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What is 'international' about international terrorism?
by Ron Anderson
March 2007
Why is this important?
At the centre of contemporary debates regarding terrorism is a fundamental question of the extent to which and the ways in which contemporary terrorism is 'international'. Answers to this question have become critical to
- the way in which major players in the international community (especially the US, and to a lesser extent the UN) have adopted international strategies to counter such perceived forms of 'international terrorism"
- how states centrally or peripherally involved in the conflict against terrorism have responded domestically to the perceived threat. This includes countries like Australia.
Clearly answers to this question have therefore embroiled in international and internal debates over how to respond to the successive threats which pre-dated Sept 11, and have developed since.
In these debates a tendency to exaggerate the nature and threat of international terrorism can be observed at two levels:
- at the national and international political level as US Presidents, UK and Australian Prime Ministers wish to use an exaggeration of the threat provided by Al Qaida, to further their own domestic and international agendas. This has even extended to cynically using the potential of encouragement to international terrorism, to stop the ending of a failing war in Iraq.
- at a popular level, where under the influence of national leaders...
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