Knowt
The Cultural Landscape Chapter 8: Political Geography
Political Geography
We are concerned with the location of activities in the world, the reasons for particular spatial distributions, and the significance of the arrangements.
You need to know the locations of countries.
Without such knowledge, you lack a basic frame of reference—knowing where things are.
In recent years, we have repeatedly experienced military conflicts and revolutionary changes in once obscure places.
No one can predict where the next war will erupt, but political geography helps to explain the cultural and physical factors that underlie political unrest in the world.
Political geographers study how people have organized Earth's land surface into countries and alliances, reasons underlying the observed arrangements, and the conflicts that result from the organization.
Political conflicts during the twentieth century were dominated by wars between states or collections of allied states.
For the United States, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War were the bloodiest, of these conflicts with other states.
In contrast, the attack against the United States on September 11, 2001, was initiated not by a hostile state, but by a group of individual terrorists.
For political geography, the challenge is to explain "why" terrorism occurs if "where" facts about the terrorists such as countries of birth and current places of residence, are not particularly important factors in the explanation.
Even so, reasons for terrorist attacks may relate to the political geography of particular regions of the world.
For several decades during the Cold War, many countries belonged to one of two regions, one allied with the former Soviet Union and the other allied with the United States.
With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the global political landscape changed fundamentally.
Geographic concepts help us to understand this changing political organization of Earth's surface.
We can also use geographic methods to examine the causes of political change and instability and to anticipate potential trouble spots around the world.
When looking at satellite images of Earth, we easily distinguish places—landmasses and water bodies, mountains and rivers, deserts and fertile agricultural land, urban areas, and forests.
What we cannot see are where boundaries are located between countries.
To many, national boundaries are more meaningful than natural features.
One of Earth's most fundamental cultural characteristics—one that we take for granted—is the division of our planet's surface into a collection of spaces occupied by individual countries.
In the post-Cold War era, the familiar division of the world into countries or states is crumbling.
Geographers observe why this familiar division of the world is changing.
Between the mid-1940s and the late 1980s two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—essentially "ruled" the world.
As on superpowers, they competed at a global scale.
But the United States is less dominant in the political landscape of the twenty-first century, and the Soviet Union no longer exists.
Today, globalization means more connections among states.
Individual countries have transferred military, economic, and political authority to regional and worldwide collections of states.
Power is exercised through connections among states created primarily for economic cooperation.
Despite (or perhaps because of) greater global political cooperation, local diversity has increased in political affairs, as individual cultural groups demand more control over the territory they inhabit.
States have transferred power to local governments, but this does not placate cultural groups who seek complete independence.
Wars have broken out in recent years—both between small neighboring states and among cultural groups within countries—over political control of territory.
Old countries have been broken up in a collection of smaller ones, some barely visible on world maps.
KEY ISSUE 1 - Where Are States Located?
The question posed in this key issue may seem self-evident, because a map of the world shows that virtually all habi~- able land belongs to a country.
But for most of history, until recently, this was not so.
As recently as the 1940s, the world r contained only about 50 countries, compared to 192 members of the United Nations as of 2009.
Problems of Defining States
A state is an area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government that has control over its internal and foreign affairs.
It occupies a defined territory on Earth's surface and contains a permanent population.
The term country is a synonym for state.
A state has sovereignty, which means independence from control of its internal affairs by other states.
Because the entire area o a state is managed by its national government, laws, army, and leaders, it is a good example of a formal or uniform region.
The term state, as used in political geography, does not refer to the 50 regional governments inside the United States.
The 50 states of the United States are subdivisions within a single state—the United States of America.
There is some disagreement about the actual number of sovereign states/
Among places that test the definition of a state are Korea, China, and Western Sahara (Sahrawi Republic).
Korea: One State or Two?
A colony of Japan for many years, Korea was divided into two occupation zones by the United States and the former Soviet Union after they defeated Japan in World War II.
The country was divided into northern and southern sections along 38° north latitude.
The division of these zones became permanent in the late 1940s when the two superpowers established separate governments and withdrew their armies.
The new government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) then invaded the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in 1950, touching off a 3-year war that ended with a cease-fire line near the 38th parallel.
Both Korean governments are committed to reuniting the country into one sovereign state.
Leaders of the two countries agreed in 2000 to allow exchange visits of families separated for a half century by the division and to increase economic cooperation.
However, progress toward reconciliation was halted by North Korea's decision to build nuclear weapons, even though the country lacked the ability to provide its citizens with food, electricity, and other basic needs.
Meanwhile, in 1992, North Korea and South Korea were admitted to the United Nations as separate countries.
China and Taiwan: One State or Two?
Are China and the island of Taiwan two sovereign states or one?
Most other countries consider China (officially, the People's Republic of China) and Taiwan (officially, the Republic of China) as separate and sovereign states.
According to China's government, Taiwan is not sovereign, but a part of China.
This confusing situation arose from a civil war in China during the late 1940s between the Nationalists and the Communists.
After losing, nationalist leaders in 1949 fled to Taiwan, 200 kilometers (120 miles) off the Chinese coast.
The Nationalists proclaimed that they were still the legitimate rulers of the entire country of China.
Until some future occasion when they could defeat the Communists and recapture all of China, the Nationalists argued, at least they could continue to govern one island of the country.
In 1999, Taiwan's president announced that Taiwan would regard itself as a sovereign independent state, but the government of China viewed that announcement as a dangerous departure from the longstanding arrangement between the two.
The question of who constituted the legitimate government of China plagued U.S. officials during the 1950s and 1960s.
The United States had supported the Nationalists during the civil war, so many Americans opposed acknowledging that China was firmly under the control of the Communists.
Consequently, the United States continued to regard the Nationalists as the official government of China until 1971, when U.S. policy finally changed and the United Nations voted to transfer China's seat from the Nationalists to the Communists.
Taiwan is now the most populous state not in the United Nations.
Western Sahara (Sahrawi Republic)
The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, also known as Western Sahara, is considered by most African countries as a sovereign state.
Morocco, however, claims the territory and to prove it has built a 2,700-kilometer wall around the territory to kee out rebels.
Spain controlled the territory on the continent's west coast between Morocco and Mauritania until withdrawing in 1976.
An independent Sahrawi Republic was declared by the Polisario Front and recognized by most African countries, but Morocco and Mauritania annexed the northern and southern portions, respectively.
Three years later Mauritania withdrew, and Morocco claimed the entire territory.
Morocco controls most of the populated area but the Polisario Front operates in the vast' sparsely inhabited deserts, especially the one fifth of the territory that lies east of Morocco's wall.
The United Nations has tried but failed to reach a resolution among the parties.
Polar Regions: Many Claims
The South polar region contains the only large landmasses on Earth's surface that are not part of a state.
Several states claim portions of the region, and some claims are overlapping and conflicting.
Several states, including Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom, claim portions of Antarctica.
Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom have made conflicting, overlapping claims.
The United States, Russia, and a number of other states do not recognize the claims of any country in Antarctica.
The Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959, provides a legal framework for managing Antarctica.
States may establish research stations there for scientific investigation, but no military activities are permitted.
The Treaty has been signed by 47 states.
As for the Arctic, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea permitted countries to submit claims inside the Arctic Circle by 2009.
The Arctic region is thought to be rich in energy resources.
Varying Size of States
The land area occupied by the states of the world varies considerably.
The largest state is Russia, which encompasses 17.1 million square kilometers (6.6 million square miles), or 11 percent of the world's entire land area.
Other states with more than 5 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) include Canada, the United States, China, Brazil, and Australia.
At the other extreme are about two dozen microstates, which are states with very small land areas.
If Russia were the size of this page, then a microstate would be the size of a single letter.
The smallest microstate in the United Nations, Monaco—encompasses only 1.5 square kilometers (0.6 square miles).
Other UN member states that are smaller than 1,000 square kilometers include Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Kiribati, Liechtenstein, Maldives, ' ~lalta, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, San Marino, Sao Tome e Principe, the Seychelles. Singapore, Tonga, and Tuvalu.
Many of the microstates are islands, which explains both their small size and sovereignty.
Development of the State Concept
The concept of dividing the world into a collection of independent states is recent.
