The Evolution of Counter-Terrorism Since 9/11

Understanding the Paradigm Shift in Liberal Democracies

Thomas Renard

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000450170
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: Terrorism

This book examines the evolution of counter-terrorism (CT) policies in liberal democracies since 2001, with a specific focus on the case of Belgium.

What is counter-terrorism (CT)? While the answer to this question may seem self-evident, it has become quite complicated to define the contours of a field that has expanded dramatically in the two decades since the 9/11 attacks. The development of "softer" policies, dealing with the prevention of radicalisation, has blurred the limits of CT.

Through the use of public policy theory and an in-depth case study on Belgium, the book identifies the key factors influencing CT policy-making, both domestically and internationally, and offers an explanation for the development of a more comprehensive CT agenda across Europe. It provides an innovative theoretical approach and is also based on extensive interviews with key counter-terrorism officials and analysis of key policy documents. The book concludes by identifying some key drivers of change and offers an embryonic theory of CT policy-making.

The book will be of much interest to students and practitioners of counter-terrorism, radicalisation, European politics and security studies.

1 Conceptualising the evolution of CT in Western liberal democracies since 2001

DOI: 10.4324/9781003188018-2

What is counter-terrorism? While the answer to this question may seem self-evident to some, it has, in fact, become quite complicated to define the contours of a field that has been expanding dramatically over the past two decades. The development of “softer” policies, dealing with the prevention of radicalisation, but also with broader issues such as social cohesion, education and well-being, has blurred the limits of counter-terrorism. In the 20th century, counter-terrorism was essentially the work of the security and judiciary services. In the 21st century, it involves a much larger spectrum of policies and stakeholders.

With a view to exploring the evolution of Belgian counter-terrorism, it is therefore important to first look at the overall evolution of counter-terrorism in Western liberal democracies. This chapter describes the emergence of a more comprehensive and coordinated approach to terrorism, resulting from a strengthening of traditional criminal justice responses, as well as the development of new prevention policies. This evolution has at times been referred to as an evolution from a hard-power-based approach to one relying more on soft power (Crelinsten 2019; Art and Richardson 2007; Cochrane and Nugent 2018). By analogy with Joe Nye’s famous concepts of “soft power” and “smart power” (Nye 2011), we could then say that counter-terrorism is evolving towards a smart-power approach. Before exploring this evolution, however, it is first necessary to explain what is meant by counter-terrorism.

Defining counter-terrorism

Terrorism studies have long been a marginal discipline in political sciences, concerning a small bunch of scholars only. Following a decline of interest in the late 1980s and 1990s, however, research increased exponentially and broadened to more scholars and disciplines after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 (Silke 2018; Stampnitzky 2016). Given the contested and politicised nature of terrorism (usually encapsulated in the expression “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”), a non-negligible share of this research has focused on definitional and conceptualisation issues, resulting in hundreds of competing definitions of terrorism (Schmid 2011b, 2013:15). Still today, the issue of definition remains at the core of many policy debates (Pantucci 2020). In contrast, surprisingly, very few scholars have tried to define counter-terrorism. While the problem of terrorism studies is the abundance of definitions and theories, the problem of counter-terrorism studies – if there is such thing – is the absence thereof. While many scholars have worked on various aspects of responses to terrorism and, increasingly, to radicalisation, definitional or conceptual work on counter-terrorism has been “virtually inexistent” (Lewis 2017:5).

Lindahl (2016:450) defines counter-terrorism as “any efforts taken to deal with terrorism”, in a rather typical “counterterrorism is what you make of it” approach (Crenshaw and LaFree 2017:168). Researchers possibly assume that the term is self-explanatory, or perhaps simply consider counter-terrorism as a practice or a sub-discipline at most that requires no theoretical effort. For instance, Lindekilde (2016:529) speaks of “terrorism studies” but only of “counterterrorism policymaking”. As a result, counter-terrorism remains significantly under-theorised, with damaging consequences for rigorous research and evidence-based policies (Lewis 2017).

Participating to the definitional and conceptual fog, counter-terrorism overlaps with other concepts that are equally ill-defined, namely counter-insurgency (COIN), counter-radicalisation, deradicalisation and, more recently, countering violent extremism (CVE) or preventing violent extremism (PVE).¹ Historically, research on (counter-)terrorism grew directly out of research on (counter-)insurgency. Before the 1970s, insurgency was the primary prism through which political violence was understood (Stampnitzky 2016). This may explain why there are still so many parallels and similarities between counter-terrorism and COIN – as the terms are often used interchangeably – with the underlying influence of a long tradition of military campaigns (Silke 2018; see also Beckett 2001; Taber 2002).² COIN is traditionally defined as a form of “counter-warfare” against an insurgency, that is “a struggle to control a contested political space, between a state (or group of states or occupying powers), and one or more popularly based, non-state challengers” (Kilcullen 2006).

While COIN is sometimes mistaken for a form of counter-terrorism, it is actually very different. It responds to a different logic, different objectives, tactics and stakeholders (Cronin 2015). Counter-terrorism in liberal democracies can hardly be compared to COIN campaigns in fragile states, and it is therefore better to clearly distinguish these concepts, while noting, however, that COIN can come in support of a counter-terrorism strategy (as illustrated by the US military mission in Afghanistan post-9/11) and that counter-terrorism tactics are a traditional component of COIN campaigns.

