Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe - The Globalization of Terrorism

Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe
University of Maryland Eastern Shore, USA

First published 2001 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe 2001

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ISBN 13: 978-1-138-73461-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-18717-4 (ebk)

Michael J. Lynch
(Associate Professor and Director, Ph.D. Program in Criminology University of South Florida Soc-107 Tampa, Florida 33620-8100 813-974-8148)

It is my great honor to be able to write a foreword for Professor Onwudiwe's book for two reasons. First, the ideas contained in this book are nothing short of a ground-breaking effort in the study of terrorism, and I shall have more to say about this below. Second, and the point I will focus on first, is the special place Professor Onwudiwe holds in my own development as a professor.

I have known Professor Onwudiwe for slightly more than a decade. During that time period I have seen him mature academically as he proceeded through his course work at Florida State University, where I served as his mentor, and directed his master's paper and doctoral dissertation. Professor Onwudiwe holds a special place in my life serving, so to speak, the role of guinea-pig as my first masters student and one of my first two doctoral students. He now also holds the distinction as being my first student to publish a book. All told, he has done well as an academic, and I am proud to have been able to serve some small role (possibly) in this development.

The first time I met Professor Onwudiwe I "butchered" his name badly, and he kindly responded in his deep, mild mannered voice, "Just call me Declan," a quick reference to his anglocized name. My first impression was that he was an impressive young man, well-mannered, intelligent, likeable, well read and astute. I can make no claim to have developed these attributes in him, as he was also academically independent, and an avaricious reader. In any event, I noticed that his previous training in political science gave him a perspective on crime and the criminal justice system that was broader than many of the graduate students one encounters in a school or department of criminal justice. His prior training caused him to look at problems of crime and justice differently than most, and this perspective is reflected in the pages that follow. His willingness and ability to view crime and justice in a different light is what sets his view of terrorism apart from the more ordinary treatments of this topic more typically encountered when reading the literature on terrorism.

Generally, the study of terrorism is undertaken from a policy perspective. That is, the majority of works on this topic offer methods for controlling terrorism. Such an approach puts the cart before the horse. In order to develop sound policies for controlling this or any other form of behavior, we must first possess a greater understanding of the causes of the behavior in question. This position is precisely the perspective that Professor Onwudiwe takes up in this book. What are the causes of terrorism? And how can terrorism be explained? These things must be known before we will be able to control terrorism.

Existing explanations of terrorism have typically been of two types. The first depicts terrorists as political actors who respond to unjust conditions. This depiction has been developed in several different directions, and sometimes evolves into descriptions that elevate terrorists to the status of heroes (which they may be at times) or revolutionaries. These descriptions have important cultural significance, and many parallels can be drawn between terrorists and the bandits described by Eric Hobwsbawm in his book that goes by the same name ( Bandits , 1981). In any event, this view requires that we examine the ideological motivations behind terrorism and connect these to broader issues of culture and politics. This view also raises the need to examine the legitimacy of terrorists, or to determine whether terrorists have indeed taken up struggles that represent attempts to rectify broader cultural, social and political conditions related to injustice and oppression. Terrorists who fit these criteria, then, have some legitimate basis for their action, and can often be described as "freedom fighters." Terrorists be elevated to this lofty status. Their behavior is described by the second who do not fit this description, who simply have "personal agendas," cannot general view in which they are seen as little more than glorified criminals who commit unjustified and abhorrent acts of violence.

Professor Onwudiwe's book goes beyond this ordinary depiction of terrorists in his attempt to explain the pattern of terrorism seen across the face of the globe. Because of this, I think this is a book that anyone interested in terrorism must read and grapple with, for assuredly, it contains answers we might otherwise overlook or even avoid. Clearly, this book contains a perspective no one else has applied to terrorism.

Rather than focus on terrorists and the attempt to classify them as freedom fighters or criminals, Professor Onwudiwe looks at terrorism as the consequence of how the world is ordered. To do so, he employs world systems theory as the background for his analysis of terrorist incidents across numerous nations, and in his case studies of African nations. Briefly, we can describe world systems theory as a model of world order that views the nations of the world as elements in a broader system tied together by economic and political relationships. The world order, in other words, has a structural dimension dictated by relationships that exist among nations on both the economic and political levels. Within the global world order, nations, in effect, occupy position similar to the class locations individuals occupy within nations. There are dominant nations that control world resources and manufacturing practices, and which possess the ability to translate their economic resources into political and military strength used to maintain a world order that continues to benefit their best interests. World systems theorists argue that these controlling nations, what they call the core nations, are composed primarily of the leading capitalist nations of the world. These nations are "leaders" in the economic realm (they are "leaders" to the extent that they are the owners of the primary means of economic production, and to the extent that they control global resources and wealth), control numerous treaties and act as protectorates for other nations, and can employ their economic powers to shape domestic and international issues across the face of the globe. In addition, they have the military might to enforce their will when challenged. I will side-step a description of the nations in the middle of the world system--the semi-peripheral nations--to get more directly to the broader point.