Prior to the 1800s, Earth's surface was organized in other ways, such as city-states, empires, and tribes.
Much of Earth’s surface consisted of unorganized territory.
Ancient and Medieval States
The development of states can be traced to the ancient Middle East, in an area known as the Fertile Crescent.
The modern movement to divide the world into states originated in Europe.
ANCIENT STATES.
The ancient Fertile Crescent formed an arc between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.
The eastern end, Mesopotamia, was centered in the valley formed y the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in present-day Iraq.
The Fertile Crescent then curved westward over the desert, turning southward to encompass the Mediterranean coast through present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.
The Nile River valley of Egypt is sometimes regarded as an extension of the Fertile Crescent.
Situated at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Fertile Crescent was a center for land and sea communications in ancient times.
The first states to evolve in Mesopotamia were known as city-states.
A city-state is a sovereign state that comprises a town and the surrounding countryside.
Walls clearly delineated the boundaries of the city, and outside the walls, the city controlled agricultural land to produce food for urban residents.
The countryside also provided the city with an outer line of defense against attack by other city-states.
Periodically, one city or tribe in Mesopotamia would gain military dominance over the others and form an empire.
Mesopotamia was organized into a succession of empires by the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians.
Meanwhile, the state of Egypt emerged as a separate empire to the west of the Fertile Crescent.
Egypt controlled a long, narrow region along the banks of the Nile River, extending from the Nile Delta at the Mediterranean Sea southward for several hundred kilometers.
Egypt's empire lasted from approximately 3000 B.C. until the fourth century B.C.
EARLY EUROPEAN STATES.
Political unity in the ancient world reached its height with the establishment of the Roman Empire, which controlled most of Europe, North Africa, and Southwest Asia, from modern-day Spain to Iran and from Egypt to England.
At its maximum extent, the empire comprised 38 provinces, each using the same set of laws that had been created in Rome.
Massive walls helped the Roman army defend many of the empire's frontiers.
The Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century after a series of attacks by people living on its frontiers and because of internal disputes.
The European portion of the Roman Empire was fragmented into a large number of estates owned by competing kings, dukes. barons, and other nobles.
Beginning about the year 1100, a handful of powerful kings emerged as rulers over large numbers of these European estates.
The consolidation of neighboring estates under the unified control of a king formed the basis for the development of such modern Western European states as England, France, and Spain.
Much of central Europe, however—notably present-day Germany and Italy—remained fragmented into a large number of estates that were not consolidated into states until the nineteenth century.
Colonies
A colony is a territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than being completely independent.
In some cases, a sovereign state runs only the colony’s military and foreign policy.
In others, it also controls the colony’s internal affairs.
COLONIALISM.
European states came to control much of the world through colonialism, which is the effort by one country to establish settlements in a territory and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory.
European states established colonies elsewhere in the world for three basic reasons:
To promote Christianity
To extract useful resources and to serve as captive markets for their products
To establish relative power through the number of their colonies.
The three motives could be summarized as God, gold, and glory.
The colonial era began in the 1400s when European explorers sailed westward for Asia but encountered and settled in the Western Hemisphere instead.
Eventually, the European states lost most of their Western Hemisphere colonies: Independence was declared by the United States in 1776 and by most Latin American states between 1800 and 1824.
European states then turned their attention to Africa and Asia.
This European colonization of Africa and Asia is often termed imperialism, which is control of territory already occupied and organized by an indigenous society, whereas colonialism is control of previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited land.
The British planted colonies on every continent, including much of eastern and southern Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and Canada.
With by far the largest colonial empire the British proclaimed that the "Sun never set" on their empire.
France had the second-largest overseas territory, primarily in West Africa and Southeast Asia.
The colonial practices of European states varied.
France attempted to assimilate its colonies into French culture and educate an elite group to provide local administrative leadership.
After independence, most of these leaders retained close ties with France.
The British created different government structures and policies for various territories of their empire.
This decentralized approach helped to protect the diverse cultures, local customs, and educational systems in their extensive empire.
British colonies generally made peaceful transitions to independence, although exceptions can be found in the Middle East, Southern Africa, and Ireland where recent conflicts can be traced in part to the legacy of British rule.
Most African and Asian colonies became independent after World War II.
Only 15 African and Asian states were members of the United Na tions when it was established in 1945, compared to 106 in 2010.
The boundaries of the new states frequently coincide with former colonial provinces, although not always.
THE FEW REMAINING COLONIES.
At one time, colonies were widespread over Earth's surface, but only a handful remain.
The U.S. Department of State lists 43 colonies with indigenous populations.
Most current colonies are islands in the Pacific Ocean or Caribbean Sea.
The most populous is Puerto Rico, a CommonweaIth of the United States, with 4 million residents on an island of 8,870 square kilometers (3,500 square miles).
Puerto Ricans are citizens of the United States, but do not participate in U.S. elections, nor have a voting member of Congress.
One of the world's least populated colonies is Pitcairn Island, a 47-square-kilometer (18-square-mile) possession of the United Kingdom.
The island in the South Pacific was settled in 1790 by British mutineers from the ship Bounty, commanded by Captain William Bligh.
Its 48 islanders survive by selling fish, as well as postage stamps to collectors.
The State Department list does not include several inhabited islands considered by other sources to be colonies, including Australia's Lord Howe Island, Britain's Ascension Island, and Chile's Easter Island.
On the other hand, the State Department list includes several entities that others do not classify as colonies, including Greenland, Hong Kong, and Macao.
Greenland regards the Queen of Denmark as its head of state.
But it has a high degree of autonomy and self-rule and makes even foreign policy decisions independently of Denmark.
Hong Kong and Macao, attached to the mainland of China, were colonies of the United Kingdom and Portugal, respectively.
The British returned Hong Kong w China in 1997 and the Portuguese returned Macao to China 2 years later.
These two areas are classified as Special Administrative Regions with autonomy from the rest of China in economic matters but not in foreign and military affairs.
KEY ISSUE 2 - Why Do Bound Between States Cause Problems?
A state is separated from its neighbors by a boundary, an invisible line marking the extent of a state's territory.
Boundaries completely surround an individual state to mark the outer limits of its territorial control and to give it a distinctive shape.
Boundaries interest geographers because the Process of selecting their location is frequently difficult.
Shapes of States
The shape of a state controls the length of its boundaries with other states.
The shape therefore affects the potential for communication and conflict with neighbors.
The shape also, as in the outline of the United States or Canada, is part of its unique entity.
Beyond its value as a centripetal force, the shape of a state can influence the ease or difficulty of internal administration and can affect social unity.
Five Basic Shapes
Countries have one of five basic shapes—compact, prompted, elongated, fragmented, or perforated—examples of each can be seen in southern Africa.
Each shape displays distinctive characteristics and challenges.
COMPACT STATES: EFFICIENT.
In a compact state, the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly.
The ideal theoretical compact state would be shaped like a circle, with the capital at the center and with the shortest possible boundaries to defend.
Compactness can be a beneficial characteristic for smaller states, because good communications can be more easily established to all regions, especially if the capital is located near the center.
However, compactness does not necessarily mean peacefulness, as compact states are just as likely as others to experience civil wars and ethnic rivalries.
ELONGATED STATES: POTENTIAL ISOLATION.
A handful of elongated states have a long and narrow shape.
Examples include:
Malawi, which measures about 850 kilometers (530 miles) north-south but only 100 kilometers (60 miles) east-west.
Chile, which stretches north-south for more than 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) but rarely exceeds an east-west distance of 150 kilometers (90 miles); Chile is wedged between the Pacific Coast of South America and the rugged Andes Mountains, which rise more than 6,700 meters (20,000 feet).
Italy, which extends more than 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) from northwest to southeast but is only approximately 200 kilometers (120 miles) wide in most places.
Gambia, which extends along the banks of the Gambia River about 500 kilometers (300 miles) east-west but is only about 25 kilometers (15 miles) north-south.
Elongated states may suffer from poor internal communications.
A region located at an extreme end of the elongation might be isolated from the capital, which is usually placed near the center.
PRORUPTED STATES: ACCESS OR DISRUPTION
An otherwise compact state with a large projecting extension is a prorupted state.
