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If aeroplanes and passengers, as well as property and people on the ground are to be protected, potential perpetrators of aviation terrorism must be prevented from breaching security checkpoints and gaining access to ‘secure’ airport areas and to aircrafts. Given the interconnectedness of the air transportation system, a sufficiently high level of security must be provided throughout the entire system. In this chapter we examine terrorism issues relevant to airline and airport security internationally, a topic that has received much attention since 9/11. Understanding the key issues is crucial in evaluating the various methods of regulating and providing aviation safety and security. The purpose of this chapter is to review the key features of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act and the characteristics of the resulting security policy. Then we examine terrorism, previous terrorists' acts against aviation as well as current and future aviation threats. A summary of our major points completes the chapter.

This article presents an analysis of some particular aspects of European public opinion with respect to defence and security issues under the threat of international terrorism after September 11, 2001.

It is based on secondary data analysis from standard EUROBAROMETER surveys, Candidate Countries EUROBAROMETER surveys and Flash EUROBAROMETER surveys carried out in 2000–2006.

The analysis shows that there is an increase in the level of anxiety across European public opinion in the ‘Age of the War on Terror’ related to international terrorism and proliferation of nuclear, bacteriological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.

The existing divergence in the threat perception in Western and Eastern parts of Europe in the first years following the end of the Cold War significantly diminished after September 11, 2001, is based on the common perception of the threat from international terrorism.

The purpose of this study is to define the interactions that determine how secure a society is from terrorism and to propose a method for measuring the threat of terrorism in an objective and spatio-temporally comparable manner.

Game-theoretic analysis of the determinants of security and discussion of how to implement these interactions into a measure of security.

We show that governments concerned with popularity have an incentive to over-invest in security and that, in certain situations, this leads to a deterioration in net security position. Our discussion provides an implementable means for measuring the levels of threat and protection, as well as individuals’ perceptions of both, which we propose can be combined into an objective and scientific measure of security.

The implication for researchers is the suggestion that efficiency, as well as scale of counter-terrorism, is important in determining a country’s overall security position. Furthermore, we suggest that individuals’ perceptions are at least as important in determining suitable counter-terrorism policy as objective measures of protection and threat. The limitations of this research are found in the vast data requirements that any attempt to measure security will need.

We propose the first method for objectively measuring the net security position of a country, using economic and econometric means.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to existing financial literature within a less researched area through a systematic, organized, and holistic approach. This study advances the notion of considering terrorist attacks as a heterogeneous group of events by employing a multidimensional approach. The event study methodology was used to investigate the impact of 46 terrorist attacks occurring on the soil of OECD countries since 1990 on stock markets in US, UK, Spain, and Denmark. Thereby, terrorist attacks are considered as events conveying information to financial markets, which is processed by investors and subsequently reflected in security prices. This chapter is the first contribution within financial literature to distinguish and categorize terrorist attacks through several dimensions and investigate the effect of various characteristics on stock markets. The multidimensional analytical approach consisted of six dimensions, which included an examination of the national stock markets, differences across industries, the underlying threat characteristics, the size of the attack, and the development over time and geospatial aspects. It is concluded that terrorist attacks exhibiting international threat characteristics result in significantly larger and boundary spanning negative abnormal returns, which impact stock markets beyond the country in which the attack occurred. Additionally, the size of the terrorist attack amplifies the negative impact on stock markets. However, while the impact on stock markets was found to be immediate indicating that stock markets are quick and efficient in absorbing new information, the negative impact is likely to evaporate within five trading days.

During the period 1962-2001 (9/11), the author identified 25 terrorist acts in the English-speaking Caribbean. Apart from US action in Grenada in 1983, the extra-regional response to these acts was minimal. However, in the aftermath of 9/11, the US has introduced a number of counter-terrorist measures into the region from Washington through such agencies as Southcom, the FBI, the DEA, and the Department of Homeland Security, now including the Coast Guard, to forestall future acts of terrorism. Also the UN, the OAS, and the CARICOM, at the instigation of the US, have encouraged Caribbean nations to adopt resolutions and pass anti-terrorist legislation at the local level in the fight against terrorism. US policy toward the region is based on its own self-interest since it considers the Caribbean its “Third Border,” one that is difficult to close to security threats. In all of this, the Caribbean nations welcome the security, more so because of the incidental protection it offers to their fragile tourist-dependent economies that are sensitive to political and other threats. This coincidence of interest has seen the US merge drug-trafficking and terrorism into one consolidated threat. Traditionally, the Caribbean region has not allocated a large part of its budget to security concerns, but with external assistance, particularly from the US, the region's police and military forces have been called upon to adapt to the global threats of the post-9/11 era by strengthening operational capacity, mission readiness, and intensify regional cooperation. This new thrust also includes making border tightening security measures more comprehensive and robust as well as the sharing of information, including intelligence. As long as the US perceives the terrorist threat a priority, Caribbean security policy will continue apace.

The threats, the potential enemies, the risks and, consequently, the strategies used in each context to face them have all changed. The comparison by countries between futures civil and military elite shows us the palpable differences that exist among both worlds in these questions. Broadly speaking, a very intense inclination among the university students toward the human security could be detected while the cadets are more inclined toward the hard security. Undoubtedly, such a redefinition and adaptation of military missions to the new demands of a globalised world will eventually take precedence.

Over the last 40 years or so, the concepts of terror and terrorism have permeated and infused political, social, and economic thought and lexicon. Given the symbolism and obvious ways in which the terms become socially constructed, terror and terrorism appear as ripened enough concepts for interactionist scrutiny. In general, interactionists have stressed that concepts applied to terrorism become useful to elites for promoting a master narrative along the lines that “free nations” must coordinate efforts and spend resources to defend against terrorist threats. We wish to extend this interactionist analysis in the following pages to provide a perspective on terrorist threats as evolving and emergent concepts, sensitive to historical and social changes. Drawing from a small number of Government and commercial print and online sources in order to identify patterns that emerge from the language, we reference terrorism handbooks starting from the 1970s to current, post “9/11” handbooks. We propose evolutionary timeframes demarcated by substantive events and changes in how we define, understand, and respond to an abstract threat made tangible and concrete. In effect, we suggest that such publications provide insight into how the dynamics of credibility associated with government, media, and “expert” assertions have framed public understandings of threat and danger. These handbooks serve as a heuristic model to draw general patterns and themes that demarcate significant time periods in our understanding of terrorism and responses to terrorism.