Choice Review

In this well-researched book, Assaf provides a new conceptual framework of interactions as a key aspect of understanding terrorist threats. He frames the discussion of terrorist cooperation in new ways to provide a comprehensive analysis of how contemporary militant actors cooperate. Understanding this cooperation is of major policy importance because terrorist cooperation defines much of the threat that terrorism poses today. Therefore, the book brings to light emerging patterns of cooperation to establish bonds of varying depth and endurance among terrorist groups. The policies the author proposes are expected to increase intelligence gathering on terrorist actors, constrain their sphere of operation, and disrupt their networks based on the types of cooperation they employ. The author persuasively argues that contemporary terrorist cooperation combines established forms of organizational cooperation, termed networked cooperation, that can feature relationships of varying qualitative strengths. The book attempts to shed new light on the multifarious ways in which terrorists cooperate. Only by grasping the fundamental transformations that terrorist actors have undergone in a constantly shifting environment can the evolution of terrorist cooperation over time be traced and its contemporary forms be understood. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Khodr M. Zaarour, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University