Proruptions are created for two principal reasons:
To provide a state with access to a resource, such as water. For example, in southern Africa, Congo has a 500-kilometer (300-mile) proruption to the west along the Zaire (Congo) River. The Belgians created the proruption to give their colony access to the Atlantic.
To separate two states that otherwise would share a boundary. For example, in southern Africa, Namibia has a 500-kilometer (300-mile) proruption to the east called the Caprivi Strip. When Namibia was a colony of Germany, the proruption disrupted communications among the British colonies of southern Africa. It also provided the Germans with access to the Zambezi, one of Africa's most important rivers.
Elsewhere in the world, the otherwise compact state of Afghanistan has a proruption approximately 300 kilometers (200 miles) long and as narrow as 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide.
The British created the proruption to prevent Russia from sharing a border with Pakistan.
PERFORATED STATES: SOUTH AFRICA.
A state that completely surrounds another one is a perforated state.
The one good example of a perforated state is South Africa, which completely surrounds the state of Lesotho.
Lesotho must depend almost entirely on South Africa for the import and export of goods.
Dependency on South Africa was especially difficult for Lesotho when South Africa had a government controlled by whites who discriminated against the black majority population.
Gambia, described above as an elongated state, is completely surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline along the Atlantic Ocean.
The shapes of Gambia and Senegal are a legacy of competition among European countries to establish colonies during the nineteenth century.
Gambia became a British colony. whereas Senegal was French.
The border between the two countries divided families and ethnic groups but was never precisely delineated, so people trade and move across the border with little concern for its location.
FRAGMENTED STATES: PROBLEMATIC.
A fragmented state includes several discontinuous pieces of territory.
Technically, all states that have offshore islands as part of their territory are fragmented.
However, fragmentation is particularly significant for some states. There are two kinds of fragmented states:
Fragmented states separated by water. Examples include:
Tanzania, which was created in 1964 as a union of the island of Zanzibar with the mainland territory of Tanganyika. Although home to different ethnic groups, the two entities agreed to join together because they shared common development goals and political priorities.
• Indonesia, which comprises 13,677 islands that extend more than 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) between the Indian Ocean and Pacific oceans. Although more than 80 percent of the country's population live on two of the islands-Java and Sumatra-the fragmentation hinders communications and makes integration of people living on remote islands nearly impossible. To foster national integration, the Indonesian government has encouraged migration from the more densely populated islands to some of the sparsely inhabited ones.
Not all of the fragments joined Indonesia voluntarily. A few days after Timor-Leste (East Timor) gained its independence from Portugal in 1975, Indonesia invaded.
A long struggle against Indonesia culminated in independence in 2002.
West Papua, another fragment of Indonesia (the western portion of the island shared with Papua New Guinea), also claims that it should be an independent country.
However, West Papua’s attempt to break away from Indonesia gained less support from the international community.
Fragmented states separated by an intervening state. Examples include:
Angola, which is divided into two fragments by the Congo proruption described above. An independence movement is trying to detach Cabinda as a separate state from Angola, with the justification that its population belongs to distinct ethnic groups.
Russia, which has a fragment called Kaliningrad (Konigsberg), a 16-square-kilometer (6,000-square-mile) entity 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of the remainder of Russia, separated by the states of Lithuania and Belarus.
The area was part of Germany until the end of World War II when the Soviet Union seized it after the German defeat. The German population fled westward after the war, and virtually all of the area's 430,000 residents are Russians. Russia wants Kaliningrad because it has the country's largest naval base on the Baltic Sea.
Panama, which was a fragmented state for most of the twentieth century, divided in two parts by the canal, built in 1914 by the United States. After the United States withdrew from the Canal Zone in 1999, Panama became an elongated state, 700 kilometers ( 450 miles) long and 80 kilometers (50 miles) wide.
India's Tin Bigha corridor, which is a tiny strip of land only 178 meters (about 600 feet) by 85 meters (about 300 feet). It fragments Dahagram and Angarpota from the rest of Bangladesh (Figure 8-11). It is a legacy of the late 1940s when the British divided the region according to religion, allocating predominantly Hindu enclaves to India and predominantly Muslim ones to Bangladesh.
India and Bangladesh reached a novel agreement that opens the Tin Bigha to citizens of both countries every day between dawn and dusk.
Bangladeshis may travel between Dahagram and Angarpota and the rest of Bangladesh, and Indians may travel between Cooch Behar and the rest of India without submitting to passport inspection, customs declarations, and other international border controls.
Landlocked States
A landlocked state lacks a direct outlet to the sea because it is completely surrounded by several other countries (only one country in the case of Lesotho).
Landlocked states are most common in Africa, where 14 of the continent's 54 states have no direct ocean access.
The prevalence of landlocked states in Africa is a remnant of the colonial era, when Britain and France controlled extensive regions.
The European powers built railroads, mostly in the early twentieth century, to connect the interior of Africa with the sea.
Railroads moved minerals from interior mines to seaports, and in the opposite direction, rail lines carried mining recruitment and supplies from seaports to the interior.
Now that the British and French empires are gone, and former colonies have become independent states, some important colonial railroad lines pass through several independent counties.
This has created new landlocked states, which must cooperate with neighboring states that have seaports.
Direct access to an ocean is critical to states because it facilitates international trade.
Bulky goods, such as petroleum, grain, ore, and vehicles, are normally transported long distances by ship.
This means that a country needs a seaport where goods can be transferred between land and sea.
To send and receive goods by sea, a landlocked state must arrange to use another country's seaport.
Types of Boundaries
Boundaries are of two types:
Physical boundaries coincide with significant features of the natural landscape.
Cultural boundaries follow the distribution of cultural characteristics.
Neither type of boundary is better or more "natural," and many boundaries are a combination of both types.
Boundary locations can generate conflict, both within a country and with its neighbors.
The boundary line, which must be shared by more than one state, is the only location where direct physical contact must take place between two neighboring states.
Therefore, the boundary has the potential to become the focal point of conflict between them.
The best boundaries are those to which all affected states agree, regardless of the rationale used to draw the line.
Physical Boundaries
Important physical features on Earth's surface can make good boundaries because they are easily seen, both on a map and on the ground.
Three types of physical elements serve as boundaries between states—deserts, mountains, and water.
DESERT BOUNDARIES.
A boundary drawn in a desert can effectively divide two states.
Like mountains, deserts are hard to cross and sparsely inhabited.
Desert boundaries are common in Africa and Asia.
In North Africa, the Sahara has generally proved to be a stable boundary separating Algeria, Libya, and Egypt on the north from Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the Sudan on the south.
MOUNTAIN BOUNDARIES.
Mountains can be effective boundaries if they are difficult to cross.
Contact between nationalities living on opposite sides may be limited, or completely impossible if passes are closed by winter storms.
Mountains are also useful boundaries because they are rather permanent and are usually sparsely inhabited.
Mountains do not always provide for the amicable separation of neighbors.
Argentina and Chile agreed to be divided by the crest of the Andes Mountains but could not decide on the precise location of the crest.
The two countries almost fought a war over the boundary line.
But with the help of U.S. mediators, they finally decided on the line connecting adjacent mountain peaks.
WATER BOUNDARIES.
Rivers, lakes, and oceans are the physical features most commonly used as boundaries.
Water boundaries are readily visible on maps and aerial imagery.
Historically, water boundaries offered good protection against attack from another state, because an invading state had to transport its troops by air or ship and secure a landing spot in the country being attacked.
The state being invaded could concentrate its defense at the landing point.
Water boundaries are especially common in East Africa:
The boundary between Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda runs through Lake Albert.
The boundary separating Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda runs through Lake Victoria.
The boundary separating Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia runs through Lake Tanganyika.
The boundary between Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia runs through Lake Mwera.
The boundary between Malawi and Mozambique runs through Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa).
Water boundaries may seem to be set permanently, but the precise position of the water may change over time.
Rivers, in particular, can slowly change their course.
The Rio Grande, the river separating the United States and Mexico, has frequently meandered from its previous course since it became part of the boundary in 1848.
Land that had once been on the U.S. side of the boundary came to be on the Mexican side, and vice versa.
The United States and Mexico have concluded treaties that restore land affected by the shifting course of the river to the country in control at the time of the original nineteenth-century delineation.
