Maritime Security Initiatives in East Asia: Assessment and the Way Forward

In the post-cold war era, especially in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, maritime security has become a priority on the national agendas. East Asian countries are concerned about maritime security given their overwhelming dependence on seaborne commerce and the vital importance of the sea-lanes of communication. This article examines the maritime security initiatives, mostly initiated by the United States, that have been adopted and implemented in East Asia.     

A Note on the United States and the Law of the Sea: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Since the Antarctic Treaty was negotiated in 1959, there have been substantial developments in the law of the sea. One of the most significant developments has been the recognition granted to coastal state entitlements to claim a range of offshore maritime areas. Yet, one of the principal aims of the Antarctic Treaty was to eliminate sovereignty disputes between territorial claimants, and the treaty placed limitations on the assertion of new claims. Nevertheless, most Antarctic territorial claimants have asserted some form of Antarctic maritime claim. This article particularly considers Australia's position toward maritime claims offshore the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT). It reviews the limitations imposed by the Antarctic Treaty, the difficulties in determining baselines in Antarctica, Australia's practice in declaring Antarctic maritime claims, and the potential range of maritime boundaries that Australia may one day have to delimit with neighboring states in the Southern Ocean.     

Biometrics and aviation security

September’s terrorist attacks on the US once again raised the profile of airport and airline security. In this month’s guest features, Mike Dell, Biometric Technology Manager at Neurodynamics, and Calum Bunney, Director of International Biometric and Authentication Consulting examine the role that biometrics could have in future aviation security scenarios.     

Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis

Our job as intellectuals, this article argues, is to struggle to understand the crisis presented by terrorism in all its forms. This can center on a theoretical account of militarization and its relationship to broader social changes, from the emergence of nationstates to the course of racialization and other inequalities to the convergence of interests in military spending. The article gives a terse historical account of the 20th-century history of the militarization process and of the distinct modes of warfare that have developed over that time. To account for the growth of militarization over the last half of the century requires a focus on the growth of U.S. hegemony and the naming of the empire that dominated the global scene as the most recent crisis opened on September 11, 2001. This account suggests how we can connect these global and national histories with specific ethnographically understood places and people, giving some examples from ethnographic and historical research in a military city, Fayetteville, North Carolina. Finally, this review of militarization suggests that the attacks on the United States, and the war that followed, represent a continuation and acceleration of ongoing developments, rather than sharp openings in history. These new developments include reasons for hope that the legitimacy of violence and empire may also be under challenge. [Keywords: militarization, modes of warfare, United States, ethnography of empire]     

Eyjafjallaj?kull and 9/11: The Impact of Large-Scale Disasters on Worldwide Mobility

Large-scale disasters that interfere with globalized socio-technical infrastructure, such as mobility and transportation networks, trigger high socio-economic costs. Although the origin of such events is often geographically confined, their impact reverberates through entire networks in ways that are poorly understood, difficult to assess, and even more difficult to predict. We investigate how the eruption of volcano Eyjafjallajökull, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and geographical disruptions in general interfere with worldwide mobility. To do this we track changes in effective distance in the worldwide air transportation network from the perspective of individual airports. We find that universal features exist across these events: airport susceptibilities to regional disruptions follow similar, strongly heterogeneous distributions that lack a scale. On the other hand, airports are more uniformly susceptible to attacks that target the most important hubs in the network, exhibiting a well-defined scale. The statistical behavior of susceptibility can be characterized by a single scaling exponent. Using scaling arguments that capture the interplay between individual airport characteristics and the structural properties of routes we can recover the exponent for all types of disruption. We find that the same mechanisms responsible for efficient passenger flow may also keep the system in a vulnerable state. Our approach can be applied to understand the impact of large, correlated disruptions in financial systems, ecosystems and other systems with a complex interaction structure between heterogeneous components.     

