Counter-Terrorism in the Post-9/11 Era

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.

Deterrence and Democracy

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.

War and Terror

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avinash Paliwal
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Military Action ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Global War

The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha in March 2001 outraged India (and the world). It killed any scope for conciliation with the Taliban. In this context, the US decision to take military action in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks was welcomed by many in India. However, Washington’s decision to undertake such action without UN approval (which came only in December 2001) sparked another round of debate between the partisans and the conciliators. As this chapter shows, the former were enthusiastic about supporting the US in its global war on terror, but the latter advocated caution given Washington’s willingness to partner with Islamabad. Despite the global trend to ‘fight terrorism’, the conciliators were successful in steering India away from getting involved in Afghanistan militarily.

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

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.

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

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 557-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Berda
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Population Control ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Security Risk ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Counter Terrorism ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Population Classification ◽  
Global War

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.

Living with Terrorism: Unimaginable Nightmare or Prospective Reality

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome H. Kahan
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Al Qaeda ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Dangerous Situation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Terrorist Organization ◽  
Global War

Abstract Nine days after the transformational 9/11 attacks, President G.W. Bush proclaimed that the nation is fighting a Global War on Terror (GWOT), an attention-grabbing phrase designed as a rallying cry for America to win the battle against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations threatening our homeland as well as our allies and interests abroad. Eight years later, President Obama inherited what had become an even more dangerous situation, which led to the unexpected and courage attack that felled bin Laden and splintered al Qaeda. However, this success was short-lived when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) suddenly emerged as our primary terrorist adversary – a new and brutal threat that President Obama vowed to “degrade and ultimately destroy” by doing what it takes to win the war against this and other terrorist organizations. While there has been some progress in halting and reversing ISIS territorial gains with the US providing support to newly trained Iraqi forces, this terrorist organization is not fully contained and far from being destroyed.

The barbarians of Fallujah

Race & Class ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Matt Carr
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global War ◽  
The City

The `global war on terror' is often represented as a struggle between incompatible opposites, of good versus evil, terror versus democracy and civilisation versus barbarism. The deployment of such dichotomies was part of the background to the onslaught on Fallujah in 2004, serving to provide the US military with the appearance of moral legitimacy, as it turned the city to rubble in order to `save' it. In the US media, the arrogant assumption that the US is civilisationally superior both to the `barbarians' its armies were fighting in the city and to the broader mass of the Iraqi population, was a recurring theme among neo-conservative and pro-war liberal ideologues. Yet, with the city's destruction presented as a moral imperative on behalf of civilised values, there has been scant examination of the allegations that US forces were guilty of war crimes. Moreover, the attack on Fallujah shows that civilisation and barbarism are not diametrically opposed concepts in a `global war on terror' which continues to cause more death and destruction than the violence it is supposedly intended to eliminate.

Cyber Rebellion: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Struggle to Break the Power of Secrecy in the Global War on Terror

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yamuna Sangarasivam
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Justice Department ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Us ◽  
Espionage Act ◽  
The Face ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Global War

AbstractFollowing the release of thousands of diplomatic cables which revealed the human rights abuses and networks of corruption that sustain the US-sponsored global war on terror, the US Justice Department has invoked the 1917 Espionage Act to indict both Bradley Manning, the US soldier who released the classified documents to WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, the editor and publisher of WikiLeaks. While censorship serves as an economic signal, as Assange asserts, how does the torture and prosecution of Pvt. Bradley Manning serve as a cultural signal which reveals the ­lessons of a patriotism that promotes a dystopic democracy? This article examines the spatio-temporal predicament of secrecy, surveillance, and censorship in the face of cyber rebellion.

Religious Communities and Possibilities for Justpeace

2015 ◽  
pp. 596-612
Author(s):  
Cecelia Lynch
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
Economic Discourses ◽  
Global War

This chapter analyzes religious communities’ role in peacebuilding vis-à-vis dominant political and economic discourses of the colonial past and the postcolonial present. This comparison demonstrates that such dominant discourses—of colonial expansion for “civilizing” purposes in the past, and for neoliberal modes of economic structuring in the context of the global war on terror in the present—entangle both strategic peacebuilders and religious communities. It is critically necessary, therefore, for peacebuilders to practice reflexivity about their own assumptions, connections, and relationships with all actors and processes in the peacebuilding environment. They should constantly interrogate whether and how the experiences of the past shape problems, strategies, and/or attitudes toward societies in conflict in the present. Moreover, religious communities and strategic peacebuilders should reclaim the prophetic voice extant in all religious traditions to challenge more directly the unjust economic, political, and social structures that inhibit the advancement of justpeace.

Iran: The state and terrorism in Iran

2019 ◽  
pp. 363-384
Author(s):  
Ali M. Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
State Policy ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global War ◽  
The Impact

This paper discusses the role of 'terror' and 'terrorism' as an aspect of state policy in Iran during the twentieth century, looking at its historical context both within Qajar Iran and as an aspect of state policy during there French Revolution. The paper critically assesses Iranian state's relationship with the term, as both a perceived victim and perpetrator, and focusses on the application of political violence against both dissidents and political opponents where the term 'terror' is used in Persian as a synonym for assassination. The paper looks at the various justifications for the use of terror and political violence, the legacy of the Rushdie affair and the impact of the US led Global War on Terror on perceptions within Iran. 

War on Terror – Armed Conflict with Al-Qaida?

2009 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-511
Author(s):  
Marja Lehto
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Terrorist Threat ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Global War

AbstractThe US government has recently renounced the term 'Global War on Terror', pointing out that it does not describeaccurately the nature of the terrorist threat. While the change of terminology is a welcomed development, it should be noted that 'War on Terror' was not merely a political slogan. The war paradigm was accompanied with a number of legal arguments and claims which have a direct link to the perplexing policy outcomes of the Bush era. One of the trickiest questions before the Obama administration is related to the concept of an armed conflict.

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