More recently, as argued later, it is the concept of “radicalisation” that has gained traction in academic and political discourses, together with their counterparts: counter-radicalisation and deradicalisation, as well as PVE and CVE (P/CVE in short). While I will define these concepts later in this chapter, it can already be noted that they suffer overall from a lack of conceptualisation and from unclear boundaries. In the context of this book, I will treat these new concepts as an extension of traditional counter-terrorism policies, upstream and downstream, or as new sub-components of a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. Indeed, while having a logic of their own, P/CVE programmes have been developed as a response to mitigate the terrorist threat, and there are often formal or informal ties between traditional CT and P/CVE structures.

What is counter-terrorism then? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, counter-terrorism is defined as the “measures designed to combat or prevent terrorism”. The US Department of Defence (DoD) Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms distinguishes counter-terrorism and anti-terrorism. It defines counter-terrorism as “activities and operations taken to neutralize terrorists and their organizations and networks in order to render them incapable of using violence to instil fear and coerce governments or societies to achieve their goals”. In contrast, anti-terrorism is defined as the “defensive measures used to reduce the vulnerability of individuals and property to terrorist acts, to include rapid containment by local military and civilian forces”. The combination of offensive counter-terrorism and defensive anti-terrorism is framed as “combating terrorism”, according to the US DoD Dictionary (2018).

While the distinction between “offensive” and “defensive” measures is largely present in the academic literature, scholars generally include them under the counter-terrorism concept (see, for instance, Crelinsten 2009), either not referring to “anti-terrorism” or using it interchangeably with “counter-terrorism”. Silke (2018:12) formulates one such encompassing definition, referring (perhaps unwittingly) to the US DoD term “combating terrorism”. He defines counter-terrorism as: “The policies, strategies and tactics that states use to combat terrorism and deal with its consequences”. Quite logically, this definition refers to terrorism, which means that all debates on the definition of terrorism apply by ricochet to this definition.³

Silke’s definition usefully emphasises the fact that counter-terrorism, similarly to terrorism (Schmid 2013:16), is both a doctrine (“strategy”) and a practice (“policies”). This means that there must be an overall vision or strategy to combat terrorism, underpinned by specific instruments and policies. It also broadens the scope of counter-terrorism as dealing not only with terrorism (or terrorists), but also with its consequences (material, medical, psychological etc.). Furthermore, it rightly highlights the central role of public authorities (“the state”) in counter-terrorism. Indeed, “state counter-terrorism” can be considered as a sub-type of counter-terrorism, along with other types of counter-terrorism by sub- or supra-national actors (Lewis 2017), as a growing number of international organisations have become important CT stakeholders, such as the United Nations (UN) or the European Union (EU), as well as non-state actors such as NGOs and civil society organisations. However, state CT is undoubtedly the dominant form of counter-terrorism, not least because governments largely drive or at least support CT initiatives taken at supra- or sub-national levels. Hence, it is the focus of this book.

Finally, the interpretation of the state’s intentions is fundamental, as counter-terrorism is not simply the opposite of terrorism, but it denotes an oppositional purposive action against terrorism (Schmid and Jongman 2005). Indeed, as Crenshaw and LaFree (2017:170) warn, the elasticity of the counter-terrorism concept means that “almost any activity pursued by a government might qualify”, which constitutes a major challenge for the conceptualisation of counter-terrorism. The focus on the policy’s intention (fighting terrorism) offers one way to address this challenge, although it certainly leaves some room for interpretation. As a result, only policies or actors whose primary function is to prevent or respond to terrorism should be considered belonging to the realm of counter-terrorism. Thus, for instance, socio-economic policies that were not designed with counter-terrorist purposes may produce positive collateral effects in the fight against terrorism, but they do not belong to the counter-terrorist domain per se. In contrast, P/CVE initiatives that aim directly to prevent the risk of radicalisation to violent extremism can be conceived as part of the broader counter-terrorism spectrum. Following this criterion, it is also possible to tackle the abusive labelling of certain counter-terrorism or CVE policies, when they are designed to instrumentalise CT or P/CVE instruments and funding to achieve primarily unrelated objectives (such as fighting crime, immigration or oppressing minorities, for instance).

While the vast majority of scholars do not offer a proper definition of counter-terrorism, many studies have explored its different dimensions and implementation by the menu, offering empirical categorisations, which equate to a basic form of conceptualisation. Academic analysis has tended to be all-encompassing in this regard, underpinned by a very broad, “elastic”, understanding of counter-terrorism (Crenshaw and LaFree 2017:168–70). Art and Richardson (2007) distinguish political, legislative-judicial and security domains of counter-terrorism; Lum et al. (2009) envisage four categories: prevention, detection, management and response; and Lindahl summarises counter-terrorism approaches under four headings: use of force, intelligence and policing, homeland security and conciliation and dialogue. Generally, such categorisations cover a large spectrum of CT dimensions, including intelligence, policing, military and anti-terror legislation, as well as more specific measures such as counter-terrorism financing and securing public spaces; and, more recently, instruments such as strategic communication or rehabilitation programmes have been added. Such basic categorisations, however, are not helpful in determining what falls under CT, and what not. In other words, it is unhelpful in determining what is counter-terrorism and, above all, what its limits are.

