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Responses to transnational terrorism vary across states. Conventional wisdom would suggest that major powers are less concerned about infringing on the sovereignty of other states for counterterrorism purposes. However, the conditions under which minor po ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite unprecedented innovations in military technology, states have suffered equally, if not more, from violence generated by non-state actors that use unconventional methods of military confrontation, such as guerilla and insurgency tactics, than their counterparts that use conventional methods of military confrontation. In the post-WWII period, 72% of the military conflicts have been caused by non-state actors, such as ethnic and religious insurgencies, guerilla groups, terrorists, and revolutionary movements. Militarily superior states, such as Russia, United States, France, and Israel all suffered from non-state armed groups (NAGs, hereforth). Several factors contribute to the endurance of NAGs, in some cases over decades. The most detrimental one is the external support these groups receive from other states. States provide NAGs with sanctuary or safe haven, access to markets and transport, training camps and military advice, arms and money, and troops to fight alongside the group. This paper has two mail goals. One is developing a conceptual framework to allow a comparative analysis across several types of non-state armed groups. Two main attributes of these groups include 'violence' as the main 'means' to achieve their goals and pursuit of the political objectives such as secessionism, regime change, and demand for more political freedoms and rights. Second goal is developing a theoretical framework to examine the influence of internal and external circumstances on the formation of a state-NAG alliance, which is defined as a state's providing safe havens, weapons, logistics, training, and financial resources to a NAG. Specifically, this paper tests the validity of the balance of power theory's proposition in the context of state-NAG interactions and tries to explain when, where, and how states are driven by external and domestic motives in allying with a NAG. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of non-state violence in the world politics joined with resurfacing of states resorting to non-state armed groups (NAGs) as a foreign policy instrument warrants a more general understanding of various types of non-state armed groups such as ethnic and religious insurgencies, terrorists, guerillas, and revolutionary movements. This paper has two mail goals. One is developing a conceptual framework to allow a comparative analysis across several types of non-state armed groups. Two main attributes of these groups include 'violence' as the main 'means' to achieve their goals and pursuit of the political objectives such as secessionism, regime change, and demand for more political freedoms and rights. Second goal is developing a theoretical framework to examine the influence of internal and external circumstances on decision-making regarding the changes in a state's external security environment. I offer a cost-benefit framework to capture the main costs and benefits involved in strategies pursued to cope with external adversaries. Specifically, this paper estimates the impact of alliances, conflict history, and ethnic fragmentation on states' intentional support of non-state armed groups against the target of non-state armed group. The results of the empirical analysis yield that having allies reduces the likelihood of a state's support of NAGs. In addition, ethnic fragmentation is found to be a very strong estimator of the state support for NAGs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]