The new era of terrorism

To demonstrate its power in the Cold War, began a race for the best weapons and deployment of armament between the two blocks, if Moscow moved troops or produced settlements near the “ iron curtain”, the United States of America deployed ballistic missiles in the territories near the USSR, which should point to the east and made as much noise as possible, so that the Soviets would be perfectly warned. Meanwhile, and only as an extreme precaution, submarines with strategic nuclear weapons were in the seas undetected.

Terrorism has always been a component of political violence and must be apprehended as an instrument of aggression, designed to annihilate or frighten its rival through the terror and intimidation of innocent people who are not fighters, this is an irregular way to face the adversary that has existed for a long time. The use of new technologies has made it possible to verify how even terrorist organizations against Western cultures use the means created on this side of the world to attack it. Therefore, the claims of the terrorist groups have been observed, these go beyond the recruitment in their own countries and extend to include the citizens of the western countries to attack their own nations and thus manage to infiltrate their social thoughts in the new world.

Terrorism, like few terms in the recent history of humanity, has managed to create debate globally, but at the same time as behavior has changed our way of facing life. According to John Horgan,

Cualquier debate acerca del concepto y fenómeno del terrorismo tiene garantizada la aparición de controversia, emociones, imprecisiones y confusión, hasta el punto de que, tal y como ha dicho la experta Louise Richardson, lo único seguro sobre el terrorismo es que se trata de un término de connotación peyorativa (2006, p. 25)

The use of the term terrorism to indicate various types of behavior, or punishable conduct, is no longer reserved for the just proportion of it, the profound damage caused in the last decade by those who insisted on perpetrating acts destined to damage on a worldwide scale, their desire to terrorize, through their actions, as many people as possible throughout the world.

Since September 11, 2001, the importance of the term terrorism acquired a great importance worldwide as never before, the possibility that any place could be damaged or attacked by terrorist attacks was a topic of discussion in all countries of the world. After the attacks in New York City, the world has not been the same or will hardly be the same again, as a consequence of the reality that all countries live from that moment, no matter where the terrorist attack takes place or who does it, it must be remembered that nowadays terrorism seeks above all to spread panic and insecurity in the population.

After terrorist attacks in World Trade Center, the weaknesses and the legal, intelligence and security gaps that the main powers had on the issue came to light, even today many of these weaknesses are still present, but these States that are under the look of terrorist groups has been in need of creating new public policies to try to stop these attacks, “ the US Supreme Court has upheld a ban by President Donald Trump on travel to the US from seven countries: North Korea, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Venezuela”(Griffiths, Dewan and Smith, 2018), these types of restrictions, such as those implemented by the President of the United States, seek to prevent any possible terrorist from entering the country, but these measures have been widely criticized, since they have been labeled as xenophobic.

Types of modern terrorism

There have been multiple interpretations and types of terrorism, for example, local, traditional or national terrorism, which is opposed in the second instance by transnational, global or international terrorism. The first case refers to that terrorism of origin and internal execution of a State, as in the case of the Fuerzas Revolucionarias Armadas de Colombia (FARC) in Colombia, Hamas in Palestine, while the second refers to some groups as Al Qaeda and ISIS.