In one of the most extensive efforts of categorisation to this day, Crelinsten (2009, 2014) distinguished various (complementary) forms of counter-terrorism: coercive (based on the use of criminal justice and military force); proactive (based on intelligence preventive work); persuasive (based on discourse and counter-discourse); defensive (based on target hardening and societal resilience); and long-term (based on policies addressing the “root causes” of terrorism). Other authors have developed other categories (see, for instance, Schmid 2005), for instance drawing from the crime prevention literature (see, for instance, Bjorgo 2013), but eventually covering similarly broad policy areas.

In the context of this book, drawing on the existing literature and building on my understanding of the recent developments in the field, I propose to define (state) counter-terrorism as a state strategy that includes coercive and non-coercive instruments across a large range of policy areas, developed and implemented with the specific intention to prevent and respond to terrorism. This definition highlights the strategic and policy aspects of terrorism, as well as the necessary counter-terrorism intention at both levels (development and implementation). Compared to Silke, it highlights the possibility to have hard (“coercive”) and soft (“non-coercive”) responses to terrorism, covering a broad range of policies, which helps apprehending the recent developments in the field with regard to P/CVE. It also emphasises that counter-terrorism has preventive aspects (which can be understood as both upstream “soft” prevention and “hard” anti-terrorism prevention, such as public security or deterrence measures), as well as reactive ones.

The remaining of this chapter further seeks to clarify and consolidate this definition. It does so by looking at the evolution of counter-terrorism in Western liberal democracies since 2001. The first evolution discussed is the toughening of the response to terrorism, while the second evolution, initiated a few years later, rather emphasises the so-called “softer” side of counter-terrorism, with an emphasis on prevention policies. As noted by Crelinsten (2019), CT is traditionally associated with “hard power” (intelligence, police, military or law), but it is now increasingly complemented with “soft power” instruments and policies. Contrary to what the terms hardening and softening may suggest, these evolutions are not antagonistic but rather ended up complementing one another, leading to a more potent and comprehensive counter-terrorism framework.

The hardening of counter-terrorism

Traditionally, counter-terrorism has been conceived through two main approaches: the criminal justice model and the war model (Crelinsten 2009). What these two approaches have in common is their coercive nature, relying on hard power. In other words, the traditional instruments to defeat terrorism were the police and intelligence services, as well as the judiciary services and, in some cases, the military whether deployed domestically or abroad. The criminal justice model treats terrorism as a crime, putting the judiciary authorities as lead responders. The war model treats terrorism as an act of war, letting the military bear prime responsibility. In the criminal justice model, the rule of law prevails; in the war model, it is the rules of war that prevail.

European nations have been confronted with terrorism long before 2001, and they have always treated it as a criminal offense. Most countries purposefully responded to terrorism as an ordinary crime in order not to glorify it in any way, although some countries eventually adopted specific laws against terrorism, which were seen as a “necessary evil”. These included: the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the UK, first adopted in 1974; various anti-terrorist laws in Germany in the 1970s; a law in connection with the “struggle against terrorism” in France in 1986; various anti-terror laws in Spain in the early 1980s; and a number of “emergency laws” in Italy in the late 1970s (Chalk 1996:99–103). The brute military force was not entirely absent from the counter-terrorism response in some European countries, as soldiers were deployed in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, for instance, or as some law enforcement agencies were still militarised in Spain in the 1970s. However, the military force was used only in last resort and under civilian authority.

After 9/11, the paradigm partially changed, particularly in the USA, as the US president George W. Bush declared “war” on terrorism, shifting from the criminal justice model to the war model (Crelinsten 2009:9). This paradigm shift is particularly striking when comparing the US response to 9/11 with the previous response to the 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing, which killed six people and wounded over a thousand, but remained treated through the traditional criminal justice response, leading to the prosecution and imprisonment of six individuals (McCauley 2006). The threat of “global terrorism” came to be conceived almost exclusively as an external threat, against which US laws were powerless. In the GWOT, the most effective response to terrorism was thought to reside with the military apparatus, blurring the lines between CT and COIN, as discussed earlier. Such military response to a terrorist threat originating from outside the country had been extremely rare before 9/11 (Crenshaw and LaFree 2017:57), but has now become more standard and accepted as part of the counter-terrorism approach.

This “paradigm shi...

Índice

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgement
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Conceptualising the evolution of CT in Western liberal democracies since 2001
• 2 The integral approach to CT in Belgium
• 3 The integrated approach to CT in Belgium
• 4 The external dimension of Belgium’s CT policy
• 5 The Belgian response to returning foreign fighters and their families
• 6 A theory of change: Public policy theory, effectiveness and the evolution of Belgian CT
• 7 Counter-terrorism in liberal democracies: looking back to look forward
• Bibliography
• Index