Title: International Terrorism - FPIF
Headings: International Terrorism
International Terrorism
Key Points
Problems with Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations

Content: Indeed, as the largest supplier of arms to the third world, and to the Middle East in particular, the U.S. provides potential terrorists easy access to weapons. In recent decades, Washington has sponsored terrorist attacks and assassinations, either directly or through intermediaries. In the 1960s, right-wing Cuban exiles were organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct a series of attacks inside Cuba that resulted in widespread civilian casualties. During the 1980s, the U.S. similarly organized, armed, and trained right-wing Nicaraguan exiles into an armed force that engaged in widespread attacks against civilian targets inside Nicaragua, resulting in the deaths of thousands. Sometimes these U.S.-trained terrorists have subsequently used the skills and weapons they acquired against the interests of their trainers, as in the case of some supporters of the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance. Osama bin Laden and many of his followers were initially trained by the U.S. CIA in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan during the 1980s. And double-standards have greatly hindered Washington’s effectiveness in gaining international support and cooperation in the struggle against terrorism. Indeed, such hypocrisy raises the question of whether the U.S. is really opposed to terrorism in general or just to terrorism when it targets America and its allies. There is nothing inherent in Islamic, Middle Eastern, Irish, Basque, or any other tradition that spawns terrorism. Terrorism by nonstate actors is primarily the weapon of the politically weak or frustrated–those who are (or believe themselves to be) unable to exert their grievances through conventional political or military means.