SOCIAL DISASTERS
Nobody argues with the fact that war, crimes, and terrorism are threats to people’s lives and properties. These problems, however, have fundamentally different nature in contrast to accidents and natural disasters.
Accidents and natural disasters, in general, have differences in whether they are caused by men or nature; however, they are both unintended. War, crimes, and terrorism, on the other hand, always come with an individual, group, or government that intentionally starts them. In other words, accidents and natural disasters are unintentional and unfavorable results of societal activities by humans, and in contrast, war, crimes, and terrorism are actions started by human for specific intentions or purposes. For this reason, measures for protecting the societies from war, crimes, and terrorism center around how to manage these executors or their motivations. We will discuss four approaches below:
The first approach is to eliminate motivations to start war, crimes, or terrorism. For example, one of the fundamental reasons to start terrorism or war is economic, religious, or ideological conflict among countries or groups involved. If we can resolve such conflicts peacefully, we can avoid the breakout of war and terrorism. Crime rates, also, are known to have high correlations with economic poverty and disparity in the societies. Thus, if we develop the economy to remove the disparity, we should be able to reduce crimes. For these approaches to make actual effects, they will take long times and enormous efforts. Then comes the second approach as an important method to control executors of war, crimes, and terrorism. This approach removes or constrains individuals or organizations with high probabilities of planning war, crimes, or terrorisms. The 2003 US military attack against Iraq and the bombing of Syria and Afghanistan upon declaring Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was a terror organization are typical examples of such approaches. For domestic crimes, police captures the suspect under the law. Actions against organized crimes and terror attacks include police investigation against illegal actions before the incidents. The third approach manages results of war, crimes, and terrorism. This approach saves victims of military or terrorist attacks, controls the spread of damages, and provides care for the victims. The fourth approach controls motivations for war, crimes, and terrorism. Arranging international rules and cooperation among international societies have continued in their efforts to raise the political price to pay for making military actions. From now on, it seems that we need approaches to socially encompass individuals that seem to turn radical and make terrorist acts and approaches to maintain environments with physical structures in cities that make it hard for crimes to take place. Among these approaches, the third and the fourth not only reduce damages from war, terrorism, or crimes, but they can also contribute to mitigating damages from accidents or natural disasters. We will discuss the fourth approach, with similarities with countermeasures against accidents and natural disasters, in some detail. First, we need to check the definition of war, terrorism, and crimes. Terrorism has large influence over interests of the international societies; thus, it has so many definitions that one can probably write a book on its definitions. There are, however, three points that are agreed among most studies: (1) the act has political or religious intention, (2) it targets civilians, and (3) it is a violent act. This chapter defines that terrorism meets all of these three conditions. A violent act targeting a citizen is a crime if it does not have a political or religious intention. We will not discuss nonviolent acts like a scam. As Fig. 9.1 shows, if a violent act with a political intention is not targeting civilians, it is a war which is an execution of the right of belligerency by a nation. The fact, however, is that some terrorist acts are backed by some countries blurring the borderline of war and terrorism; however, this book will not discuss this matter. Our explanation here gives a common understanding that war, crimes, and terrorism are all violent acts that individuals or groups of people make.
Terrorism has a long history, and Global Terrorism Database (GTD) records international terrorist attacks since 1970. Figure 9.3, based on this database, shows the number of terrorism incidents and deaths over the world. This figure shows us two distinct features about terrorism. The first is the fact that the number of terrorist attacks has increased since the globalization in the 1980s. Second, after the 2001 coordinated simultaneous September 11 attacks, the number of victims has also increased in the war on terror. Especially in recent years, about 40,000 are killed by terror attacks annually.
War, Its Damages and Causes
First, we will review the amount of risk a war poses on our lives and properties. In the human history since the fifteenth century, the number of deaths due to war is not necessarily increasing, and Pinker explained that the number of wars is decreasing (Pinker 2013). Nevertheless, with the two world wars we experienced, the number of deaths with one war is increasing since the twentieth century. The history of Japan shows 3.2 million victims during World War II. The number is bigger by digits compared to the First Sino-Japanese War or the Russo-Japanese War. If we count the victims over the entire world, World War I resulted in 8.53 million deaths and World War II, 50 million, that is, the number of victims per each war abruptly increased. We need to look at two factors to explain the sudden increase of victims with recent wars (Kihata 2004). The first factor is the change in how wars are fought. Up to the eighteenth century, knights and mercenaries fought wars, and the wars were between two kings. Once the countries adopted the draft systems to hire professional soldiers, wars involved the people of the countries. The two world wars in the twentieth century were typical examples, and they were battles among the full forces of the countries involved. A nation entering a full force war pours many of the economic resources into the war, and large portions of the citizens are entangled into the actions. The second factor is the change in technologies of weapons. The advancement in scientific technology greatly increased the ability to kill with new weapons. Especially, nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are so deadly as they have the power for human distinction. Recognizing the magnitude of devastation, a war can make now the world largely changed its concept about war. When war was a conflict between kings, it was just another method of solving the difference. The international society, however, recognized war as a “crime against peace” after experiencing World War I. The United Nations, established after World War II, enhanced the concept of group security assurance. The members, in general, view sanctions by the international society are necessary against military actions that threat the peace.The new concept gradually reduced direct damages by war on the global basis; however, small military conflicts still take place frequently. On the other hand, the coordinated simultaneous September 11 attacks in 2001 was not a militant conflict between two countries but a new form of war between a small radical group and international peace, and this conflict is still present on our earth.
Damages from Crimes
World Comparison of Crimes
Murder is a typical outbreak of violent actions. Different countries have different definitions, e.g., in the United States, intentional killing is murder or voluntary manslaughter, and if the killing was unintended, involuntary manslaughter. Comparing damages from murder among different countries is, therefore, not necessarily an easy task.The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that the worldwide murder victims in 2004 were 490,000. This evaluates to 7.6 for each 100,000 people. This number exceeds 20 in South America, Central America, Caribbean countries, and South Africa and, in contrast, is less than 5 in Europe, Oceanian countries, and East Asian countries (Malby 2010). Note that numbers announced by the jurisdiction are often quite different from numbers by health authorities. Hirschi wrote that people tend to take delinquent actions when the four elements of bond, “attachment,” “commitment,” “involvement,” and “belief” are weak (Hirschi 1969).In a recent field of study, environmental criminology explains crimes with the environment that surrounds the society. A theory in the study field, “Routine Activity Theory” explained a crime breaks out when the three conditions of “potential offender,” “suitable target,” and “absence of capable guardians” are met. In other words, absence of capable guardians, like police, is one factor for a crime to take place; however, the presences of an individual with the tendency to commit a crime and an individual that is an easy target are equally important factors (Cohen and Felson 1979).