“There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence – a noun,a verb and 9/11”: terrorism,fear and the after,after 9/11

In the years since 11 September 2001, pundits, politicians and scholars of terrorism and international relations routinely have declared that 9/11 “changed everything”. This article explores not only how those decisions transformed the United States and the global response to terrorism, but also how both the decisions and response sustained a sense of fear. Further, they made possible, to paraphrase then candidate Joseph Biden’s critique of former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, the framing of so much of the global political debate about terrorism, and national security references as simply 9/11 accompanied by a noun and a verb. Finally, the article examines the consequences of this framing for not only our understanding of terrorism, but also our understanding of terrorism and violence within the current global system.     

The banality of counterterrorism “after,after 9/11”? Perspectives on the Prevent duty from the UK health care sector

Since 2015, the UK healthcare sector sector has (along with education and social care) been responsibilised for noticing signs of radicalisation and reporting patients to the Prevent programme. The Prevent Duty frames the integration of healthcare professionals into the UK’s counterterrorism effort as the banal extension of safeguarding. But safeguarding has previously been framed as the protection of children, and adults with care and support needs, from abuse. This article explores the legitimacy of situating Prevent within safeguarding through interviews with safeguarding experts in six National Health Service (NHS) Trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups. It also describes the factors which NHS staff identified as indicators of radicalisation – data which was obtained from an online questionnaire completed by 329 health care professionals. The article argues that the “after, after 9/11” era is not radically distinct from earlier periods of counterterrorism but does contain novel features, such as the performance of anticipatory counterterrorism under the rubric of welfare and care.     

Why Is There an ISIL?

In June 2014,the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)1——an extremist organization——suddenly appeared in Mosul in Northern Iraq.Since then it has rapidly expanded its sphere of influence,to incorporate much of northern and western Iraq.Strategists,both in China and overseas,are puzzling over this Islamic State.Some scholars argue that the west Asian political landscape that was carved out 100 years ago is collapsing.ISIL's influence is spreading throughout the Middle East and threatening global security.     

The right to commemoration and “ideal victims”: the puzzle of victim dissatisfaction with State-led commemoration after 9/11 and 3/11

This article explores the puzzle of victim dissatisfaction with State-led commemoration following 9/11 and 3/11 by offering a cross-national case study through which to view key areas of theoretical debate in the sociology of human rights, cultural trauma and collective memory, and the politics of victimhood. Although State-led commemorative processes are often highly contested, we would expect them to be less so in the cases of 9/11 and 3/11, given broad social consensus about the victims’ right to commemoration and the traumatic nature of the events, and especially the “ideal nature” of the victims who as symbolic representatives of the State are conferred with great moral authority. Drawing on primary and secondary data on the commemoration of the attacks of 11th September 2001 and 11th March 2004 we find that despite sharp differences between commemorative processes, three common key areas of contestation and dissatisfaction for victims emerge: political instrumentalisation, hierarchies of worth and exclusion. We show how the status of ideal victimhood for victims of transnational terrorism carries within it an inherent paradox which provides the key to their dissatisfaction, namely the moral authority conferred on them as representatives of the State simultaneously depersonalises them, excluding them as individuals with rights and needs.     

“Night fell on a different world”: experiencing,constructing and remembering 9/11

This article explores the endurance of the pervasive framing of “9/11” as a moment of temporal rupture within the United States. It argues that this has persisted despite the existence of plausible competitor narratives for two reasons: first, because it resonated with public experiences of the events predating this construction’s discursive sedimentation and; second, because of its vigorous defence by successive US administrations. In making these arguments this article seeks to extend relevant contemporary research in three ways: first, by reflecting on new empirical material drawn from the Library of Congress Witness and Response Collection, thus offering additional insight into public understandings of 11 September 2011 in the immediacy of the events; second, by drawing on insights from social memory studies to explore the persistence of specific constructions of 9/11 and; third, by outlining the importance of categories of experience and endurance for constructivist international relations more broadly.     

Is the internet an instrument of global democratization?

This article explores the hypothesis that people in less democratic nations will use the Internet newsgroups devoted to those countries as a relatively ‘safe’ form of political discussion and even protest. Also, it is expected that nationals of those countries living overseas will use these newsgroups to more openly discuss politics in those nations than they could otherwise do so. Before turning to a content analysis of the messages posted in non‐United States Usenet groups, the number of these groups and the levels of political discussion in them are quantified. The article quantifies the international usage of the Usenet as a first attempt to find some patterns in this usage that may be politically motivated. After all, many pundits imagine that the Internet will become the vaunted ‘global village’ and source of ‘grass‐roots democracy’, and not merely in the United States. An examination of the content of about 2500 messages in 41 Usenet groups then follows, with a view to establishing the following: how many messages are explicitly political; how many are in opposition to the current government; how many are pro‐government; whether they primarily serve as alternative sources of news; whether they are attempts to recruit people in the subject country and around the world into some sort of political action; and whether richer nations are more likely to have higher levels of discussion in their newsgroups than poorer ones. The findings conclude that newsgroups devoted to countries with lower levels of democratization have a much higher percentage of anti‐government messages than the newsgroups about nations that are more democratic.     

