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The nature and goals of terrorist organizations have changed profoundly since the Cold War standoff among the U.S., Soviet, and Chinese superpowers gave way to the current "polyplex" global system, in which the old rules of international engagement have been shattered by a new struggle for power among established states, non-state actors, and emerging nations. In this confusing state of global disorder, terrorist organizations that are privately funded and highly flexible have become capable of carrying out incredibly destructive attacks anywhere in the world in support of a wide array of political, religious, and ethnic causes.

This groundbreaking book examines the evolution of terrorism in the context of the new global disorder. Richard M. Pearlstein categorizes three generations of terrorist organizations and shows how each arose in response to the global conditions of its time. Focusing extensively on today's transnational (i.e., privately funded and internationally operating) terrorist organizations, he devotes thorough attention to the two most virulent types: ethnoterrorism and radical Islamic terrorism. He also discusses the terrorist race for weapons of mass destruction and the types of attacks, including cyberterrorism, that are likely to occur in coming years. Pearlstein concludes with a thought-provoking assessment of the many efforts to combat transnational terrorism in the post-September 11 period.

Studies the complex constraints and trade-offs the second administration of Colombian President Uribe (2006–2010) encountered as it attempted to resolve that nation’s violent Marxist insurrection and to have a more efficient judicial system

Fighting Monsters in the Abyss offers a deeply insightful analysis of the efforts by the second administration of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2006–2010) to resolve a decades-long Marxist insurgency in one of Latin America’s most important nations. Continuing work from his prior books about earlier Colombian presidents and yet written as a stand-alone study, Colombia expert Harvey F. Kline illuminates the surprising successes and setbacks in Uribe’s response to this existential threat.

In State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986–1994, Kline documented and explained the limited successes of Presidents Virgilio Barco and César Gaviria in putting down the revolutionaries while also confronting challenges from drug dealers and paramilitary groups. The following president Andrés Pastrana then boldly changed course and attempted resolution through negotiations, an effort whose failure Kline examines in Chronicle of a Failure Foretold. In his third book, Showing Teeth to the Dragons, Kline shows how in his first term President Álvaro Uribe Vélez more successfully quelled the insurrection through a combination of negotiated demobilization of paramilitary groups and using US backing to mount more effective military campaigns.

Kline opens Fighting Monsters in the Abyss with a recap of Colombia’s complex political history, the development of Marxist rebels and paramilitary groups and their respective relationships to the narcotics trade, and the attempts of successive Colombian presidents to resolve the crisis. Kline next examines the ability of the Colombian government to reimpose rule in rebel-controlled territories as well as the challenges of administering justice. He recounts the difficulties in the enforcement of the landmark Law of Justice and Peace as well as two significant government scandals, that of the “false positives” (“falsos positivos”) in which innocent civilians were killed by the military to inflate the body counts of dead insurgents and a second scandal related to illegal wiretapping.

In tracing Uribe’s choices, strategies, successes, and failures, Kline also uses the example of Colombia to explore a dimension quite unique in the literature about state building: what happens when some members of a government resort to breaking rules or betraying their societies’ values in well-intentioned efforts to build a stronger state?

In her book, Oksala shows that the arguments for the ineliminability of violence from the political are often based on excessively broad, ontological conceptions of violence distinct from its concrete and physical meaning and, on the other hand, on a restrictively narrow and empirical understanding of politics as the realm of conventional political institutions.