Terrorism and Political Violence

Political violence has always been present. Sometimes it is expressed as a formal war between clearly defined combatants for clearly defined aims; more usually the aims are mixed and the methods and targets even more muddled. It is essential to understand these distinctions, moral, legal, political and practical in order to understand wider political practices both between nation states and within them. Since 1945, there have been almost no ?wars? in the traditional sense of the word and very few which approximate to wars between states. Future wars are more likely to be between ill-defined protagonists and since 11 September 2001 and the US's "war on terrorism", it has become even more important to understand the roots, aims, morals, ethics and techniques of political terrorism and all forms of political violence.