 (Treaty of Westphalia), and the state's monopoly on warfare, or inter-state violence, is even more recent. The lack of central governments made it impossible to use terror as a method of affecting a political change, as there was no single dominant political authority. Also, the absence of central authority meant that the game of warfare was open to many more players. Instead of national armies, a variety of non-sovereign nobility, mercenaries, leaders of religious factions, or mercantile companies participated in warfare. Their involvement in warfare was considered to be perfectly legitimate. This is in contrast to the modern era, where nations go to war, but private participation is actually illegal.
• In the early years of the 20th Century nationalism and revolutionary political ideologies were the principal developmental forces acting upon terrorism. When the Treaty of Versailles redrew the map of Europe after World War I by breaking up the Austro-Hungarian Empire and creating new nations, it acknowledged the principle of self-determination for nationalities and ethnic groups. This encouraged minorities and ethnicities not receiving recognition to campaign for independence or autonomy. However, in many cases self-determination was limited to European nations and ethnic groups and denied others, especially the colonial possessions of the major European powers, creating bitterness and setting the stage for the long conflicts of the anti-colonial period.