The International Boundary and Water Commission, jointly staffed by the United States and Mexico, oversees the border treaties and settles differences.
Ocean boundaries also cause problems because states generally claim that the boundary lies not at the coastline but out at sea.
The reasons are for defense and for control of valuable fishing industries.
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, some states recognized a boundary, known as the territorial limit, which extended 3 nautical miles (about 5.5 kilometers or 3. 5 land miles) from the shore into the ocean.
Some states claimed more extensive territorial limits, and others identified a contagious zone of influence that extended beyond the territorial limits.
The Law of the Sea, signed by 158 countries, has standardized territorial limits for most countries at 12 nautical miles (about 22 kilometers or 14 land miles).
Under the Law of the Sea, states also have exclusive rights to the fish and other marine life within 200 miles (320 kilometers).
Countries separated by less than 400 miles of sea must negotiate the location of the boundary between exclusive fishing rights.
Disputes can be taken to a Tribunal for the Law of the Sea or to the International Court of Justice.
Cultural Boundaries
Two types of cultural boundaries are common—geometric and ethnic.
Geometric boundaries are simply straight lines drawn on a map.
Other boundaries between states coincide with differences in ethnicity, especially language and religion.
GEOMETRIC BOUNDARIES.
Part of the northern U.S. boundary with Canada is a 2,100-kilometer (1,300-mile) straight line (more precisely, an arc) along 49° north latitude running from Lake of the Woods between Minnesota and Manitoba to the Strait of Georgia between Washington State and British Columbia.
This boundary was established in 1846 by a treaty between the United States and Great Britain which still controlled Canada.
The two countries share an additional 1,100-kilometer (700-mile) geometric boundary between Alaska and the Yukon Territory along the north-south arc of 141° west longitude.
The 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) boundary between Chad and Libya is a straight line drawn across the desert in 1899 by the French and British to set the northern limit of French colonies in Africa.
Libya claimed that the straight line should be 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the south.
Citing an agreement between France and Italy in 1935, Libya seized the territory in 1973.
In 1987, Chad expelled the Libyan army with the help of French forces and regained control of the strip.
RELIGIOUS BOUNDARIES.
Boundaries between countries have been placed where possible to separate speakers of different languages or followers of different religions.
Religious differences often coincide with boundaries between states, but in only a few cases has religion been used to select the actual boundary line.
The most notable example was in South Asia, when the British partitioned India into two states on the basis of religion.
The predominantly Muslim portions were allocated to Pakistan, whereas the predominantly Hindu portions became the independent state of India.
Religion was also used to some extent to draw the boundary between two states on the island of Eire (Ireland).
Most of the island became an independent country, but the northeast—now known as Northern Ireland—remained part of the United Kingdom.
Roman Catholics comprise approximately 95 percent of the population in the 26 countries that joined the Republic of Ireland, whereas Protestants constitute the majority in the six countries of Northern Ireland.
LANGUAGE BOUNDARIES.
Language is an important cultural characteristic for drawing boundaries, especially in Europe.
England, France, Portugal, and Spain are examples of European states that coalesced around distinctive languages before the nineteenth century.
Germany and Italy emerged in the nineteenth century as states unified by language.
The movement to identity nationalities on the basis of language spread elsewhere in Europe during the twentieth century.
After World War I, leaders of the victorious countries met at the Versailles Peace Conference to redraw the map of Europe.
One of the chief advisers to President Woodrow Wilson, the geographer Isaiah Bowman, played a major role in the decisions.
Language was the most important criterion the allied leaders used to create new states in Europe and to adjust the boundaries of existing ones.
The Versailles conference was particularly concerned with Eastern and Southern Europe, regions long troubled by political instability and conflict.
Boundaries were drawn around the states of Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania to conform closely to the distribution of Bulgarian, Hungarian (Magyar), Polish, and Romanian speakers.
Speakers of several similar South Slavic languages were placed together in the new country of Yugoslavia.
Czechoslovakia was created by combining the speakers of Czech and Slovak, mutually intelligible West Slavic languages.
The nation-states created by the Versailles conference on the basis of language lasted with minor adjustment through most of the twentieth century.
A nation-state exists when the boundaries of a state match the boundaries of the territory inhabited by an ethnic group.
Problems exist when the boundaries do not match,
However, during the 1990s, the boundaries on the map of Europe drawn at Versailles in 1919 collapsed.
Despite speaking similar languages, Czechs and Slovaks found that they could no longer live together peacefully in the same state.
Croats, Macedonians, Serbs, and Slovenes realized the same.
Cyprus's "Green Line" Boundary
Cyprus, the third-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, contains two nationalities—and Turkish.
Although the island is physically closer to Turkey, Turks comprise only 18 percent of the country's population, whereas Greeks account for 78 percent.
When Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960, its constitution guaranteed the Turkish minority a substantial share of elected offices and control over its own education, religion, and culture.
But Cyprus has never peacefully integrated the Greek and Turkish nationalities.
Several Greek Cypriot military officers who favored unification of Cyprus with Greece seized control of the government in 1974.
Shortly after the coup, Turkey invaded Cyprus to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority.
The Greek coup leaders were removed within a few months, and an elected government was restored, but the Turkish army remained on Cyprus.
The northern 36 percent of the island controlled by Turkey declared itself the independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes it as a separate state.
A wall was constructed between the two areas, and a buffer zone patrolled by the United Nations was delineated across the entire island.
Traditionally, the Greek and Turkish Cypriots had mingled, but after the wall and buffer zone were established, the two nationalities became geographically isolated.
The northern part of the island is now overwhelmingly Turkish, whereas the southern part is overwhelmingly Greek.
Approximately one-third of the island's Greeks were forced to move from the region controlled by the Turkish army, whereas nearly one-fourth of the Turks moved from the region now considered to be the Greek side.
The two sides have been brought closer in recent years.
A portion of the wall was demolished, and after three decades the two nationalities could again cross to the other side.
The European Union accepted the entire island of Cyprus as a member in 2004.
A UN Peace Plan for reunification was accepted by the Turkish side but rejected by the Greek side.
Frontiers
Historically, frontiers rather than boundaries separated states.
A frontier is a zone where no state exercises complete political control.
It is a tangible geographic area, whereas a boundary is an infinitely thin, invisible, imaginary line.
A frontier provides an area of separation, often kilometers in width, but a boundary brings two neighboring states into direct contact, increasing the potential for violent face-to-face meetings.
A frontier area is either uninhabited or sparsely settled by a few isolated pioneers seeking to live outside organized society.
Almost universally, frontiers between states have been replaced by boundaries.
Modern communications systems permit countries to monitor and guard boundaries effectively, even in previously inaccessible locations.
Once-remote frontier regions have become more attractive for agriculture and mining.
Most of the borders between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, for example, remained frontiers until recently.
Saudi Arabia was separated from Kuwait by a diamond-shaped frontier called a Neutral Zone until 1965, and another diamond-shaped Neutral Zone separated Saudi Arabia from Iraq until 1981.
Saudi Arabia converted its frontiers with Oman to boundaries in 1990, and with Yemen in 2000.
In all three cases, Saudi Arabia agreed with its neighbors to share the former frontier regions' resources, such as water, oil, and grazing land, and to permit nomads to wander freely in the frontier.
Boundaries Inside States
Within countries, local government boundaries are sometimes drawn to separate different nationalities or ethnicities.
They are also drawn sometimes to provide advantage to a political party.
Unitary and Federal States
In the face of increasing demands by ethnicities for more self-determination, states have restructured their governments to transfer some authority from the national government to local government units.
An ethnicity that is not sufficiently numerous to gain control of the national government may be content with control of a regional or local unit of government.
The governments of states are organized according to one of two approaches—the unitary system or the federal system.
The unitary state places most power in the hands of central government officials, whereas the federal state allocates strong power to units of local government within the country.
A country's cultural and physical characteristics influence the evolution of its governmental system.
In principle, the unitary government system works best in nation-states characterized by few internal cultural differences and a strong sense of national unity.
Because the unitary system requires effective communications with all regions of the country, smaller states are more likely to adopt it.
Unitary states are especially common in Europe.
