The War on Terror and the Enforced Disappearances in Pakistan

The movement against enforced disappearances has been exceptionally strong in Pakistan. It has highlighted the extralegal activities of state actors and has prompted the judiciary to question powerful agencies regarding their conduct. With the help of historical analysis, this article argues that the movement has grown out of the reactions generated by War on Terror in Pakistan. The state’s stance to override human rights for combating terrorism is challenged by a movement which is largely anti-War on Terror and which is strengthened by historical and ideological factors as well as by respect for human rights. The movement against enforced disappearances had thus paved the ground for important debates on human rights in Pakistan.     

War Narratives: Framing Our Understanding of the War on Terror

Unlike past American wars, the current war on terror has not been associated with a centrally proffered narrative providing some guidance and orientation for those administering government services under state-of-war conditions. War is as much a cultural endeavor as it is a military undertaking, and the absence of a clear sensemaking narrative was detected in this study of public administrators from three agencies with varying proximity to the conflict. Q-methodology was used to explore the way individuals processed the war narratives put forth by the Bush administration and reported in the media immediately following the September 11 attacks. Though no distinct state-of-war narratives were found among the public administrators in this study, there are clear indications that latent narratives reflecting local political and organizational task environments have emerged.     

The Response of Chinese Intellectuals to the US War on Terror

Studying the Chinese intellectual response to the US War on Terror, and how the battle between the Chinese liberals and nonliberals fitted into the above debate, the article focuses on two cases, 9-11 and the war in Iraq. Each will be divided into the expressive response (i.e., how the intellectuals reacted physically); the ideological response (i.e., how they interpreted the incidents in ideologically); and the strategic response (i.e., how they proposed the right strategies for the party-state to manage global affairs). After studying the cases, we should discover how the Chinese intellectuals used nationalist rhetoric to disguise their real disagreements, i.e., their views on domestic politics as well as to advance their own national importance. Simon Shen is Research Assistant Professor in the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Dr. Shen is author or editor of Redefining Nationalism in Modern China: Sino–American Relations and the Emergence of Chinese Public Opinions in the 21st Century, Chinese Response to Anti-terrorism, Non-state Actors and Foreign Affairs of the Greater China Region (with Joseph Cheng). His articles have appeared in the East Asia, Journal of Comparative Asian Development, Pacific Review, Politics, Asian Perspective, and Journal of East Asian History. Research for this article was partially funded by a grant from the South China Program, Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. The author thanks Dr. Rana Mitter of the University of Oxford and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the earlier drafts of this article.     

The Virtual War on Terror: Counterterrorism Narratives in Video Games

Over the past decade, a great deal of research has been done to analyze the ways in which popular media, especially movies and television shows, construct fictional terrorist threats. However, little attention has been given to the extremely popular genre of counterterrorism video games and how they fit into the War on Terror media narrative. Counterterrorism video games reflect many of the themes of other media about terrorism, such as the demonization of terrorist enemies and the exaggeration of terrorist threats. However, video games strengthen these themes to make the threat of terrorism appear more pervasive and imminent. Consequently, counterterrorism games display an intensified vision of the War on Terror narrative, in which the entire world is a war zone. This leads game narratives to simulate and justify more extreme state responses to terrorism.     

The Myth of the Failed State and the War on Terror: A Challenge to the Conventional Wisdom

Abstract

A central hypothesis in the articulated rationale inspiring the war on terror suggests that failed states play a key role in the international terrorist nexus and require external intervention and guided democratization. This logic is based on two related premises; first that there is a direct link between failed states and international terrorism, second that democratic governance reduces the recourse to terrorism. This article suggests that there is no causal link between failed states and international terrorism and that the asserted ability of democratic governance to catalyze a reduction in terrorism is exaggerated if not wholly inaccurate.     

Authoritarianism,Threat, and Americans’ Support for the War on Terror

In the years following 9/11, surveys have revealed high levels of public support for policies related to the war on terror that, many argue, contravene long‐standing American ideals. Extant research would suggest that such preferences result from the activation of authoritarianism. That is, the terrorist attacks caused those predisposed toward intolerance and aggression to become even more intolerant and aggressive. However, using data from two national surveys, we find that those who score high in authoritarianism do not become more hawkish or less supportive of civil liberties in response to perceived threat from terrorism; they tend to have such preferences even in the absence of threat. Instead, those who are less authoritarian adopt more restrictive and aggressive policy stands when they perceive threat from terrorism. In other words, many average Americans become susceptible to “authoritarian thinking” when they perceive a grave threat to their safety.     

行政权的演化及启示

行政权是一个不断演化的动态概念。通过对东西方行政权演化历程的考察可以发现,中国与西方国家行政权的演化路径正好相反,但其中的许多共通之处对我们今天建立现代政府仍有所启迪:不同的经济体制对政府职能的要求和选择不同;在社会经济发展的不同历史阶段政府职能亦不相同;行政文化影响深远;行政权的运行要把握适度原则。     

The Quality of Terror

I present a model of the interaction between a government, a terrorist organization, and potential terrorist volunteers in which, as a result of an endogenous choice, individuals with low ability or little education are most likely to volunteer to join the terrorist organization. However, the terrorist organization screens the volunteers for quality. Consequently, the model is consistent with two seemingly contradictory empirical findings. Actual terrorist operatives are not poor or lacking in education. And yet lack of economic opportunity and recessionary economies are positively correlated with terrorism. The model also endogenizes the effect of government counterterrorism on mobilization. Government crackdowns have competing effects on mobilization: they decrease the ability of terrorists to carry out effective attacks (making mobilization less attractive), and they foment ideological opposition to the government and impose negative economic externalities (making mobilization more attractive). This provides conditions under which government crackdowns increase or decrease mobilization.     

Scale,Security, and Political Economy: Debating the Biopolitics of the Global War on Terror1

Critical scholarship in Political Science and International Relations (IR) theory is turning increasingly to Michel Foucault's writings on governmentality and biopolitics to explore the complex discursive interdependencies between transnational governance and the War on Terror. Marxist critics have assailed this effort recently, however, for its premature assumption that the practices of governmental power can simply be “scaled” without the interventions of specific state-imperial powers. Yet both sides in this “debate about biopolitics” seem to rest their arguments on readings of Foucault which ignore his views on the importance of developments in the discourses of political economy for the emergence of modern governmental relations. Inspired by Foucault's recently published lectures on importance of the concept of “economic man” for neoliberal governmentality in particular, this article suggests that Foucault attributed to governmentality an explicit impulse toward economic globalization. Moreover, based on comments made in the same lectures concerning the emergence of contemporary “anarcho-liberalism” and its radically economic ontology of security, the article closes with an exploration of the crucial role played by economic knowledge in the integration of Iraq into a regime of global-governmental security.