Catastrophe Risk Analysis: A Financial Perspective

This article examines how catastrophe events affect risk analysis from a financial perspective. Data from different industries such as Advanced Sustainable Performance Indices, gold, energy, real estate, and insurance were collected and analyzed. The performance of these funds was compared by using various financial ratios. Then we tested the stock selecting and market timing abilities. We also assessed whether a particular catastrophe event has affected stock prices by analysis of two event studies, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the collapse through bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. We examined how an asset portfolio performs under catastrophic events and under the situation of adding Advanced Sustainable Performance Indices into an investor's portfolio basket. We found that the 9/11 terrorist attacks affected the Dow Jones Real Estate Index's prices a lot. Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing had a positive impact on the CBOE Gold Index, and had a large impact on the Fidelity US Bond Index. The ASPI Index in our optimization problem gave us better diversification. From our analysis, we conclude that portfolio diversification is a good way to hedge against catastrophic risk.     

War, Factionalism, and the State in Afghanistan

Since September 11, 2001, the explanations offered to account for the rise of a foreign-led terrorist network on Afghan soil have variously focused on the political vacuum opened up by the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, interference by foreign powers in Afghanistan's internal affairs, the failure of Afghanistan to produce a "strong state" because of ethnic factionalism, and an internal moral incoherence inherent to Afghan culture. I argue that none of these explanations is entirely satisfactory in itself. To understand the situation in Afghanistan, we must recognize that its political and military chaos is not an isolated or unique phenomenon, and at the same time acknowledge the particular social and political dynamics of Afghanistan's history that have set the parameters for current events. I show that communal conflicts in Afghanistan are part of a much wider affliction common to many postcolonial states and multinational societies, and that Afghanistan's current situation can only be understood by focusing on its failed attempts at nation-state building within the broader geopolitical circumstance of foreign manipulation and proxy wars that have given rise to particular forms of ethnic division. [Keywords: Afghanistan, nation-building, ethnic factionalism, warfare, the State]     

Regulating biorisks: developing a coherent policy logic (part II)

This is the second of two articles that empirically details the working practices of regulators charged with overseeing biological research. The first article considered how regulators from the Biological Agents Unit of the UK Health and Safety Executive went about implementing the British legislation controlling work with biological agents and genetically modified organisms prior to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the ensuing anthrax letters in the U.S. This second article continues the investigation of the Biological Agents Unit's working practices by considering how its activities have changed and adapted to the new, post-9/11 policy and regulatory environment. The main argument put forward in the articles is that an understanding of the implementation processes--that is, the strategies adopted by regulatory agencies and the styles employed by agency regulators in their interactions with those regulated--is critical to developing a coherent policy logic for the emerging regulatory regime around biorisks.     

Narrating September 11: Race, Gender, and the Play of Cultural Identities

This article considers the September 11 tragedy as an event that has created a powerful experience—an astonishing and unthinkable "breach" from the expected and routine—that has riveted the American public and provoked personal storytelling. September 11 and its aftermath have provided an occasion for rethinking and reworking cultural identity. We explore how September 11 and subsequent events have been experienced, constructed, and narrated by African American women, primarily from working-class and low-income backgrounds. These stories, and the commentaries and discussions that surround them, provide vehicles for these women to ponder what sort of social contexts they inhabit, within what sort of subject positions they are placed, and how these may be shifting in light of the attacks and America's "War on Terrorism. [Keywords: African American, narrative, gender, cultural identity]     

The evolution of law in biopreparedness

The decade following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and ensuing anthrax exposures that same fall has seen significant legal reforms designed to improve biopreparedness nationally. Over the past 10 years, a transformative series of legal changes have effectively (1) rebuilt components of federal, state, and local governments to improve response efforts; (2) created an entire new legal classification known as "public health emergencies"; and (3) overhauled existing legal norms defining the roles and responsibilities of public and private actors in emergency response efforts. The back story as to how law plays an essential role in facilitating biopreparedness, however, is pocked with controversies and conflicts between law- and policymakers, public health officials, emergency managers, civil libertarians, scholars, and others. Significant legal challenges for the next decade remain. Issues related to interjurisdictional coordination; duplicative legal declarations of emergency, disaster, and public health emergency; real-time legal decision making; and liability protections for emergency responders and entities remain unresolved. This article explores the evolving tale underlying the rise and prominence of law as a pivotal tool in national biopreparedness and response efforts in the interests of preventing excess morbidity and mortality during public health emergencies.     

