[Book Talk] Global Jihad: A Brief History

Most violent jihadi movements in the twentieth century focused on removing corrupt, repressive secular regimes throughout the Muslim world. But following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a new form of jihadism emerged – global jihad – turning to the international arena as the primary locus of ideology and action. With his new book published with Stanford University Press, Glenn E. Robinson, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, develops a compelling and provocative argument about this violent political movement’s evolution. Global Jihad tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: whether a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qaida’s call to drive the United States out of the Muslim world; ISIS using “jihadi cool” to recruit followers; or leaderless efforts of stochastic terror to “keep the dream alive.” Robinson connects the rise of global jihad to other “movements of rage” such as the Nazi Brownshirts, White supremacists, Khmer Rouge, and Boko Haram. Against that backdrop, this book talk will discuss not only the history and the nature of the global jihad phenomenon, it will also question its future as a strategic threat from the Middle East to the Southeast Asian region.