The world is currently a more dangerous place than it was 40 or 50 years ago because of the rise in power of non-state actors relative to states and their level of ambiguity, difficulty to predict, penetrate, and contain. This is highlighted by the recent rise of power in ISIL and its terrorism. These non-state actors, including ISIL, pose as multiple and challenging threats to national, international, and human security. The threat of terrorism can never be ignored, taken lightly, or downplayed. Not only does terrorism incite fear and panic, it is done in such a way to cause governments to react exactly like non-state actors wish them to act. Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter state that the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda were in efforts for the …show more content…
It is a threat to international security because it poses to be a problem to any and all countries that oppose its perverted ideologies. It is a threat to human security because the attacks by ISIL create fear and panic which are social costs. It also adds to the refugee crisis pouring from Syria and Iraq, displacing and killing many more civilians. Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack state that the world is a less dangerous place because there have been decreases in homicides, rapes, genocides, victimization of children, world autocracies, armed conflicts and wars, and battle deaths (Pinker and Mack, 2014, pp. 1-3). Most of these issues addressed are domestic and the data is isolated to only certain states.
To argue that the world is a less dangerous place, one has to focus on the international system and international threats because then it can transcend down into how safe a region is, then how safe a state is, then how safe a certain population is. It fails to recognize that even in the general decreasing trend of violence, conflicts, and death, the latter portion of the 21st century is seeing significant spikes in various data figures. Although there has been a general trend of decreasing violence and concentrates on hard evidence, it does not concentrate on evidences that are complex, unseen, and