Terrorisme

Terrorism, as treated here, is both a category of political violence and a contested label whose application follows power. The account accepts a literal definition based on calculated violence or its threat for political, religious, or ideological ends, while arguing that official discourse often applies the word selectively: violence by enemies is terrorism, whereas comparable conduct by powerful states is described as counterterrorism, coercive diplomacy, or war. The distinction shapes judgments of responsibility, the pursuit of legal remedies, and the policies advanced in terrorism’s name.

Definition and the Problem of Naming

The account adopts the definition found in official United States documents: calculated violence, or the threat of violence, used to pursue political, religious, or ideological aims, including through intimidation, coercion, or the creation of fear. Under that definition, the attacks on the United States discussed in the interview are terrorism and a grave terrorist crime. The author stresses that this judgment does not depend on whether the perpetrators are politically sympathetic or whether their violence is framed as resistance; the relevant standard is the conduct and its purpose.

That literal definition is set against a second, propagandistic use. In this familiar pattern, people condemn terrorism when it is committed by enemies against themselves or their allies, while treating their own comparable actions as counterterrorism. The account notes that even the Nazis denounced terrorism and described their operations against partisans as counterterrorist. Condemnation alone, therefore, does not establish a consistent principle: the decisive question is whose violence the label describes.

The author’s stated position is that the term should retain its literal meaning and that all terrorist actions should be condemned, not only those designated as terrorism for political purposes. This insistence makes consistency the test of the definition. If a category changes according to the identity of the actor, it ceases to function as a neutral description and becomes a means of distributing blame.

State Violence and Official Doctrine

The argument challenges the claim that terrorism is simply the weapon of the weak. The United States officially conducts what the account calls low-intensity warfare; comparing common descriptions of that doctrine with the official American definition of terrorism, the author finds them nearly alike. Both concern coercive methods directed at civilian populations to achieve political or other aims. Terrorism, on this analysis, is not external to state policy: it can be a component of state action, in the United States and elsewhere.

This comparison does not erase distinctions among particular acts or establish that every state operation is legally identical to every non-state attack. Instead, it asks that the same definition be applied without changing it to accommodate the power or identity of the actor. The account’s sharper claim is that the ordinary vocabulary of international politics obscures this comparison. Great-power threats or uses of force are conventionally called coercive diplomacy rather than terrorism, even when the means and purposes would attract that description if used by actors without great-power status.

The difference between the words “war” and “war on terrorism” is part of the same dispute. The account argues that “war on terrorism” is propaganda unless the campaign actually targets terrorism as consistently defined. If Western powers cannot apply their own official definitions to their own conduct and that of their clients, the label presents an asymmetrical campaign as a principled one. The passage therefore treats naming not as a cosmetic matter, but as a way of concealing who acts, who is targeted, and which standards are being used.

Labels, Alliances, and Changing Judgments

The account’s example of Kosovo shows how the classification of an armed group can shift with policy. The Kosovo Liberation Army had been officially condemned by the United States as terrorist in 1998, following attacks on Serbian police and civilians. The account says that the group described its actions as attempts to provoke a disproportionate Serbian response. It also reports that, through January 1999, British officials considered the group responsible for more deaths than Serbia, while noting that this assessment is difficult to accept but revealing of high-level analysis within NATO.

The account contrasts those judgments with the political turn preceding the bombing campaign against Serbia in late March 1999. Drawing on Western documentation, it argues that no tangible change on the ground preceded the departure of verification officials and the bombing; what changed was policy. The United States and the United Kingdom decided to attack Serbia, and the group previously called terrorist was recast as a freedom-fighting force. After the war, the group and close allies were again described as terrorists, criminals, or thugs as they pursued similar actions for similar stated reasons in Macedonia, a United States ally. The sequence makes the label appear responsive to alignments and policy rather than to a stable assessment of conduct.