Post-9/11 Security in South Asia

The September 11 terrorist attacks and the consequent U. S. ac- tions on terrorism as well as its adjustment of global strategy have ex- erted an in-depth influence on international and regional security struc- ture. As the neighboring region of Afghanistan the target state of American war on terror, it is more difficult for South Asia to keep aloof from the affairs. Greater changes have taken place in security situation in the region and in Washington's countermeasures as well. First is ab…     

Sam Fisher and the “war on terror”: an analysis of Splinter Cell in a post-9/11 context

This article examines the values and attitudes present within the 2002 video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and the methods employed to convey them. It compares the game’s message with the rhetoric contained in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative. A qualitative content analysis of a Splinter Cell “game movie” and gameplay sessions is undertaken to examine the messages communicated through elements of simulation and representation. This article finds that Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” narrative express similar perspectives of terrorism and counterterrorism. First, both exaggerate the physical and normative threat of terrorism, and portray it as overwhelmingly powerful. Second, both sources justify violent counterterrorism action through claims of necessity, urgency and self-defence. Third, violence is consistently portrayed as effective for achieving the desired objective. Finally, violence and military action are represented as simple solutions that ultimately lead to victory over terrorism. The parallels between the messages within Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” rhetoric indicate that the game was shaped by the post-9/11 culture in which it was developed. More significantly, however, Splinter Cell perpetuates and legitimises the “war on terror” narrative by conveying its message through an immersive interactive environment.     

“9/11 is alive and well” or how critical terrorism studies has sustained the 9/11 narrative

ABSTRACT

This article argues that despite engaging in a powerful critique of the construction of the attacks of 11 September 2001 (or “9/11”) as temporal break, critical terrorism scholars have sustained and reproduced this same construction of “9/11”. Through a systematic analysis of the research articles published in Critical Studies on Terrorism, this article illustrates how critical scholars have overall failed to extricate themselves from this dominant narrative, as they inhabit the same visual, emotional and professional landscape as those they critique. After examining how CTS has reproduced but also renegotiated this narrative, the article concludes with what Michel Foucault would describe as an “effective history” of the attacks – in this case, a personal narrative of how the attacks did not constitute a moment of personal rupture but nonetheless later became a backdrop to justify my scholarship and career. It ends with a renewal of Maya Zeyfuss’ call to forget “9/11”.     

Europe,China and security governance: is there evidence of normative convergence?

Normative power can be defined as the ability to govern interdependencies by means of rules, regimes and compliance strategies. This paper presents two case studies in security governance—international responsibility to protect in Sudan and counter-proliferation policies towards Iran’s nuclear programme—to evaluate the degree of normative convergence between China and Europe. It concludes that there are still major differences between Europe and China on employing normative strategies in security governance but that both modes of governance and identities as security actors are mobile so that the trend is towards convergence, albeit with some distance still to travel.     

Is there a “Depth versus Participation” dilemma in international cooperation?

Much of the International Relations literature assumes that there is a “depth versus participation” dilemma in international politics: shallower international agreements attract more countries and greater depth is associated with less participation. We argue that this conjecture is too simple and probably misleading because the depth of any given cooperative effort is in fact multidimensional. This multidimensionality manifests itself in the design characteristics of international agreements: in particular, the specificity of obligations, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, dispute settlement mechanisms, positive incentives (assistance), and organizational structures (secretariats). We theorize that the first three of these design characteristics have negative and the latter three have positive effects on participation in international cooperative efforts. Our empirical testing of these claims relies on a dataset that covers more than 200 global environmental treaties. We find a participation-limiting effect for the specificity of obligations, but not for monitoring and enforcement. In contrast, we observe that assistance provisions in treaties have a significant and substantial positive effect on participation. Similarly, dispute settlement mechanisms tend to promote treaty participation. The main implication of our study is that countries do not appear to stay away from agreements with monitoring and enforcement provisions, but that the inclusion of positive incentives and dispute settlement mechanisms can promote international cooperation. In other words, our findings suggest that policymakers do not necessarily need to water down global treaties in order to obtain more participation.     

The Moore thesis: what's left after 1989?

This article reconsiders the work of Barrington Moore and his critics on the historical emergence of democracy in the light of post-communist democratization. What are we to make of a region which violates Moore's dictum – “No bourgeoisie, no democracy”? Using the tools of comparative historical analysis, it makes sense of how democracy emerged in the region by developing a theory which both explains why this was possible and what social actors were essential to this outcome. With attention to patterns of social development in the region, the politics of elite alliance in the final phase of communism, the strength of civil society at extrication, and the role of the international system, it explains differences in regime outcomes across the region.