3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Drawing on the social movement literature, this course examines the emergence of irregular armed groups and their decisions to use violence. It explains how social movements turnviolent, how violence dictates their nature, and what this nature can tell us in terms of group strengths and weaknesses. It provides the students with the analytical tools needed to distinguish between terrorism, insurgency, and crime – by focusing and understanding group strategies, behavior, and capabilities. Students will thus be familiarized with the theory on armed group formation and evolution – but the course goes further, by counterposing such theory to the complexities of practice through the consideration of key case studies. The course ends with an overview of state strategies intended to counter a wide variety of threats. Particular attention is paid to the notion of operational art and lines of effort to underline the potential and meaning of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.