In a federal state, such as the United States, local governments possess more authority to adopt their own laws.
Multinational states may adopt a federal system of government to empower different nationalities, especially if they live in separate regions of the country.
Under a federal system, local government boundaries can be drawn to correspond with regions inhabited by different ethnicities.
The federal system is also more suitable for very large states because the national capital may be too remote to provide effective control over isolated regions.
Most of the world's largest states are federal, including Russia, Canada, the United States, Brazil, and India.
However, the size of the state is not always an accurate predictor of the form of government: Tiny Belgium is a federal state (to accommodate the two main cultural groups, the Flemish and the Walloons), whereas China is a unitary state (to promote Communist values).
Some multinational states have adopted unitary systems so that the values of one nationality can be imposed on others.
In Kenya and Rwanda, for instance, the mechanisms of a unitary state have enabled one ethnic group to extend dominance over weaker groups.
Trend Toward Federal Government
In recent years there has been a strong global trend toward federal government.
Unitary systems have been sharply curtailed in a number of countries and scrapped altogether in others.
FRANCE: CURBING A UNITARY GOVERNMENT.
A good example of a nation-state, France has a long tradition of unitary government in which a very strong national government dominates local government decisions.
Their basic local government unit is the département (department).
Each of the 96 departments has an elected general council, but its administrative head is a powerful préfet appointed by the national government rather than directly elected by the people.
A second tier of local government in France is the commune.
Each of the 36,686 communes has a locally elected mayor and council, but the mayor can be a member of the national parliament at the same time.
Further, the median size of a commune is 380 inhabitants, too small to govern effectively, with the possible exception of the largest ones, such as those in Paris, Lyon, Lille, and Marseille.
The French government has granted additional legal powers to the departments and communes in recent years.
Local governments can borrow money freely to finance new projects without explicit national government approval, which was formerly required.
The national government gives a block of funds to localities with no strings attached.
In addition, 22 regional councils that previously held minimal authority have been converted into full-fledged local government units, with elected councils and the power to levy taxes.
POLAND: A NEW FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
Poland switched from a unitary to a federal system after control of the national government was wrested from the Communists.
The federal system was adopted to dismantle legal structures by which Communists had maintained unchallenged power for more than 40 years.
Under the Communists' unitary system, local governments held no legal authority.
The national government appointed local officials and owned public property.
This system led to deteriorated buildings, roads, and water systems because the national government did not allocate sufficient funds to maintain property and no one had clear responsibility for keeping property in good condition.
In 1999, Poland adopted a three-tier system of local government.
The country was divided into 16 województw (provinces).
Each województwo was divided into between 12 and 42 powiats (counties), and each powiat was divided into between 3 and 19 gmina (municipalities).
The transition to a federal system of government proved difficult in Poland and other Eastern European countries.
Given the absence of local government for a half-century, elected officials had no experience in governing a community.
The first task for many newly elected councilors was to attend a training course on how to govern.
To compound the problem of adopting a federal system, Poland's newly elected local government officials had to find thousands of qualified people to fill appointed positions, such as directors of education, public works, and planning.
Electoral Geography
The boundaries separating legislative districts within the United States and other countries are redrawn periodically to ensure that each district has approximately the same population.
Boundaries must be redrawn because migration inevitably results in some districts gaining population, whereas others are losing.
The districts of the U.S. House of Representatives are redrawn every 10 years following the release of official population figures by the Census Bureau.
The job of redrawing boundaries in most European countries is entrusted to independent commissions.
Commissions typically try to create compact homogeneous districts without regard for voting preferences or incumbents.
A couple of U.S. states, including Iowa and Washington, also use independent or bipartisan commissions, but in most U.S. states the job of redrawing boundaries is entrusted to the state legislature.
The political party in control of the state legislature naturally attempts to redraw boundaries to improve the chances of its supporters to win seats.
The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power is called gerrymandering.
The term gerrymandering was named for Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814), governor of Massachusetts (1810-1812) and vice president of the United States (1813-1814).
As governor, Gerry signed a bill that redistricted the state to benefit his party.
An opponent observed that an oddly-shaped new district looked like a "salamander," whereupon another opponent responded that it was a "gerrymander."
A newspaper subsequently printed an editorial cartoon of a monster named "gerrymander" with a body shaped like the district.
Gerrymandering takes three forms.
"Wasted vote" spreads opposition supporters across many districts but in the minority.
"Excess vote" concentrates opposition supporters into a few districts.
"Stacked vote" links distant areas of like-minded voters through oddly shaped boundaries.
"Stacked vote" gerrymandering has been especially attractive for creating districts inclined to elect ethnic minorities.
Because the two largest ethnic groups in the United States (African Americans and most Hispanics other than Cubans) tend to vote Democratic—in some elections, more than 90 percent of African Americans vote Democratic—creating a majority African American district virtually guarantees election of a Democrat.
Republicans support a "stacked" Democratic district because they are better able to draw boundaries that are favorable to their candidates in the rest of the state.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled gerrymandering illegal in 1985 but did not require dismantling of existing oddly shaped districts, and a 2001 ruling allowed North Carolina to add another oddly shaped district that ensured the election of an African American Democrat.
Through gerrymandering, only about one-tenth of congressional seats are competitive, making a shift of the more than a few seats unlikely from one election to another in the United States except in unusual circumstances.
KEY ISSUE 3 - Why Do States Cooperate with Each Other?
Chapter 7 illustrated examples of challenges to the survival of states from the trend toward local diversity.
Ethnicities seek the right of self-determination as an expression of unique cultural identity.
The inability to accommodate the diverse aspirations of ethnicities has led to the breakup of states into smaller ones, especially in Eastern Europe.
The future of the world's current collection of sovereign states is also challenged by the trend toward globalization.
States are willingly transferring authority to regional organizations, established primarily for economic cooperation.
Although it has limited authority, the United Nations includes all but a handful of states.
Political and Military Cooperation
During the Cold War era (late 1940s until early 1990s), global and regional organizations were established primarily to prevent a third world war in the twentieth century and to protect countries from a foreign attack.
With the end of the Cold War, some of these organizations have flourished and found new roles, whereas others have withered.
The United Nations
The most important global organization is the United Nations, created at the end of World War II by the victorious Allies.
When established in 1945, the United Nations comprised 49 states, but membership grew to 192 in 2006, making it a truly global institution.
The number of countries in the United Nations increased rapidly on three occasions—1955, 1960, and the early 1990s.
Sixteen countries joined in 1955, mostly European countries that had been liberated from Nazi Germany during World War II.
Seventeen new members were added in 1960, all but one a former African colony of Britain or France.
Twenty-six countries were added between 1990 and 1993, primarily from the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.
UN membership also increased in the 1990s because of the admission of several microstates.
The United Nations was not the world's first attempt at international peacemaking.
It replaced an earlier organization known as the League of Nations, which was established after World War I.
The League was never an effective peacekeeping organization.
The United States did not join, despite the fact that President Woodrow Wilson initiated the idea, because the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the treaty.
By the 1930s, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union had all withdrawn, and the League could not stop aggression by these states against neighboring countries.
UN members can vote to establish a peacekeeping force and request states to contribute military forces.
The United Nations is playing an important role in trying to separate warring groups in a number of regions, especially in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and sub-0Saharan Africa.
However, any one of the five permanent members of the Security Council—China, France, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States—can veto a peacekeeping operation.
During the Cold War era, the United States and the Soviet Union used the veto to prevent undesired UN intervention, and it was only after the Soviet Union’s delegate walked out of a Security Council meeting in 1950 that the UN voted to send troops to support South Korea.
More recently, the opposition of China, France, and Russia prevented the United Kingdom and the United States from securing support from the United Nations for the 2003 attack on Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Because it must rely on individual countries to supply troops, the UN often lacks enough of them to keep peace effectively.
The UN tries to maintain strict neutrality by separating warring factions, but this has proved difficult in places such as Bosnia & Herzegovina, where most of the world sees one ethnicity (Bosnian Serbs) as a stronger aggressor and another (Bosnian Muslims) as a weaker victim.
Despite its shortcomings, though, the UN represents a forum where, for the first time in history, virtually all states of the world can meet and vote on issues without resorting to war.
