Scenarios for Countering Terrorism as an Instrument of International Terrorism Prevention

The creation of counterterrorism strategies should be approached with consideration of potential scenarios that could arise in the countries of the Eurasian region. The set of scenarios is shaped by the diversity of national legal systems in countries belonging to international associations. They depend on the degree of elaboration of certain counterterrorism programs, including: a universal (global) scenario (within the UN global counterterrorism strategy), 13 sectoral scenarios (in specific anti-terrorist areas), regional scenarios (within supranational (intergovernmental) organizations: SCO, CIS, CSTO). All scenarios are divided into those focusing on the technological or social aspect of terrorism. The first type concentrates on dangerous technologies and technologically-conditioned situations, the second on people. This research study is aimed at identifying possible scenarios for countering future terrorist threats in the international legal space and establishing correlations between universal and regional political and legal programs for reducing terrorist threat (case study of the central part of the Eurasian space). The methodology includes a number of research techniques, for example: induction and deduction, content analysis, formal legal, comparative legal, and analytical methods. It has been found in the course of the study that State authorities should analyze the options for certain terrorist attack scenarios allowing for the objectively verified political, legal and military measures that can prevent growing terrorist activity in specific countries of the region. As of now, the States located on the Eurasian continent have not developed a single strategic line to achieve concrete counterterrorism results. This is also due to the inconsistency of legal regulation measures taken in various countries of the region. The lack of clearly defined terminological concepts within the existing international agreements results in significant drawbacks of the legal field regulating counterterrorism processes and seriously complicates the development of interstate interaction programs, which, in turn, greatly reduces the effectiveness of the law enforcement agencies as they consider specific terrorist attack scenarios.