Terrorist Attacks Escalate in Frequency and Fatalities Preceding Highly Lethal Attacks

Highly lethal terrorist attacks, which we define as those killing 21 or more people, account for 50% of the total number of people killed in all terrorist attacks combined, yet comprise only 3.5% of terrorist attacks. Given the disproportionate influence of these incidents, uncovering systematic patterns in attacks that precede and anticipate these highly lethal attacks may be of value for understanding attacks that exact a heavy toll on life. Here we examined whether the activity of terrorist groups escalates–both in the number of people killed per attack and in the frequency of attacks–leading up to highly lethal attacks. Analyses of terrorist attacks drawn from a state-of-the-art international terrorism database (The Global Terrorism Database) showed evidence for both types of escalation leading up to highly lethal attacks, though complexities to the patterns emerged as well. These patterns of escalation do not emerge among terrorist groups that never commit a highly lethal attack.     

Crisis-induced depression,physical activity and dietary intake among young adults: Evidence from the 9/11 terrorist attacks

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we provide evidence that young adults respond to crisis-induced depression by exercising less and having breakfast less often. Exogenous variation in the crisis-induced depression is obtained through a unique event in our sample period – the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We compare those who were interviewed just before and just after 9/11 and find a significant and sharp increase in the symptoms of depression. We also provide evidence that this increase is not a September effect, but an effect of the external traumatic event.     

A decade of suspicion: Islam and Muslims in Denmark after 9/11

In 2011, al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan and the US president, Barack Obama, concluded a decade of global ‘war against terror’. In light of this, it seems only sensible to explore what implications the post-9/11 international developments have had on a local basis in specific national contexts. With this in mind, this article focuses on Denmark and discusses how the critical event of 9/11 motivated a security/integration response, including various pre-emptive measures that have cast the Muslim population as the usual suspects. It will discuss how these changes have affected the everyday lives of ordinary Danish Muslims over the last ten years and changed the relationship between majorities and minorities. Finally, it will also examine how and why recent national and international events have created the potential for another shift in majority–minority relations.     

Estimating the Effects of September 11th and Other Forms of Violence on the Mental Health and Social Development of New York City's Youth: A Matter of Context

This longitudinal study examines the effects of exposure to the terrorist attack of September 11th as well as exposure to other forms of community violence on change in the mental health and social attitudes of youths in New York City. Three quarters of the youths reported some form of direct exposure to the events of September 11th, and 80% reported a lot of exposure to at least 1 form of media coverage of September 11th; these rates were comparable with the citywide survey of public school students in New York City conducted by the New York City Department of Education. Results of a structural equation model that included controls for previous levels of mental health and social attitudes, as well as a range of demographic factors, indicated that direct exposure and family exposure to the event did not predict change in any mental health outcomes, but did predict change in levels of social mistrust; media exposure did predict posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. In contrast, victimization by other forms of violence was strongly associated with change in or current levels of all of the examined mental health symptoms, whereas witnessing other forms of violence was associated with change in or levels of 3 of 4 mental health symptoms and with increased hostile attribution bias and levels of social mistrust. Implications of the results for applied developmental and public mental health strategies in response to traumatic events are discussed.     

The effect of terrorist events on media portrayals of Islam and Muslims: evidence from New York Times headlines, 1985–2013

This article examines whether media portrayals of Islam and Muslims are overwhelmingly negative, whether they have evolved over time, and what factors most consistently affect their tone. We analyse every fourth New York Times headline about Islam or Muslims between 1985 and 2013. We find that headlines have not been predominantly negative. In addition, New York Times headlines about Islam and Muslims have become more positive over the long term, even after the 9/11 attacks. Most counter-intuitively, we find that terrorist attacks have had a systematic positive effect on headline tone. During the first four weeks after each Islamist terrorist attack on an American target, the tone of New York Times headlines became significantly more positive compared to the four weeks prior to the attack. However, over the subsequent few months, coverage reverted back toward the tone that prevailed during the weeks before the event.     

