Change and continuity across the 9/11 fault line: rethinking twenty-first-century responses to terrorism |
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Authors: | Richard English |
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Affiliation: | Queen’s University Belfast, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Belfast, UK |
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Abstract: | This article asks the following questions. Which terrorism threats, challenges and responses did key players consider to have been decisively changed by 9/11? On close inspection now, nearly two decades after those attacks, how are we to assess such claims? What did 9/11 really change regarding terrorism and counterterrorism? And what remained unaltered? The article’s central argument is this: some western states exaggerated the extent to which terrorist threats and challenges had been changed by 9/11 and, as a consequence, they did significantly alter some of their responses to terrorism; but at the heart of this ironic process was the tragic reality that, had there been a more serious-minded and historically sensitive recognition of how little had necessarily been changed by 9/11 in terms of terrorist threats and challenges, then the twenty-first-century experience of non-state terrorism would have been much less painful than has been the case in practice. |
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Keywords: | Terrorism counterterrorism 9/11 |
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