John Gearson

According to the King's College Staff pages:

Dr John Gearson is Reader in Terrorism Studies; from 2002 he was on secondment to the House of Commons where he was advising the Defence Select Committee on Defency Policy. Previously he worked as a management consultant, was a special advisor to the City of London Corporation on the terrorist threat to the City, and advised the U.S. Congress National Commission on Terrorism. Until his secondment John was Director of the MA in Defence Studies and he continues to lecture in terrorism and defence policy. He has taught at the University of London on the inter-collegiate history programme, where he completed his MA and PhD degrees in War Studies, the latter as a King's College Scholar, and also holds a BSc (Econ) in International Politics with Strategic Studies from University of Wales, Aberystwyth. John was a Research Fellow of the Nuclear History Project and the German Historical Institute, London, and is a regular contributor to media outlets including the BBC, ITN, Sky News, Reuters and various foreign news organisations. John resumed his teaching at the JSCSC as of 1 Feb 2007.

Selected Publications/Conference Papers

'The Nature of Modern Terrorism,' in Lawrence Freedman (ed.,) Superterrorism: Policy Responses, (Blackwell: Oxford, 2002) 'Terrorist Targeting of Financial Centres: the IRA's City of London Campaign,' in Martin Gill (ed.,) Crime at Work Three, (Perpetuity Press: Leicester, 2003) 'The Challenge of Terrorism,' (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003) with Rathmell, Overill and Valeri 'The IW Threat from Sub-State Groups: An interdisciplinary approach,' Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 6, No. 2 (October 1998) with K. Schake (eds.,) 'The Berline Wall Crisis: Perspectives on Cold War Alliances,' (Basingstoke: Macmillan/Palgrave, 2002) with Lawrence Freedman 'Interdependence and Independence: Nassau and the British Nuclear Deterrent,; in Kathleen Burke and Melvyn Stokes (eds.,) The United States and the Western Alliance, (London: Berg, 1999) 'Officer Education in the United Kingdon - the Development of the Joint Approach,' in Giuseppe Caforio (ed.,) The European Officer - A Comparative View on Selection and Education, (Pisa, 2000)

Views

Superterrorism

John Gearson at Kings College, London, traces the birth of superterrorism to six years before the September 11 attack, when the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo used sarin gas to kill 12 people on the Tokyo underground, with a further 5000 affected. Gearson states the effect was that "the way in which terrorism was understood changed for ever. For the first time an independent substate group, acting without patronage or protection, had managed to deploy biochemical weapons on a significant scale".

Criticism of the 'Superterrorism' Debate

The U.S. focus on superterrorism as a product and extension of rogue states was disproved by the al-Qaeda example: Afghanistan was a terrorist-sponsored state, rather than a state sponsoring terrorism. al-Qaeda's case also refuted the presumed reliance of 'superterrorists' on sophisticated weapons of mas destruction: it sucessfully combined the tactics of 'old' terrorists (ideologically motivated sub-state groups) with the use of new technologies that assist both the trans-national organization and comunnication and the repertoire of weapons.