ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE - OLD METHOD, NEW CONCERN
ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE - OLD METHOD, NEW CONCERN

Summary/Abstract: The Cold War was distinguished by a clear dividing line between East and West. The Soviet threat and the American response to it created a bipolar world: two superpowers locked in a head-on confrontation, with many of the other countries joining the coalitions created by the two superpowers. Today things have changed. The new millennium that started under the sign of globalization changed the world radically and made the environment we are living in totally different, new and unpredictable. With the fall of the Berlin wall, the scenario of easily defining the enemy collapsed. The globalizing world, free movement of people, goods and capitals, the values of liberal democracy result in new challenges. The threats to this new international system are no longer clear and one-dimensional, but multipolar and diffuse. They are expressed at different levels and display different degrees of intensity. There are now multiple, low-intensity threats and the consensus for dealing with them is much more difficult to achieve amongst the Western allies (respectively the new democracies in Eastern Europe). September 11, 2001, train bombings in Madrid, Istan¬bul, Moscow theatre and the two plain crashes in Russia demonstrated the international terrorism is more and more spreading to all geographic regions and becomes a major threat. This paper tries to analyze different opinions about this major contemporary threat and tries to list the preliminary measures and activities that should be taken in advance.

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