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Japan's Aum Shinrikyo, the changing nature of terrorism, and the post-cold war security agenda
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Hughes, Christopher W. (1998) Japan's Aum Shinrikyo, the changing nature of terrorism, and the post-cold war security agenda. Global Change, Peace & Security, Vol.10 (No.1). pp. 39-60. doi:10.1080/14781159808412846
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14781159808412846
Abstract
Events such as the Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1994 have placed terrorism at the top of the post‐Cold War security agenda and have caused policy makers to sense qualitative change and new dangers in the terrorist threat to industrialised societies. By examining the case of the Aum Shinrikyo and comparing it in detail with Japanese terrorism during the Cold War period, this article demonstrates that terrorism has indeed undergone qualitative change in the 1990s due to terrorism's enhanced non‐specificity, expansion in destructive potential, greater erosion of the barriers between internal and external security, and ability to corrode the legitimacy of existing security institutions. The article then goes on to argue that Aum's characteristics as a terrorist phenomenon reflect the nature of the post‐Cold War security agenda as a whole, and that the policy lesson of the Tokyo subway attack is that, in the 1990s, in order for security institutions to detect new security challenges early enough and to deal with them they need to discard Cold War mindsets and to sustain the process of internal reform.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DS Asia H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare U Military Science > U Military Science (General) |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Terrorism -- Japan, National security -- Japan, Security, International, Oumu Shinrikyō (Religious organization) | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Global Change, Peace & Security | ||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||
| ISSN: | 1478-1158 | ||||
| Official Date: | 1998 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Vol.10 | ||||
| Number: | No.1 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 39-60 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/14781159808412846 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed |
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