Economics of National Security: Unfunding Terror
Abstract
The discussion of how best to deprive terrorist organizations of funding is necessarily broad because of the numerous means people have devised to acquire and move funds for whatever purpose they intend. How seriously the United States takes this issue can be seen just in the number of statutory provisions that have been adopted and the diligence with which we update terror-associated lists that are aimed at depriving terrorists of funds. While it is clearly a matter of concern, the National Security Strategy s treatment of this topic is very broad and is discussed only within fairly limited contexts. The muted language of the National Security Strategy (NSS) may simply be a realistic assessment of the difficulties we face in trying to dry up terrorist funding streams and the challenges of evaluating our efforts in spite of the fairly broad approach that has been undertaken in the past decade. The two contexts within which the NSS raises the issue of depriving terrorist organizations of funds are countering al-Qa ida specifically and, more generally, countering transnational criminal enterprises.2 The NSS recognizes that terrorist organizations use criminal enterprises as a means of funding their activities and, although it only states that, [t]he crime-terror nexus is a serious concern as terrorists use criminal networks for logistical support and funding, making the connection between the two threats does imply that efforts to combat transnational criminal enterprises will have an ancillary dampening effect on terror financing. In contrast to the very general description of the target of efforts to counter transnational criminal activities, the NSS states its counter-terrorism objective very specifically as: disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qa ida and its violent extremist affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the world.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA554329
Entities
People
- Mark Holzer
Organizations
- United States Army War College