Regional Military Alliances
In addition to joining the United Nations, many states joined regional military alliances after World War II.
The division of the world into military alliances resulted from the emergence of two states as superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union.
ERA OF TWO SUPERPOWERS.
During the Cold War era, the United States and the Soviet Union were the world's two superpowers.
As very large states, both superpowers could quickly deploy armed forces in different regions of the world.
To maintain strength in regions that were not contiguous to their own territory, the United States and the Soviet Union established military bases in other countries.
From these bases, ground and air support were in proximity to local areas of conflict.
Naval fleets patrolled the major bodies of water.
Before the Cold War, the world typically contained more than two superpowers.
For example, before the outbreak of World War I in the early twentieth century, there were eight great powers: Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
When a large number of states ranked as great powers of approximately equal strength, no single state could dominate.
Instead, major powers joined together to form temporary alliances.
A condition of roughly equal strength between opposing alliances is known as a balance of power.
In contrast, the post-World War II balance of power was bipolar between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Because the power of these two states was so much greater than all others, the world comprised two camps, each under the influence of one of the superpowers.
Other states lost the ability to tip the scales significantly in favor of one or the other superpower.
They were relegated to a new role, that of ally or satellite.
Both superpowers repeatedly demonstrated that they would use military force if necessary to prevent an ally from becoming too independent.
The Soviet Union sent its armies into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to install more sympathetic governments.
Because these states were clearly within the orbit of the Soviet Union, the United States chose not to intervene militarily.
Similarly, the United States sent troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989 to ensure that they would remain allies.
MILITARY COOPERATION IN EUROPE.
After World War II, most European states joined one of two military alliances dominated by the superpowers—NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or the Warsaw Pact.
NATO was a military alliance among 16 democratic states, including the United States and Canada plus 14 European states.
The Warsaw Pact was a military agreement among Communist Eastern European countries to defend each other in case of attack.
Seven members joined the Warsaw Pact when it was founded in 1955.
Some of Hungary's leaders in 1956 asked for the help of Warsaw Pact troops to crush an uprising that threatened Communist control of the government.
Warsaw Pact troops also invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 to depose a government committed to reforms.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact were designed to maintain a bipolar balance of power in Europe.
For NATO allies, the principal objective was to prevent the Soviet Union from overrunning West Germany and other smaller countries.
The Warsaw Pact provided the Soviet Union with a buffer of allied states between it and Germany to discourage a third German invasion of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.
In a Europe no longer dominated by military confrontation between two blocs, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded, and the number of troops under NATO command was sharply reduced.
NATO expanded its membership to include most of the former Warsaw Pact countries.
Membership in NATO offered Eastern European countries an important sense of security against any future Russian threat, no matter how remote that appears at the moment, as well as participation in a common united Europe.
OTHER REGIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.
Other prominent regional organizations include:
The Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Its 56 members include the United States, Canada, and Russia, as well as most European countries. When founded in 1975, the Organization on Security and Cooperation was composed primarily of Western European countries and played only a limited role. With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the renamed OSCE expanded to include Warsaw Pact countries and became a more active forum for countries concerned with ending conflicts in Europe, especially in the Balkans and Caucasus. Although the OSCE does not directly command armed forces, it can call upon member states to supply troops if necessary.
The Organization of American States (OAS). All 35 states in the Western Hemisphere are members. Cuba is a member but was suspended from most OAS activities in 1962. The organization's headquarters, including the permanent council and general assembly, are located in Washington, D.C. The OAS promotes social, cultural, political, and economic links among member states.
The African Union (AU). Established in 2002, it encompasses 53 countries in Africa. The AU replaced an earlier organization called the Organization of African Unity, founded in 1963 primarily to seek an end to colonialism and apartheid in Africa. The new organization has placed more emphasis on promoting economic integration in Africa.
The Commonwealth. It includes the United Kingdom and 52 other states that were once British colonies, including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Most other members are African states or island countries in the Caribbean or Pacific. Commonwealth members seek economic and cultural cooperation.
Economic Cooperation
The era of a bipolar balance of power formally ended when the Soviet Union was disbanded in 1992, and the world has returned to the pattern of more than two superpowers that predominated before World War II.
The contemporary pattern of global power displays two key differences, however:
The most important elements of state power are increasingly economic rather than military. China, Germany, and Japan have joined the ranks of superpowers on the basis of their economic success, whereas Russia has slipped in strength because of economic problems.
The leading superpower is not a single state, such as the United States or Russia, but an economic union of European states.
With the decline in the military-oriented alliances, European states increasingly have turned to economic cooperation.
Western Europe's most important economic organization is the European Union (formerly known as the European Economic Community, the Common Market, and the European Community).
When it was established in 1958, the predecessor to the European Union included six countries-Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
The union was designed to heal Western Europe's scars from World War ll (which had ended only 13 years earlier) when Nazi Germany, in alliance with Italy, conquered the other four countries.
The European Union has expanded from 6 countries during the 1950s and 1960s to 12 countries during the 1980s and 27 countries during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
A European Parliament is elected by the people in each of the member states simultaneously.
Croatia and Turkey have begun negotiations to join, but the European Union has not yet set a timetable.
Macedonia is a candidate to join but negotiations have not started.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iceland, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia have been designated by the European Union as potential candidates.
In 1949, during the Cold War, the seven Eastern European Communist states in the Warsaw Pact formed an organization for economic cooperation, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).
Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam were also members of the alliance, which was designed to promote trade and sharing of natural resources.
Like the Warsaw Pact, COMECON disbanded in the early 1990s after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.
Most former COMECON members have joined the European Union.
The main task of the European Union is to promote development within the member states through economic cooperation.
At first, the European Union played a limited role, providing subsidies to farmers and to depressed regions such as southern Italy.
Most of the European Union's budget still serves these purposes.
The European Union has taken on more importance in recent years as member states seek greater economic and political cooperation.
It has removed most barriers to free trade; with a few exceptions, goods, services, capital, and people can move freely through Europe.
Trucks can carry goods across borders without stopping, and a bank can open branches in any member country with supervision only by the bank's home country.
In addition, the introduction of the euro as the common currency in a dozen European countries has eliminated many differences in prices, interest rates, and other economic policies within the region.
The effect of these actions has been to turn Europe into the world's wealthiest market.
KEY ISSUE 4 - Why Has Terrorism Increased?
Terrorism is the systematic use of violence by a group in order to intimidate a population or coerce a government into granting its demands.
Terrorists attempt to achieve their objectives through organized acts that spread fear and anxiety among the population, such as bombing, kidnapping, hijacking, taking of hostages, and assassination.
Terrorists consider violence necessary as a means of bringing widespread publicity to goals and grievances that are not being addressed through peaceful means.
Terrorists' belief in their cause is so strong that they do not hesitate to strike despite knowing they will probably die in the act.
Terrorism by Individuals and Organizations
The term terror (from the Latin "to frighten") was first applied to the period of the French Revolution between March 1793 and July 1794, known as the Reign of Terror.
In the name of protecting the principles of the revolution, the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Maximilien Robespierre, guillotined several thousand of its political opponents.
In modern times, the term terrorism has been applied to actions by groups operating outside government rather than to those of official government agencies, although some governments provide military and financial support for terrorists.
Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated—Lincoln (1865), Garfield (1881), McKinley (1901), and Kennedy 1963).
The Roman Emperor Julius Caesar's assassination 2,000 years ago has been vividly re-created for future generations through Shakespeare's play.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serb in Sarajevo (capital of present-day Bosnia & Herzegovina) on June 28, 1914, led directly to the outbreak of World War 1.
But terrorism differs from assassinations and other acts of political violence because attacks are aimed at ordinary people rather than at military targets or political leaders.
Victims of terrorism are a cross-section of citizens who happen to be at the target at the time of the attack.
Other types of military action can result in civilian deaths-bombs can go astray, targets can be misidentified, and enemy's military equipment can be hidden in civilian buildings—but average individuals are unintended victims rather than principal targets in most conflicts.
A terrorist considers all citizens responsible for the actions he or she opposes, so they are therefore equally legitimate as victims.
