What is the affiliations of domestic and transnational terrorism?

We would start this essay by looking at the Department of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.  Looking at that list is a great way to identify transnational terrorist groups.  Working from those groups, you could the identify a transnational group that is linked to a domestic terrorist group.  The County Reports on Terrorism also reveal how international terrorist groups work and can provide some insight into their ties to domestic organizations.  Working this way may be important for the integrity of your research because the designation of groups as domestic terrorist groups changed significantly under the last presidential administration.  Prior to that time, many right-wing groups were listed as terrorist organizations, but they lost that designation under the administration, even if still considered to be terrorist organizations by other observers.  Therefore, you have to be aware of the impact that politics and party policies have on domestic terrorist organizations.

For the purposes of this answer, we used an article published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a highly-rated think tank for foreign policy, to look at the issue of domestic terrorism.  They concluded that, in the United States, white supremacist organizations remain the greatest threat for domestic terrorism.  However, because one of the fairly consistent trademarks of these white supremacist domestic terrorist groups, and of most right-wing domestic terrorist groups, is that they are very nationalistic.  This characteristic makes it less likely that they will have publicly stated affiliations with international terrorist groups, though they may have less public mutually-beneficial relationships.  In addition, many domestic terrorist groups in the United States have decentralized structures and identify locally, with acts of violence being planned at local levels, which means that it is very difficult to compare their operational methods to what is known of terrorist cells, the chain network, or terrorist organization models. 

As a result, writing about the connection between domestic terrorism in the United States and international terrorism may require focusing on smaller threats of domestic terrorism rather than the largest threat, which is white supremacist terrorist organizations.  For example, the Salafi-Jihadists, which have homegrown cells in the United States interact with and may support or be supported by both ISIS and al-Qaeda.   However, since the United States has designated the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) as a global terrorist group, the only white supremacist group currently designated as such by the United States, finding connections between domestic terrorist groups and RIM would make for a stronger essay.

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