Issues of Terrorism in the Post-Coronavirus Era

This edited compilation was written in the latter part of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, a watershed event in world history that illustrated wide-ranging systems and structural vulnerabilities worldwide. The book provides a framework for thinking about the environmental context of unconventional political conflict and intrinsic issues of continuity and change; it highlights significant potential terror threats, trajectories, and potential inflection points for consideration by policymakers, security experts, and counterterrorism practitioners.

The book focuses on unfolding threats that will affect our security worldwide, including the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the continuously evolving condition of environmental degradation and global warming, the probability of increased “enhanced terrorism” use, future technologies like gene editing and “Crisper,” and more. The book frames empirical links between the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, and other international system factors within the context of our contemporary globalized world, to scope out basic uncertainties, and the subtleties and nuances of complexity that pose challenges and opportunities for policymakers. It discusses looming challenges to decisionmakers who must attempt to counter terror and crime and their expected convergence in the coming era. The use of novel foresight tools in the context of anticipatory defense, science communication methodologies, knowledge sharing, its dissemination, and management to overcome threat potential is presented.

As one of the first books to delve into post-coronavirus consequences and to examine the linkages between these wide-ranging impacts, Issues of Terrorism in the Post-Coronavirus Era provides essential food for thought for decision-makers, policymakers, academics, global business leaders, students, and lay readers who are concerned about the future of humankind.

Dr.  Richard J. Chasdi is a political scientist who specializes in terrorism studies and counterterrorism, and who has published four books and over one dozen refereed academic journal articles and book chapters. Chasdi is a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at The George Washington University. Prior to that, Chasdi was a Professor of Management in the Management Department at Walsh College, Troy, Michigan. His first book, Serenade of Suffering: A Portrait of Middle East Terrorism, 1968-1993 (Lexington Books, 1999) received Choice magazine’s “Outstanding Academic Title” in international relations in 2000. He completed a Fulbright Specialist Program in 2017 at the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2017. Chasdi serves on the editorial boards of both Armed Forces and Society, and Perspectives on Terrorism. He is a Senior Fellow at theGlobal Peace Institute (UK) and and Adjunct Senior Fellow at ICPVTR at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Chasdi has served as a news consultant for many televisions networks that include, but are not limited to, al-Jazeera, Asharq News, Al-Araby Television, China Global Television Network (CGTN), Sputnik Radio, and National Public Radio (NPR).

Dr. Yair Sharan is currently the director of the FIRS2T Group, Israel, a Col.(ret) in the IDF, who is active in the security foresight and technology fields, was a senior researcher at BESA, Bar-Ilan University, and was the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Technological Analysis and Forecasting (ICTAF) at Tel Aviv University. Recent co-authored or co-edited publications include:  Tripping Points in the Road to Outwit terror (Springer 2021), Identification of Potential Terrorists and Adversary Planning Emerging Technologies and New Counter-Terror Strategies (IOS Press for NATO, 2017), Lone Wolf TerrorProspects (2015), Lone Actors-An Emerging Security Threat (IOS Press for NATO, 2015), and Terrorism and the Internet (IOS Press, 2010).