The broader example of postwar counterinsurgency extends the point beyond Kosovo. The account says that United States counterinsurgency programs drew on a Nazi model treated with deference: Wehrmacht officers were consulted, and their manuals were used in designing programs for the postwar world. These plans were called counterterrorism. By placing the institutional vocabulary beside the history of its design, the passage questions the assumption that “counterterrorism” necessarily identifies a morally or legally distinct kind of conduct.

Law, Evidence, and Political Selectivity

The account argues that crimes, potentially including crimes against humanity, are more precise descriptions than the general term war. But a legal approach requires identifying perpetrators, establishing responsibility, and producing tangible evidence. The account presents this evidentiary demand as consequential rather than merely procedural: investigation can raise questions that powerful states would prefer to leave unasked, including who committed acts of international terrorism condemned by the International Court of Justice years earlier.

The same demand for consistency appears in the discussion of official designation rules. Under the criteria summarized in the text, an organization must be foreign, must engage in activities defined as terrorist under the Immigration and Nationality Act, and must pose a threat to the security of United States nationals or to United States national security, including defense, foreign affairs, or economic interests. The account thus distinguishes the definition of terrorist activity from the additional judgment that a particular organization threatens United States security. Classification is not only a description of conduct; it is also a state decision with specified political and legal consequences.

The account lists effects of designation beyond formal penalties: it can deter contributions, increase public awareness, communicate United States concerns to other governments, and stigmatize and isolate an organization internationally. These effects show how the label operates as an instrument of policy and public communication. Although the designation procedure includes review and a stated evidentiary process, the account’s wider argument asks whether comparable scrutiny is applied to violence by states and their allies.

The Post-9/11 Uses of Counterterrorism

The account describes the attacks of September 11 as accelerating policies and tendencies already in place. Governments, it argues, used the attacks as an occasion to introduce or intensify repressive measures. Russia joined the counterterrorism coalition while seeking latitude to continue its actions in Chechnya; China also joined for reasons the account characterizes as similar. Turkey offered troops for the new phase of the United States-led campaign, with its prime minister linking the offer to American support for Turkey’s campaign against its Kurdish population. The passage presents these examples as evidence that the counterterrorism framework could legitimize or reward coercive policies by states participating in the coalition.

The author also describes a domestic consequence. In societies including the United States, governments used fear and appeals to patriotism to advance restrictive measures and laws the account calls unpopular. It argues that the Bush administration seized the opportunity to pursue policies against the majority of the population, including future generations, while serving the narrow interests of large corporations with unusual influence over the administration. In this analysis, the language of security does not merely identify a threat; it can also narrow public dissent and authorize broader government action.

A geopolitical consequence was the establishment, for the first time, of substantial United States military bases in Central Asia. The account connects those bases to the contemporary “Great Game,” the prospect of installing multinational corporations under United States dominance, control of the region’s resources, and the wider strategic encirclement of major energy resources in the Persian Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, it says, Diego Garcia was the most secure base in the system directed toward the Gulf; the new Central Asian position made intervention easier if the United States considered it necessary.

The account interprets the new phase of the campaign as an opportunity for the Bush administration to consolidate military superiority and promote global dominance. It recounts that, during Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s visit to the United States in April, he urged the administration to consider Arab reactions to its support for Israeli repression. The administration’s response, as reported in the passage, was that it did not care what he or other Arabs thought. The account also cites remarks published by The New York Times that presented Afghanistan as a demonstration of American capability and firmness. These reported exchanges connect the public language of counterterrorism to a message of power directed beyond the immediate battlefield.

The author treats the bombing of Afghanistan and the NATO bombing of Serbia as actions that may have served strategic purposes beyond their stated rationales. Without claiming access to confidential documents, the account proposes that the Afghanistan bombing may have been intended chiefly to warn others about the consequences of failing to follow United States rules. It says that the Serbia campaign had likewise been justified in terms of NATO credibility, as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton explained, with the relevant credibility belonging not to Norway or Italy but to the United States and its principal arms client. The passage closes by distinguishing continuity from change: the basic international problems largely remained, but September 11 brought changes that could have significant and unpleasant consequences.