1. Post-Covid Security Landscape: A Conversation with Raffaelo Pantucci
- Author:
- Raffaello Pantucci
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Fletcher Security Review
- Institution:
- The Fletcher School, Tufts University
- Abstract:
- Fletcher Security Review (FSR): Thank you for joining FSR today. To begin, what challenges do you believe countries or security practitioners will face in preventing terrorism or countering violent terrorism in a postCOVID-19 world? Raffaelo Pantucci (RP): There are going to be a lot of challenges. The difficulty with trying to make judgments about what is going to happen in a post-COVID world is that we are not in the post-COVID world yet. We are still in the midst of the pandemic, so a lot of this work and assumptions that we look into are based on assessments of what we think could happen. I think a number of things will happen. First, I think we are going to see real pressure on security forces’ resources. On the one hand, kinetic security forces—police and intelligence services—probably will not suffer too much. But the real dilemma will come with some of the upstream funding. Money is being used to try to stop people from being drawn to violent groups in the first place. Countering violent extremism projects will face immense challenges since it is very hard to understand and make direct causal links between the issues the programs are addressing and the ultimate threats. We are going to see a push on budgets and that will result in cuts for security forces. These will have an impact in different ways in different places. Unfortunately, terrorist threats are global. You can have a good grip on your threat matrix, but it has links across borders which are beyond your control. This creates a potential risk if a country you are connected to does not have a grip on their security and are under the same sort of budgetary pressures, then it is possible you will see a negative knockon effect.
- Topic:
- Security, Terrorism, Interview, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus