Terrorisme d’État

Terrorisme d’État is the concept through which the book challenges the boundary between terrorism by non-state groups and violence exercised by governments. It argues that official definitions centered on coercion and political purpose also describe certain state practices, while political convention often exempts powerful states from the label. The result is not merely a dispute over terminology: in the book’s account, the naming of violence helps conceal responsibility, justify military action, and extend state power.

Definition and the Politics of Naming

The book begins from a definition used in official United States documents: terrorism is the calculated use or threat of violence to pursue political, religious, or ideological goals, potentially through intimidation, coercion, or the creation of fear. Under that definition, the attacks against the United States discussed in the book are clearly a terrorist crime. The definition, however, does not by itself distinguish state from non-state perpetrators. The author’s central challenge is to apply the same standard to both rather than letting the identity of the actor determine the classification.

That distinction is obscured by a conventional, propagandistic use of “terrorism” to describe violence committed by enemies against the speaker or its allies. The book argues that this usage is widespread: governments condemn terrorism in the name of opposing forces they regard as hostile, even when they employ comparable methods themselves. In that framework, “counterterrorism” can become a label for state violence rather than a neutral description of a different kind of action.

The language of war performs a related function. The book argues that calling a campaign a “war on terrorism” is propaganda unless terrorism is in fact its target. Yet, it says, Western powers could not consistently apply their own official definitions to their conduct without exposing the United States and its clients to the same charge. The broad word “war” therefore offers political shelter: it avoids the more legally consequential language of crimes and responsibility, which would require identifying perpetrators and substantiating allegations with evidence.

State Doctrine and Historical Reversals

The argument is grounded in the book’s comparison of terrorism’s official definition with the United States’ doctrine of low-intensity warfare. The author says that the two descriptions are nearly alike: both involve coercive means directed at civilian populations to achieve political or other ends. In this account, terrorism is not simply an “weapon of the weak”; it can be a component of state policy, and the United States is not the only state implicated by that claim.

The book also describes postwar counterinsurgency planning as drawing explicitly on the Nazi model. Wehrmacht officers were consulted, and their manuals were used in designing programs for use around the world; those programs were called counterterrorism. The significance of this history, as presented in the book, lies in the continuity between methods and the instability of their labels: people and actions can be designated terrorists, then freedom fighters, and later criminals again, without a corresponding change in the conduct being described.

Kosovo provides the book’s concrete example of that reversal. In 1998, the Kosovo Liberation Army was officially condemned by the United States as a terrorist force because of attacks on Serbian police and civilians, which the book says were intended to provoke an excessive Serbian response. By January 1999, British hawks within NATO regarded the group as responsible for more deaths than Serbia. The book says that Western documentation showed no tangible change on the ground before verification officials withdrew and the NATO bombing began in late March. What changed, in its interpretation, was policy: once the United States and the United Kingdom decided to attack Serbia, the terrorists became freedom fighters. After the war, the same actors and their allies were again called terrorists, thugs, and criminals in connection with actions in Macedonia, a United States ally.

September 11 and Repression Beyond the Battlefield

The book presents the aftermath of September 11 as an opportunity for governments to intensify policies already in motion. Russia joined the coalition against terrorism in the hope of gaining latitude to continue its actions in Chechnya, and, in the author’s account, was not disappointed. China also joined for similar reasons. Turkey was the first country to offer troops for the new phase of the United States-led campaign; its prime minister connected the offer to United States support during Turkey’s campaign of repression against its Kurdish population. The book emphasizes the contrast between that record and Turkey’s subsequent role as a power entrusted with protecting Kabul from terrorism, backed by the same superpower that had supplied it with military means and diplomatic and ideological support.

Israel, the book continues, recognized that it could intensify its repression of Palestinians with still stronger United States support. The examples are presented as part of a wider pattern: governments used the counterterrorism campaign to pursue or legitimize policies that predated the attacks. The concept therefore encompasses not only direct violence but also the political arrangements that enable it, including arms, diplomatic backing, and the reclassification of state conduct as security policy.

The argument extends inside democratic societies. The book says that governments, including the United States, used fear and appeals to patriotism to discipline their own populations and enact unpopular laws under the pretext of combating terrorism. It describes the Bush administration as seizing the opportunity to advance policies against much of the United States population, including future generations, while serving the narrow interests of large corporations influential in the administration. In this account, counterterrorism operates both as a justification for force abroad and as a rationale for restricting political space at home.

Military Power and Strategic Purpose

The book connects the language of counterterrorism to the expansion of United States military reach. It identifies the establishment of major United States bases in Central Asia as a major consequence of the post-September 11 period. The author links those bases to access to the region’s resources and to the contemporary “Great Game,” as well as to the wider strategic effort to surround the energy resources of the Persian Gulf. Before the Afghanistan war, the book says, Diego Garcia was the safest base in the network directed toward the Gulf; the new position, in its analysis, made forceful intervention easier.

The author interprets the Bush administration’s campaign as an opportunity to consolidate an already overwhelming military advantage and promote global dominance. During the April visit of Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the United States, Abdullah urged the administration to consider Arab reactions to its strong support for Israeli repression. The book recounts that senior officials answered that the United States did not care what he or other Arabs thought. It also cites a senior official’s comparison of the Afghanistan campaign with Operation Desert Storm and a former military official’s prediction that displays of firmness would secure respect and end interference. These remarks, in the book’s reading, reveal a conception of military action as a warning about the consequences of defying United States power.

The author acknowledges that confidential documents are unavailable and frames the proposed strategic purpose as an inference: the Afghanistan bombings may have been intended chiefly to demonstrate what the United States could do to those who failed to follow its rules. The book compares this interpretation with NATO’s bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton explained in terms of maintaining NATO’s credibility. The point is not that every official rationale is disproved by the comparison, but that the stated language of counterterrorism may coexist with broader purposes of deterrence, alliance credibility, and global military predominance.

Consequences and Significance

Terrorisme d’État brings these arguments together around a problem of consistent classification. If the official definition is applied literally, the distinction between terrorism and state action cannot rest on whether the perpetrator is an adversary, an ally, or a major power. The book’s examples instead show labels shifting with political alignment: methods identified as terrorism in an enemy can be recast as counterterrorism, war, or freedom fighting when state policy changes.

The concept also explains how those labels can produce material consequences. The post-September 11 designation system described in the book requires, among other conditions, that an organization’s activities threaten United States nationals or the national security of the United States. The stated effects include deterring contributions, raising public awareness, communicating United States concerns to other governments, and stigmatizing and isolating designated organizations internationally. The book’s wider critique is that official categories can have substantial legal and diplomatic force while remaining politically selective in how they are applied.

The author concludes that the basic international problems largely remained in place, even as September 11 accelerated existing tendencies and introduced changes with significant, often unwelcome consequences. In this analysis, state terrorism is not a separate category safely confined to hostile regimes. It is a challenge to the selective language through which powerful states describe violence, assign blame, and convert military and domestic repression into the authorized work of security.