Canadians' Representation of Chemical,Biological, Radiological,Nuclear, and Explosive (CBRNE) Terrorism: A Content Analysis

The global threat of terrorism raises questions about preparedness and risk communication in the context of public health and security. Although experts discriminate between chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CNRNE) terrorist events, little is known about how the Canadian public represents these forms of terrorism. A stratified random sample of 1502 Canadians participated in a telephone survey on CBRNE terrorism. A word association technique was used to assess first words or images that came to mind while thinking about different types of terrorist scenarios. Content analysis of this data revealed a number of potential uncertainties and misconceptions regarding different types of terrorism scenarios. Despite most frequently providing agents in response questions surrounding chemical or biological terrorism, respondents frequently confounded agents of biological and chemical nature. Similarly, different aspects of nuclear events were not consistently distinguished. Most notably, however, a sizable proportion of respondents had difficulty providing word associations to the different types of terrorist events or only provided vague responses that closely mirrored the scenario in question. Finally, images regarding the potential impacts of scenarios were infrequent. Implications for risk communication and preparedness are discussed; in particular, the need to provide the public with more detailed information regarding the nature of different forms of CBRNE terrorism and how to best prepare for a potential event.     

Orthostatic panic as a key Vietnamese reaction to traumatic events: the case of September 11, 2001

This article discusses a culturally specific response to traumatic events: orthostatic panic attacks among Vietnamese refugees. We compared the rate and severity of orthostatic panic as well as the rates and severity of associated flashbacks a month before and a month after September 11, 2001. After that date, the rate and severity of orthostatic panic greatly increased, as did the rate and severity of associated flashbacks. The central role of orthostatic panic as a response to traumatic events is illustrated through a patient's vignette. An explanation of why September 11 so profoundly influenced this population is adduced, including an explanation of why it resulted in considerable worsening of orthostatic panic.     

A Functional Polymorphism in a Serotonin Transporter Gene (5-HTTLPR) Interacts with 9/11 to Predict Gun-Carrying Behavior

On September 11, 2001, one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in US history took place on American soil and people around the world were impacted in myriad ways. Building on prior literature which suggests individuals are more likely to purchase a gun for self-protection if they are fearful of being victimized, the authors hypothesized that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 would lead to an increase in gun carrying among US residents. At the same time, a line of research has shown that a polymorphism in the 5-HTT gene (i.e., 5-HTTLPR) interacts with environmental stressors to predict a range of psychopathologies and behaviors. Thus, it was hypothesized that 9/11 and 5-HTTLPR would interact to predict gun carrying. The results supported both hypotheses by revealing a positive association between 9/11 and gun carrying (b = .426, odds ratio = 1.531, standard error for b = .194, z = 2.196, p = .028) in the full sample of respondents (n = 15,052) and a statistically significant interaction between 9/11 and 5-HTTLPR in the prediction of gun carrying (b = −1.519, odds ratio = .219, standard error for b = .703, z = −2.161, p = .031) in the genetic subsample of respondents (n = 2,350). This is one of the first studies to find an association between 9/11 and gun carrying and, more importantly, is the first study to report a gene-environment interaction (GxE) between a measured gene and a terrorist attack.     

Maritime Security in the South China Sea: Coordinating Coastal and User State Priorities

Maritime security concerns in the South China Sea are increasing for several reasons: higher volumes of shipping traffic, protection of exclusive economic zone resources, piracy, terrorist threats, greater international scrutiny of ports and shipping, and the modernization of regional naval and coast guard forces. Coastal states and international user states have many overlapping interests in the South China Sea, for example, in promoting safe navigation through its busy sea-lanes. On other issues, in particular, antipiracy or anti-maritime terrorism measures, they have different views about the seriousness of the threats and the responses necessary to address them. This article examines the convergent and divergent maritime security interests of coastal states (China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore) and international user states (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) in the South China Sea. It finds that multiple stakeholders pursuing diverse interests have yet to close the gap between goals and means of achieving maritime security.