Terrorism against Americans
The United States suffered several terrorist attacks during the late twentieth century:
December 21, 1998: A terrorist bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard, plus 11 on the ground.
February 26, 1993: A car bomb parked in the underground garage damaged New York’s World Trade Center, killing 6 and injuring about 1,000.
April 19, 1995: A car bomb killed 168 people in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
June 25, 1996: A truck bomb blew up an apartment complex in Dhahran. Saudi Arabia, killing 29 U.S. soldiers who lived there and injuring more than 100 people.
August 7, 1998: U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed, killing 190 and wounding nearly 5,000.
October 12, 2000: The USS Cole was bombed while in the port of Aden, Yemen, killing 17 U.S. service personnel.
With the exception of the Oklahoma City bombing, Americans generally paid little attention to the attacks and had only a vague notion of who had committed them.
It took the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, for most Americans to feel threatened by terrorism.
Some of the terrorists during the 1990s were American citizens operating alone or with a handful of others.
Theodore J. Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was convicted of killing 3 people and injuring 23 others by sending bombs through the mail during a 17-year period.
His targets were mainly academics in technological disciplines and executives in businesses whose actions he considered to be adversely affecting the environment.
Timothy J. McVeigh was convicted and executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, and for assisting him Terry I. Nichols was convicted of conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter but not executed.
McVeigh claimed his terrorist act was provoked by rage against the US government for such actions as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian religious compound near Waco, Texas, culminating with an attack on April 19, 1993, that resulted in 80 deaths.
September 11, 2001 Attacks
The most dramatic terrorist attack against the United States came on September 11, 2001.
The tallest buildings in the United States, the 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, were destroyed, and the Pentagon, near Washington, D.C., was damaged.
The attacks resulted in nearly 3,000 fatalities:
93 (77 passengers, 11 crew members, and 5 terrorists) on American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into World Trade Center Tower 1 (North Tower)
65 (51 passengers, 9 crew members, and 5 terrorists) on United Airlines Flight175, which crashed into World Trade Center Tower 2 (South Tower)
2,605 on the ground at the World Trade Center
64 (53 passengers, 6 crew members, and 5 terrorists) on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon
125 on the ground at the Pentagon
44 (33 passengers, 7 crew members, and 4 terrorists) on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought with terrorists on board, preventing an attack on another Washington, D.C., target.
Al-Qaeda
Responsible or implicated in most of the anti-U.S. terrorism during the 1990s, as well as the September 11, 2001, attacks, was the al-Qaeda network, founded by Osama bin Laden.
His father, Mohammed bin Laden, a native of Yemen, established a construction company in Saudi Arabia and became a billionaire through close connections to the royal family.
Osama bin Laden, one of about 50 children fathered by Mohammed with several wives, used his several hundred million dollar inheritance to fund al-Qaeda (an Arabic word meaning "the foundation" or "the base" ) around 1990 to unite jihad fighters in Afghanistan, as well as supporters of bin Laden elsewhere in the Middle East.
Bin Laden moved to Afghanistan during the mid-1980s to support the fight against the Soviet army and the country's Soviet-installed government.
Calling the anti-Soviet fight a holy war or jihad, bin Laden recruited militant Muslims from Arab countries to join the cause.
After the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled in 1991 for opposing the Saudi government's decision permitting the United States to station troops there during the 1991 war against Iraq.
Bin Laden moved to Sudan but was expelled in 1994 for instigating attacks against U.S. troops in Yemen and Somalia, so he returned to Afghanistan, where he lived as a "guest" of the Taliban-controlled government.
Bin Laden issued a declaration of war against the United States in 1996 because of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and Israel.
In a 1998 fatwa ("religious decree"), bin Laden argued that Muslims had a duty to wage a holy war against U.S. citizens because the United States was responsible for maintaining the Saud royal family as rulers of Saudi Arabia and a state of Israel dominated by Jews.
Destruction of the Saudi monarchy and the Jewish state of Israel would liberate from their control Islam's three holiest sites of Makkah (Mecca), Madinah, and Jerusalem.
Al-Qaeda has been implicated in several bombings since 9/11:
May 12, 2003: 35 died (including 9 terrorists) in car bomb detonations at two apartment complexes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
November 15, 2003: Truck bombs killed 29 (including 2 terrorists) at two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey.
November 20, 2003: 32 (including 2 terrorists) were killed at the British consulate and British-owned HSBC Bank in Istanbul.
May 29, 2004: 22 died in attacks on oil company offices in Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
July 7, 2005: 56 died (including 4 terrorists) when several subway trains and buses were bombed in London, England.
July 23, 2005: 88 died in bombings of resort hotels in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt.
November 9, 2005: 60 died in the bombing of three American-owned hotels in Amman, Jordan.
Al-Qaeda is not a single unified organization, and the number involved is unknown.
Bin Laden is advised by a small leadership council, which has several committees that specialize in such areas as finance, military, media, and religious policy.
In addition to the original organization founded by Osama bin Laden responsible for the World Trade Center attack, al-Qaeda also encompasses local franchises concerned with country-specific issues, as well as imitators and emulators ideologically aligned with al-Qaeda but not financially tied to it.
Jemaah Islamiyah is an example of an al-Qaeda franchise with local concerns, specifically with establishing fundamentalist Islamic governments in Southeast Asia.
Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist activities have been concentrated in the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia:
October 12, 2002: A nightclub in the resort town of Kuta on the island of Bali was bombed, killing 202.
August 5, 2003: Car bombs killed 12 at a Marriott hotel in the capital Jakarta.
September 9, 2004: Car bombs killed 9 or 11 at the Australian embassy, also in Jakarta.
October 1, 2005: Attacks on a downtown square in Kuta as well as a food court in Jimbaran, also on Bali, killed 23 (including 3 terrorists).
Other terrorist groups have been loosely associated with al-Qaeda. For example:
November 28, 2002: A Somali terrorist group killed 10 Kenyan dancers and 3 Israeli tourists at a resort in Mombasa, Kenya, and fired two missiles at an Israeli airplane taking off from the Mombasa airport.
March 11, 2004: A local terrorist group blew up several commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 192.
Al-Qaeda's use of religion to justify attacks has posed challenges to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
For many Muslims, the challenge has been to express disagreement with the policies of governments in the United States and Europe yet disavow the use of terrorism.
For many Americans and Europeans, the challenge has been to distinguish between the peaceful but unfamiliar principles and practices of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims and the misuse and abuse of Islam by a handful of terrorists.
State Support for Terrorism
Several states in the Middle East have provided support for terrorism in recent years, at three increasing levels of involvement:
Providing sanctuary for terrorists wanted by other countries
Supplying weapons, money, and intelligence to terrorists
Planning attacks using terrorists
Libya
The government of Libya was accused of sponsoring a 1986 bombing of a nightclub in Berlin, Germany, popular with U.S. military personnel then stationed there, killing three (including one U.S. soldier).
U.S. relations with Libya had been poor since 1981 when U.S. aircraft shot down attacking Libyan warplanes while conducting exercises over waters that the United States considered international but that Libya considered inside its territory.
In response to the Berlin bombing, U.S. bombers attacked the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in a failed attempt to kill Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Libyan agents were found to have planted bombs that killed 270 people on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, as well as 170 people on UTA Flight 772 over Niger in 1989.
Following 8 years of UN economic sanctions, Qaddafi turned over suspects in the Lockerbie bombing for a trial that was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law.
One of the two was acquitted; the other, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, but he was released in 2009 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Libya renounced terrorism in 2003, and has provided compensation for victims of Pan Am 103.
UN sanctions have been lifted, and it is no longer considered a state sponsor of terrorism.
Afghanistan
U.S. accusations of state-sponsored terrorism escalated after 9/11.
The governments of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, and then Iran were accused of providing at least one of the three levels of state support for terrorists.
As part of its war against terrorism, the U.S. government with the cooperation of some other countries attacked Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 to depose those country's government leaders, who were considered supporters of terrorism.
The United States attacked Afghanistan in 2001 when its leaders, known as the Taliban, sheltered Osama bin L1den and other al-Qaeda terrorists.
The Taliban (Pashto for "students") had gained power in Afghanistan in 1995 and had imposed strict Islami c fundamentalist law on the population.
