Modeling the Complexity of the Terrorism/Counter-Terrorism Struggle

Abstract

The United States armed forces could be considered the world’s most powerful military force. However, in modern conflicts, techniques of asymmetric warfare (terrorism) wreak havoc on the inflexible, regardless of technological or numerical advantage. In order to be more effective, the US military must improve its counter-terrorism (CT) capabilities and flexibility. In this light, the authors model the terrorism-counter-terrorism (T-CT) struggle with a detailed and complex mathematical model and analyze the model’s components of leadership, promotion, recruitment, resources, operational techniques, cooperation, logistics, security, intelligence, science, and psychology in the T-CT struggle, with the goal of informing today’s decision makers of the options available in counter-terrorism strategy.