The War on Terrorism: When the Exception Becomes the Rule (original) (raw)
Related papers
The War on Terror and the State of Exception Paradigm
2017
This thesis seeks to investigate the global paradigm that exists in the War on Terror. It will do so over several steps, starting with the second chapter which will first document the history, both in the field of International Relations and of global politics, before 9/11. Afterward it discusses the international reaction and immediate war strategies of the War on Terror. The following section will go into the nuances of the War on Terror that make it distinct from other wars and make it harder to explain by legal and political scholars. In Chapter 3, various research of the State of Exception theory will be presented, including that of: John Locke, Carl Schmitt, Nicos Poulantzas, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben. This section highlights the strengths of Agamben's theory over the others in looking at the War on Terror paradigm. In Chapter 4, the Agambenian State of Exception theory will be applied to the empirical reality of the War on Terror. In the Conclusion chapter, thi...
Routledge, 2014
This book assesses the impact of post-9/11 domestic counterterrorism policy on US political life. It examines political discourse, law, the institutional architecture of the state and its relations with the population, and shows that 'homeland security' is a project with wide-ranging implications for democratic institutions and culture. These implications are addressed through a novel approach which treats law and the state as social relations, and relates developments in law to those in the state and in social dynamics. On this basis, the book examines the new political representations in counterterrorism discourse, especially regarding the relation between the state and the population. It examines the form and content of counterterrorism law, the powers it provides, and the structure and functions it prescribes for the state. Moreover, by focusing on the new Department of Homeland Security and the restructuring of the intelligence apparatus, the book assesses the new, intelligence-led, policing model. Finally, it examines forms of popular support and resistance to homeland security, to discuss citizenship and state-population relations. The author concludes that homeland security has turned the US into a hybrid polity; the legal and political institutions of democracy remain intact, but their content and practices become authoritarian and exclude the population from politics. These legal and political forms remain operative beyond counterterrorism, in the context of the present economic crisis. They seem to be a permanent configuration of power. This book is an indispensable companion for students of (counter-)terrorism and security studies, politics, human rights, constitutional and criminal law, American studies and criminology. Contents List of abbreviations viii 1 Introduction: homeland security, the US polity, and social dynamics 1 2 Politics, the state and law: a strategic-relational approach 11 3 11 September 2001: a social, political and legal charting 4 Heralding a new politics: the war on terror discourse 5 A blueprint of power: legislating counterterrorism 6 Counterterrorism legislation and the law-form 7 The Act and the state: implementation, friction, resistance 102 8 Department of homeland security and police restructuring 117 9 Total intelligence, intelligence-led policing, 'totalitarian' state? 10 The political significance of intelligence: government by experts 151 11 Citizen corps: homeland security citizenship 12 Resistance to homeland security 13 Repression
2014
The book by Michael Blain offers an empirical and critical investigation of the American War on Terror. In terms of methodology, the study focuses on American political discourses combining quantitative content analysis with detailed qualitative interpretations. Its critical edge is reflected in the use of theoretical concepts like ‘biopower’ (Foucault), ‘victimage ritual’ (Burke), ‘power elite’ (Mills) and ‘empire’ (Hardt and Negri). According to the author, the American power elite can be characterized by its imperial agenda, even though the United States remains an empire in denial: George W Bush as well as Barrack Obama promoted policies of empire, while publicly denouncing any imperial ambition.
Redefining State Power and Individual Rights in the War on Terrorism
America’s “war on terrorism” initiated after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks has served more than a rhetorical function. It reflects the U.S. government’s considered legal position that it is engaged in an armed conflict against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated groups — a conflict of unbounded territorial scope and uncertain, if not perpetual, duration. The United States’ adoption of a war paradigm as a central part of its counter-terrorism policy has had significant consequences. Among the most important has been the expansion of state power at the expense of individual liberties. This Essay explores the impact of the war on terrorism on the detention and treatment of terrorism suspects. It first describes the shift in U.S. policy after the 9/11 attacks and the legal underpinnings of the war on terrorism. The Essay then examines how a war paradigm underlies key aspects of the United States’ approach to terrorism, including: indefinite detention; the use of military commissions in place of the regular criminal courts; and the rendition and interrogation of terrorism suspects. The Essay concludes by exploring the ways in which the war on terrorism has become institutionalized, and the consequences for the state, society, and individual rights.