Afghanistan's Taliban leadership treated women especially harshly.
Women were prohibited from attending school, working outside the home seeking health care, or driving a car.
They were permitted to leave home only if fully covered by clothing and escorted by a male relative.
The 6 years of Taliban rule temporarily suppressed a civil war that has raged in Afghanistan on and off since the 1970s.
The civil war began in 1973 when the king was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Mohammed Daoud Khan.
Daoud was murdered 5 years later and replaced by a government led by military officers sympathetic to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union sent 115,000 troops to Afghanistan beginning m 1979 after fundamentalist Muslims, known as mujahedeen or "holy warriors, " started a rebellion against the pro-Soviet government.
Although heavily outnumbered by Soviet troops and possessing much less sophisticated equipment, the mujahedeen offset the Soviet advantage by waging a guerrilla war in the country’s rugged mountains, where they were more comfortable than the Soviet troops and where Soviet air superiority was ineffective.
Unable to subdue the mujahedeen, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops in 1989; the Soviet-installed government in Afghanistan collapsed in 1992.
After several years of infighting among the factions that had defeated the Soviet Union, the Taliban gained control over most of the country.
Six years of Taliban rule came to an end in 2001 following the U.S. invasion.
Destroying the Taliban was necessary in order for the United States to go after al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who were living in Afghanistan as guests of the Taliban.
Removal of the Taliban unleashed a new struggle for control of Afghanistan among the country's many ethnic groups.
When U.S. attention shifted to Iraq and Iran. the Taliban were able to regroup and resume an insurgency against the U.S.-backed Afghanistan government.
Iraq
US claims of state-sponsored terrorism proved more controversial with regard to Iraq than to Afghanistan.
The United States led an attack against Iraq in 2003 in order to depose Saddam Hussein, the country's longtime president.
U.S. officials' justification for removing Hussein was that he had created biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.
These weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists, the U.S. government charged, because close links were said to exist between Iraq's government and al-Qaeda.
The United Kingdom and a few other countries joined in the 2003 attack, but most countries did not offer support.
U.S. confrontation with Iraq predated the war on terror.
From the time he became president of Iraq in 1979, Hussein's behavior had raised concern around the world.
War with neighbor Iran, begun in 1980, ended 8 years later in a stalemate.
A nuclear reactor near Baghdad, where nuclear weapons to attack Israel were allegedly being developed, was destroyed in 1981 by Israeli planes. Hussein ordered the use of poison gas in 1988 against Iraqi Kurds, killing 5,000.
Iraq's 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait, which Hussein claimed was part of Iraq, was opposed by the international community.
The 1991 U.S.-led Gulf War, known as Operation Desert Storm, drove Iraq out of Kuwait, but it failed to remove Hussein from power.
Desert Storm was supported by nearly every country in the United Nations because the purpose was to end one country's unjustified invasion and attempted annexation of another.
In contrast, few counties supported the U.S.-led attack in 2003; most did not agree with the U.S. assessment that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction or intended to use them.
Inspectors sent by the United Nations had found the following evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during the 1980s:
A nuclear radiation weapon program, including 40 nuclear research facilities and 3 uranium-enrichment programs
A program for making weapons from the VX nerve agent
A biological weapons program, including the production of botulinum, anthrax, aflatoxin, and clostridium, and bombs to deliver toxic agents
UN experts concluded that Iraq had destroyed these weapons in 1991 after its Desert Storm defeat. U.S. officials believed instead that Iraq still had the weapons hidden, though they were never able to find them and their judgment may have been based on faulty intelligence.
The U.S. assertion that Hussein had close links with al-Qaeda was also challenged by most other countries, as well as ultimately by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Hussein's Ba'ath Party, which ruled Iraq between 1968 and 2003, espoused different principles than the al-Qaeda terrorists.
The guiding principle of the Ba'ath Party was Pan-Arab nationalism, which was the belief that the several hundred million Arabs living in the vast territory between North Africa and Central Asia should be joined together into one powerful nation-state, with financial strength garnered by sharing the region's extensive oil wealth.
Whereas al-Qaeda terrorists justified their attacks on the basis of their interpretation of Islam, Ba'ath Party leaders were not observant Muslims and did not derive Pan-Arab philosophy from religious principles.
Lacking evidence of weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda, the United States argued instead that Iraq needed a "regime change."
Hussein's quarter-century record of brutality justified replacing him with a democratically elected government, according to U.S. officials.
The U.S. position drew little international support—sovereign states are reluctant to invade another sovereign state just because they dislike its leader, no matter how odious.
Iraq is divided into around 150 tribes.
After Hussein was toppled, tribes stepped into the political vacuum, establishing control over their local territories.
A tribe ('ashira) is divided into several clans (fukhdhs), which in tum encompass several houses (beit), which in tum include several extended families (kham).
Tribes are grouped into more than a dozen federations (qabila).
Most Iraqis have stronger loyalty to a tribe or clan than to a national government.
In addition, Iraq's principal ethnic groups are split into regions, with Kurds in the north, Sunnis in the center, and Shi'ites in the south.
The Kurds welcomed the United States because they gained more security and autonomy than they had under Hussein.
Sunni Muslims opposed the U.5.-led attack because they feared loss of power and privilege given to them by Hussein, who was a Sunni.
Shiite Muslims also opposed the U.S. presence.
Although they had been treated poorly by Hussein and came to control Iraq's post-Hussein government, Shiites shared a long-standing hostility toward the United States with their neighbors in Shiite-controlled Iran.
The capital, Baghdad, where one-fourth of the Iraqi people live, has some neighborhoods where virtually all residents are of one ethnicity, but most areas are mixed.
In many of these historically mixed neighborhoods, the less numerous ethnicity has been forced to move away.
Having invaded Iraq and removed Hussein from power, the United States expected an enthusiastic welcome from the Iraqi people.
Instead, the United States became embroiled in a complex and violent struggle among these various religious sects and tries.
A quarter-century of Hussein's dictatorial rule had suppressed long-standing tensions among these groups, and violence erupted among them after his removal.
Iran
Hostility between the United States and Iran dates from 1979 when a revolution forced abdication of Iran's pro-U.S. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Iran's majority Shiite population had demanded more democratic rule and opposed the Shah's economic modernization program that generated social unrest.
Supporters of exiled fundamentalist Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini then proclaimed Iran an Islamic republic and rewrote the constitution to place final authority with the ayatollah.
Militant supporters of the ayatollah seized. 05 the U.S. embassy on November 4, 1979, and held 62 Amenca hostage until January 20, 1981.
Iran and Iraq fought a war between 1980 and 198 over control of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flowing into the Persian Gulf.
Forced to cede control of the waterway to Iran in 1975, Iraq took advantage of Iran's revolution to seize the waterway in 1980, but Iran was not defeated outright, so an 8-year war began that neither side was able to win.
An estimated 1.5 million died in the war, which ended when the two countries accepted a UN peace plan.
When the United States launched its war on terrorism after 9/11, Afghanistan was the immediate target, followed by Iraq.
But after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2005, relations between the United States and Iran deteriorated.
The United States accused Iran of harboring al-Qaeda members and of trying to gain influence in Iraq, where, as in Iran, the majority of the people were Shiites.
More troubling to the international community was Iran's aggressive development of a nuclear program.
Iran claimed that its nuclear program was for civilian purposes, but other countries believed that it was intended to develop weapons.
Prolonged negotiations were undertaken to dismantle Iran's nuclear capabilities without resorting to yet another war in the Middle East.
Pakistan
Pakistan along with India was created in 1947 when South Asia was partitioned into predominantly Muslim and Hindu states.
The war on terrorism has spilled over from Pakistan's western neighbors Afghanistan and Iran.
Although the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are Muslim, Pakistan is a multiethnic state.
Punjabis comprise around 45 percent of the population and, combined, Pashtuns, Sindhis, and Seraikis around 40 percent; the remaining 15 percent are other ethnicities.
Around 70 percent of Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims and 30 percent are Shiite.
Western Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan, is a rugged, mountainous region inhabited by several ethnic minorities where the Taliban have been largely in control.
Osama bin Laden is thought to have hidden in Pakistan after escaping from Tora Bora.