Managing ‘dangerous populations’: How colonial emergency laws shape citizenship

This article traces the historical foundations of current security legislation as the matrix of citizenship. Examining Israel’s new Counter-Terrorism Law against the backdrop of security legislation in India, its main proposition is that these laws and their effects are rooted in colonial emergency regulations and the bureaucratic mechanisms for population control developed therein, rather than in the ‘global war on terror’. The article offers an organizational vantage point from which to understand the development of population-classification practices in terms of an ‘axis of suspicion’ that conflates ‘political risk’ with ‘security risk’. Through an account of the formalization of emergency laws, it explains the effects of colonial bureaucracies of security upon independent regimes seeking legitimacy as new democracies by tracing decisions regarding the use of an inherited arsenal of colonial and settler-colonial practices of security laws for population management, particularly mobility restrictions, surveillance and political control. One of the most important of these effects is the shaping of the citizenship of targeted populations by security laws.

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Deterrence and Democracy

10.1093/oso/9780190851163.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Richard A. Falkenrath

Keyword(s):

War On Terror ◽

Terrorist Attacks ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

The Us ◽

Democratic Societies ◽

Global War ◽

Taking Action ◽

The Given

This chapter examines strategy and deterrence and traces the shift from deterrence by ‘punishment’ to deterrence by ‘denial’ in Washington’s conduct of the Global War on Terror. The former rested on an assumption that the consequences of an action would serve as deterrents. The latter may carry messages of possible consequences, but these are delivered by taking action that removes the capabilities available to opponents – in the given context, the Islamist terrorists challenging the US. Both approaches rest on credibility, but are more complex in the realm of counter-terrorism, where the US authorities have no obvious ‘return to sender’ address and threats to punish have questionable credibility. In this context, denial offers a more realistic way of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet, the advanced means available to the US are deeply ethically problematic in liberal democratic societies. However, there would likely be even bigger questions if governments failed to act.

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Enter 9/11: Latin America and the Global War on Terror

Journal of Latin American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022216x20000565 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 52 (3) ◽

pp. 545-573

Author(s):

Markus-Michael Müller

Keyword(s):

Latin America ◽

Latin American ◽

Local Knowledge ◽

War On Terror ◽

Discursive Construction ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Security Governance ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Global War

AbstractThis article offers an analysis of the transnational discursive construction processes informing Latin American security governance in the aftermath of 9/11. It demonstrates that the Global War on Terror provided an opportunity for external and aligned local knowledge producers in the security establishments throughout the Americas to reframe Latin America's security problems through the promotion of a militarised security epistemology, and derived policies, centred on the region's ‘convergent threats’. In tracing the discursive repercussions of this epistemic reframing, the article shows that, by tapping into these discourses, military bureaucracies throughout the Americas were able to overcome their previous institutional marginalisation vis-à-vis civilian agencies. This development contributed to the renaissance of counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism discourses and policies in the region, allowing countries such as Colombia and Brazil to reposition themselves globally by exporting their military expertise for confronting post-9/11 threats beyond the region.

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9/11 and the emergence of Critical Terrorism Studies

Locus - Revista de História ◽

10.34019/2594-8296.2021.v27.33772 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 27 (2) ◽

pp. 9-25

Author(s):

Raquel Da Silva ◽

Alice Martini

Keyword(s):

Problem Solving ◽

War On Terror ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Counter Narrative ◽

Diverse Backgrounds ◽

Alternative Approaches ◽

Global War ◽

The Impact

The attacks of 11 September 2001 have profoundly impacted the field of terrorism studies. In this article we aim to trace, in particular, the impact of this date on the establishment of critical terrorism studies (CTS) as a school of thought. Such an endeavour aims to create an ‘umbrella-term’ to gather scholars from diverse backgrounds, in an attempt to provide a counter-narrative to the dominant, mainstream understanding of terrorism and counter-terrorism. CTS scholarship offers alternative approaches to state-centred, ahistorical, and ‘problem-solving’ standpoints, which have been at the origin of numerous atrocities committed, for example, under the Global War on Terror banner. This article explores the key debates stirred by CTS scholarship over the years, its recent advancements, and existing gaps.

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Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Situating al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terror within Geopolitical Trends and Structures

Eurasian Geography and Economics ◽

10.2747/1539-7216.50.2.150 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 50 (2) ◽

pp. 150-171 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Colin Flint ◽

Steven M. Radil

Keyword(s):

War On Terror ◽

Al Qaeda ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Global War

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Military and monetary power: Are they the right counter-terrorism strategies?

10.31219/osf.io/9xeh3 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Minh-Hoang Nguyen

Keyword(s):

International Collaboration ◽

War On Terror ◽

Trust Building ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Suicide Attacks ◽

Global Terrorism ◽

Building Activities ◽

The Right ◽

Global War

Two-century efforts of the global war on terror, using overwhelming monetary power and modern destructive weapons, still could not obliterate terrorism. The suicide attacks into Kabul airport are evidence of the existing risks of the return of global terrorism. They, terrorists, might come back stronger and deadlier, using the weapons that used to belong to counter-terrorism fighters to damage their homeland. So, is it time to rethink the grand global counter-terrorism strategies? In my opinion, terrorism can be countered by neither modern military weapons, technologies, nor monetary power but through trust-based international collaboration and trust-building activities

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Institutions as swords and shields: multilateral counter-terrorism since 9/11

Review of International Studies ◽

10.1017/s0260210510000653 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 591-613 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

PETER ROMANIUK

Keyword(s):

War On Terror ◽

International Institutions ◽

Maritime Security ◽

Weak States ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Terrorist Financing ◽

Distributional Consequences ◽

Global War ◽

Over Time

AbstractInternational institutions are prominent in the ‘global War on Terror’. But there remains variation in the institutionalisation of counter-terrorism, across policy domains and over time. I argue that institutions pursue tasks of counter-terrorism when they are backed by power. Institutions function as ‘swords’ as strong states seek to influence others. Weak states, too, are sensitive to the distributional consequences of cooperation and use institutions as ‘shields’ to resist the powerful. These claims are reflected in patterns of cooperation within the UN, and in terrorist financing and maritime security. Looking forward, multilateral counter-terrorism may remain contingent upon state power.

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Counter-Terrorism in the Post-9/11 Era

Illusions of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197265901.003.0003 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Rashmi Singh

Keyword(s):

War On Terror ◽

Global War On Terror ◽

Counter Terrorism ◽

Strategic Vision ◽

The Past ◽

The Us ◽

The Future ◽

Global War ◽

Successes And Failures

This chapter assesses the US-led counter-terrorism response to the September 2001 attacks on the American homeland in order to gauge the successes and failures of the Global War on Terror. It concludes that successes against transnational terrorist threats, as represented by al-Qaida and its affiliates, have been few and far between. Instead, the past decade has been marked by a failure to meet set goals for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: the shifting character of war, the unintended fallouts of the counter-terrorism policies adopted, and an inadvertent strengthening of al-Qaida’s material and ideological capabilities through the US macro-securitisation of the Global War on Terror–all of which point to the absence of a long-term strategic vision. However, our counter-terrorism failures hold crucial lessons for the future and the chapter concludes by outlining how they can enable us to translate our past failures into future successes.

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