Guerre contre le terrorisme

“War on Terror” is not, in Noam Chomsky’s account, a neutral description of a bounded campaign. The phrase turns a contested political program into an apparently universal struggle, even though official definitions of terrorism also encompass coercive violence by states. Its rhetoric can therefore conceal responsibility and permit governments to use the attacks of September 11 as grounds for policies extending far beyond the pursuit of those responsible.

Naming the campaign

The language surrounding American uses of force changes with political circumstance. Attacks in Iraq were described as “smart bombardment,” while the 1999 attacks on Serbia were framed as “humanitarian intervention”; the 1991 Gulf War, by contrast, was called a war. After the September 11 attacks, the administration initially used the word “crusade,” then dropped it when it became clear that the term would impede efforts to secure allies in the Islamic world. The later phrase “war against an unnamed enemy” avoided identifying a specific adversary while restoring the language of war.

Chomsky argues that “war against terrorism” functions as propaganda unless the campaign actually targets terrorism according to a consistent definition. He notes that the United States’ own official definition describes terrorism as coercive violence against civilians for political, religious, or other purposes, and says that this definition resembles the stated doctrine of low-intensity warfare. On that reading, terrorism is not simply an instrument of the weak: it can also be a component of state policy. Applying the same standard to powerful governments, he contends, would expose a contradiction between their declared opposition to terrorism and their own use of coercive force.

The phrase also avoids the harder language of crimes and accountability. Chomsky cites Robert Fisk’s suggestion that “crimes,” and perhaps “crimes against humanity,” would be more appropriate terms. Legal accountability, however, would require identifying perpetrators, establishing responsibility, and producing tangible evidence. It would also invite questions about earlier acts of international terrorism condemned by the International Court of Justice. The broad word “war,” by comparison, can sidestep those questions and leave the identity and responsibility of perpetrators less sharply defined.

A definition applied selectively

Chomsky distinguishes a literal definition of terrorism from its conventional propagandistic use. In the literal sense, he accepts the official United States formulation: calculated violence, or threats of violence, used to pursue political, religious, or ideological aims, including through intimidation, coercion, or fear. Under that definition, the recent attacks on the United States were unquestionably a grave terrorist crime. The dispute, in his account, is not whether those attacks meet the definition, but whether the same definition is applied to violence by states and their allies.

His account of the Kosovo Liberation Army illustrates how political labels can shift without a corresponding change in an organization’s conduct. The United States officially condemned the group as terrorist in 1998, citing its attacks on Serbian police and civilians. In January 1999, British officials reportedly considered it responsible for more deaths than Serbia. After the United States and the United Kingdom chose to attack Serbia, the group was recast as a force of freedom; after the war, it and its allies were again described as terrorists, criminals, and lawless actors in Macedonia, a United States ally. For Chomsky, this sequence shows that the label often follows political alignment rather than a stable standard of violence.

He connects this selective vocabulary to the history of counterinsurgency. In his account, postwar American counterinsurgency programs drew on Nazi models, with Wehrmacht officers consulted and their manuals used in planning. Those programs were called “counterterrorism.” The example reinforces his broader claim: terms such as terrorist, counterterrorist, and freedom fighter can be reassigned to the same actors as policy changes, while the actions being categorized remain comparable.

A recurring political program

Chomsky argues that the campaign was not new. He traces its rhetoric to the Reagan administration, which came to power describing Soviet-supported international terrorism as the gravest danger to the United States and its allies, and promising an uncompromising effort to eradicate it. He contrasts that declared mission with the administration’s support for extensive international terrorist campaigns, including actions that led to the International Court of Justice condemning the United States. He also cites devastation in southern Africa during the Reagan years: 1.5 million deaths and $60 billion in damage, which he attributes to South African actions backed by the West. The contrast, in his view, is between a public campaign against terrorism and the state’s own support for coercive violence.

The September 11 attacks, he predicts, would be used to advance a broad domestic agenda as well as a military one. He describes a program of increased militarization, including missile defense and the militarization of space; weakening social-democratic programs; diverting attention from the harms of globalization and problems such as the environment and health insurance; transferring more wealth to a small number of people, including through cuts to corporate charges; and subordinating public life to limit debate and dissent. He presents these goals as the interests of powerful domestic constituencies, not simply as a response to a security emergency.

Chomsky also describes competing pressures on the government’s response. Foreign leaders, Middle East specialists, and intelligence officials, he supposes, would warn that a massive military offensive would fulfill Osama bin Laden’s wishes. At the same time, he says, hawkish elements would seize the opportunity to strike their enemies with little regard for the suffering of civilians abroad, in the United States, or in Europe. That prospect belongs to what he calls a familiar cycle of violence, in which the retaliatory campaign can create consequences that sustain further conflict.

Repression and military reach

In the longer term, Chomsky says, the attacks accelerated existing tendencies. Governments used them to introduce or intensify repressive policies: Russia joined the coalition in hopes of gaining latitude for its actions in Chechnya, and China did so for similar reasons. Turkey was the first country to offer troops for the new phase of the American campaign. Its prime minister linked that offer to American support for Turkey’s repression of its Kurdish population, including the provision of large quantities of weapons. Chomsky notes the contrast between that record and Turkey’s subsequent role as a proposed protector of Kabul from terrorism.

Israel, he adds, acknowledged that it could act against Palestinians with greater brutality under stronger American support. Inside the United States, the atmosphere of fear and demands for patriotism helped justify measures to discipline the population and enact policies opposed by popular interests. Chomsky characterizes the Bush administration’s use of the emergency as an assault on most Americans, including future generations, in service of the narrow interests of large corporations. Across these examples, the campaign’s language of public protection accompanies expanded power over both foreign populations and domestic dissent.

The military consequences were also geographic. For the first time, the United States established large military bases in Central Asia. Chomsky associates those bases with the region’s substantial resources, the contemporary “Great Game,” and the wider effort to encircle major energy resources in the Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, he says, Diego Garcia had been the most secure base in the network directed toward the Gulf, which stretched from the Pacific to the Azores. The new Central Asian presence, in his interpretation, made forceful intervention easier if the United States judged it appropriate.

Dominance, deterrence, and the ending

Chomsky describes the Bush administration’s new phase of the campaign as a means of consolidating an already overwhelming military advantage and promoting global dominance. He recounts a disagreement during the visit of Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: Abdullah urged the administration to pay more attention to Arab reactions to American support for Israeli repression, while American officials reportedly answered that they did not care what he or other Arabs thought. The account casts the campaign not as an effort to secure consent, but as an assertion that American power would proceed regardless of criticism.

He interprets the bombing of Afghanistan partly as a signal of what the United States could do to those who failed to follow its rules. In support, he recalls the stated rationale for the NATO bombing of Serbia: Tony Blair and Bill Clinton said it was necessary to preserve NATO’s credibility. Chomsky emphasizes that this meant the credibility of the United States and its principal arms client, rather than that of Norway or Italy. He treats the episode as part of a wider diplomatic pattern in which military action demonstrates resolve to other states.

The article’s conclusion is deliberately qualified: the underlying international problems mostly remained, but September 11 introduced changes with potentially significant and unpleasant consequences. The campaign’s name, in this reading, is therefore consequential precisely because it gathers military expansion, selective definitions of terrorism, domestic discipline, and international deterrence under a single claim of counterterrorism. Rather than resolving the contradiction between the label and state violence, the phrase helps make that contradiction harder to see.