Terrorism as a type of armed political violence in the context of global urbanization

Abstract

The article sees terrorism as a special kind of armed political violence, intensified by systemic problems and contradictions of modern civilization. Considering terrorism as a city phenomenon, the author assumes that modern tendencies of urbanization that modify the urban environment lead to changes in the nature of terrorist organizations, the structure of terrorist groups, and mechanisms for recruiting personnel for terrorist activities. Two models of terrorism are presented: terrorism as an instrument of broadly defined national liberation struggle (or separatism or ethnic and cultural expansion), and as a form of a frozen at the embryotic stage civil war. Focus is drawn to the fact that nowadays a third model of terrorism is being formed in cities, synthesizing the first two. It is based on the mutual spread of civilizations into their internal spaces under the influence of globalization. The author concludes that modern civilization cannot eradicate political terrorism in view of the multifaceted nature of the phenomenon, which stems from internal and international political processes. Terrorist organizations have evolved into independent players on the global scale.