Liberal Lawfare and Biopolitics: US Juridical Warfare in the War on Terror
Geopolitics, 2011
Two basic forms of ‘lawfare’ are employed by the United States in its enactment of the war on terror, both of which have a biopolitical focus. The first strategy has been well documented. 1 It involves the indefinite detention and sometimes extraordinary rendition of enemy combatants, legally sanctioned and politically justified by the ‘exceptional’ circumstances of late modern war and terrorist violence. Geography plays a central role in strategy number one: the legal statuses of detainees, whose lives and bodies are cast out and denied basic juridical rights, are bounded, identified and allowed for in extra-territorial spaces throughout the world, from Guantanamo Bay to Bagram Air Force Base. Such exceptional biopolitical spaces are essentially ‘defensive’ and operate at the local scale. On the contrary, the second seldom-discussed legal strategy conditions and protects the US military in ‘offensive’ mode, operates at the national and transnational scale, and involves the careful legal designation and protection of US military personnel in forward deployed areas. 2 This paper is centrally concerned with strategy number two – a strategy that can be defined as ‘forward juridical warfare’ and involves the US military's mobilisation of the law in the waging of war along the ‘new frontiers’ of its war on terror. The paper seeks to expound the legal and biopolitical constitution and operation of the current US military's forward presence overseas, and begins by drawing on recent work on biopolitics that has sought in various ways to critique the proliferation of practices of liberal lawfare and securitization in our contemporary world.
This dissertation addresses the following research question: How did the US government construct the triple threat of terrorism, ‘outlaw’ regimes, and weapons of mass destruction after the September 11th attacks, and use this triple threat to justify subsequent policy decisions? In answering the question, this work has adapted the Copenhagen School’s theory of securitization as a framework of analysis. Through a critical examination of the political rhetoric employed by the Bush administration following the September 11th terrorist attacks, this dissertation traces the process of threat construction, and its utilization for the justification of any means necessary in combating security threats. Over 40 official government texts have been analyzed, resulting in the isolation of certain verbal triggers that serve to elucidate the securitizing moves of the government, and American public acceptance of the securitization. This dissertation seeks to demonstrate the subjective nature of security threats, and make evident the consequences of a successful securitization. It emerges that securitization, cocooned in sanitizing discourse, enabled the government to make sordid practices seem clean. Buttressed by teachings of political psychology, the second half of the dissertation is devoted to examining how this obfuscation facilitated moral disengagement in the American public, which allowed for a successful securitization. This dissertation concludes with raising concerns for the next generation of political elite and ordinary citizens alike, and urges a reconsideration of how states approach conflict and peace.
Tartu University Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, 2017
This MA thesis aims at achieving working definitions of terrorism and violence and to review the actions and political and legal considerations that the United States has made with the intention of arguing that there are few, if any, features that legitimize the conflict as a just war under philosophical and ethical considerations of the term, and is instead a series of deliberate acts of state terrorism and human rights abuses. Then lastly to apply post-colonial theory to the history and development of militarized action by the natives occupying the Middle East region. In short, concentration is on the broader circumstance of the War on Terror.
This chapter surveys key aspects of Anglo-saxon counterterrorism, and assesses their implications for the state-form. Specifically, it examines: (a) the legal definition of terrorism as a politically motivated crime, which defines all counterterrorism law and policy; (b) the reconfiguration of the rule of law into a novel law-form termed authoritarian legality; (c) the expansion of surveillance powers and the rise in prominence of the intelligence apparatus, leading to total intelligence; and (d) the platforms for popular involvement in counterterrorism, in which new citizen (and enemy) subjectivities are forged. These aspects of counterterrorism are unified in their primary consideration with popular politics; and are inscribed in a strategy of pre-emption. This shared orientation grants coherence to counterterrorism policy.