Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
I'm analytically allergic to sweeping, monocausal explanations, and frankly I think this one is especially deeply flawed.
This is not to say that there aren't important confluences and interrelationships between formal and informal economies, criminal activity and armed nonstate groups/terrorism--such groups, like all institutions, need to generate resources. However, to lump (as this seems to do) all Islamist political mobilization to an epiphenomenon of economic interest, to ignore political grievances and domestic settings, and even to lump very different groups together seems to me to be more about sound-bites (or word-bites) than it is about analyzing the real world.
More broadly, I think there is an interesting phenomenon whereby a variety of audiences--politicians, policymakers, the press, the public, even new CT professionals--look for an easy, engaging, sweeping diagnosis and answer to current security challenges. In my view, not only is it NOT that easy, but the real pay off is in understanding precisely the complexities and variations at work.
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