This book provides a comprehensive critique of the prevailing view of ungoverned spaces and the threat they pose to human, national and international security.

Using a two-tiered framework areas applied to eight case studies from around the globe, the authors of this ground-breaking work seek to understand the conditions that give rise to ungoverned territories and make them conducive to a terrorist or insurgent presence. They also develop strategies to improve the U.S. ability to mitigate their effects on U.S. security interests.

Ungoverned territories-failed or failing states or ungoverned areas within otherwise viable states-generate all manner of security problems and can become terrorist sanctuaries. Using a two-tiered framework areas applied to eight case studies from around the globe, the authors seek to understand the conditions that give rise to ungoverned territories and what makes some ungoverned territories more conducive to a terrorist or insurgent presence than others. On the basis of this ground-breaking analytical work, they identify three types of ungoverned territories and their effects on U.S. securit.

Policymakers worry that "ungoverned spaces" pose dangers to security and development. Why do such spaces exist beyond the authority of the state? Earlier scholarship—which addressed this question with a list of domestic failures—overlooked the crucial role that international politics play. In this shrewd book, Melissa M. Lee argues that foreign subversion undermines state authority and promotes ungoverned space. Enemy governments empower insurgents to destabilize the state and create ungoverned territory. This kind of foreign subversion is a powerful instrument of modern statecraft. But though subversion is less visible and less costly than conventional force, it has insidious effects on governance in the target state. To demonstrate the harmful consequences of foreign subversion for state authority, Crippling Leviathan marshals a wealth of evidence and presents in-depth studies of Russia's relations with the post-Soviet states, Malaysian subversion of the Philippines in the 1970s, and Thai subversion of Vietnamese-occupied Cambodia in the 1980s. The evidence presented by Lee is persuasive: foreign subversion weakens the state. She challenges the conventional wisdom on statebuilding, which has long held that conflict promotes the development of strong, territorially consolidated states. Lee argues instead that conflictual international politics prevents state development and degrades state authority. In addition, Crippling Leviathan illuminates the use of subversion as an underappreciated and important feature of modern statecraft. Rather than resort to war, states resort to subversion. Policymakers interested in ameliorating the consequences of ungoverned space must recognize the international roots that sustain weak statehood.

Ungoverned territories -- failed or failing states or ungoverned areas within otherwise viable states -- generate all manner of security problems and can become terrorist sanctuaries. Using a two-tiered framework area applied to eight case studies from around the globe, the authors seek to understand the conditions that give rise to ungoverned territories and what makes some ungoverned territories more conducive to a terrorist or insurgent presence than others. On the basis of this ground-breaking analytical work, they identify three types of ungoverned territories and their effects on U.S. security interests and develop strategies to improve the U.S. ability to mitigate these effects.

From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

This in-depth, historical analysis of terrorism investigates the major funding streams of terrorists, insurgents, guerrillas, warlords, militias, and criminal organizations throughout the world as well as the efforts of the international community to thwart their efforts. Terrorist financing is an ongoing game of creating, concealing, and surreptitiously utilizing funds. This intriguing book considers every facet of guerrilla funding—from how activities are financed, to what insurgents do with the revenue they generate, to the range of countermeasures in place for deterring their moneymaking activities. Case studies prompt an analysis of past government responses and inform recommendations for countering irregular warfare worldwide. Author Colin P. Clarke presents the business side of terrorism, taking a look at the cash-producing ventures he labels "gray activities" such as diaspora support, charities, fraudulent businesses, front companies, and money laundering as well as "dark activities" including kidnapping for ransom, robbery, smuggling, trafficking, and extortion. He considers the transnational efforts to stop terrorist activities—from wiretaps and electronic surveillance to financial sanctions and the freezing of funds and accounts—and points to the emergence of interagency task forces for detaining and destroying the operations of major criminal organizations across the globe.