Cultures of Counterterrorism

French and Italian Responses to Terrorism after 9/11

Silvia D'Amato

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429878404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates counterterrorism responses from a strategic-culturalist perspective, focusing on France and Italy in the post-9/11 era.

Terrorism occupies a predominant space within contemporary political debate across all European countries. Recent attacks in Europe have raised many questions about the status of counterterrorism structures within European countries, revealing a wide range of practical as well as discursive security implications. This work provides an original contribution to the understanding of counterterrorism by asking how values, norms, and a shared sense of identity matter in policy dynamics. It explores and assesses which cultural elements are relevant for the fight against terrorism and investigates the impact which these elements can have on practical approaches to terrorism. Despite the current attention to terrorist attacks in Europe, the cases of France and Italy in counterterrorism affairs are particularly overlooked by the existing literature; this book analyses, questions, and examines the strategy of these two countries through the instruments offered by the culturalist approaches to strategy.

This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, discourse analysis, European politics, security studies, and international relations in general.

Part I

1Introduction

Recent events in Europe have once again brought the fight against terrorism to the top of the priority list for the majority of governments around the world. In the last few years, Europe has been targeted in an unprecedented manner, with attacks in many major cities, such as Manchester, Stockholm, London, Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. Other than the peculiarity of the modalities of the aggression, usually implemented with rudimentary white weapons or with vehicles such as cars or trucks, a common denominator of these events has been recognised in the transnational mobility across European states of the majority of perpetrators such as Ahmed Hanachi, Anis Amri, or Salah Abdeslam. From this point of view, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL as it is often referred to, has marked the history of European security in many ways. The planning capacity shown by its warfare project on European soil has been unprecedented and warlike, but that is not all. Although questions remain as to whether there was a real and direct involvement of ISIL in many of the perpetrated attacks between 2015 and 2018, there was certainly a connection to the organisation at the practical, financial, or at least the ideological level. These attacks have, indeed, raised many questions with respect to the status of counterterrorism structures within European countries, revealing a wide range of practical, as well as discursive, security implications.

Practically, in their everyday lives, European citizens have been constantly and increasingly reminded of the risk of terrorism by the media and politicians, as well as through the limitations they encounter in a series of common activities, such as travelling or entering private or public buildings. Increasingly often, these limitations affect also private activities, such as searching on the Internet or expressing opinions.

Discursively, speculations on the causes and meanings of such a deliberate use of violence started spreading and have become the focus of many academic, political, and public debate. A series of new concepts and definitions has started to circulate in the public discourse on terrorism, revolving around dominant expressions such as “lone wolves,” “foreign fighters,” or “radicalisation.” In addition, ISIL’s extensive social media strategy (Farwell 2014; Chadwick 2013) spread and systematised a new way of communicating terror through so-called “keyboard terrorism.”

Yet, as it was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, policymakers across Europe designed and implemented a spectrum of diverse responses to guarantee the security of their citizens and to be accountable for preventable wrongs (Proulx 2012). Policy responses across the continent have subsequently been reconceptualised and restructured, ranging from new legislative measures, military or rather diplomatic activities, to different discursive interactions and practices (Art and Richardson 2007; Bianchi and Keller 2008; Crenshaw 2010; De Graaf 2011; Foley 2013; van den Herik and Schrijver 2013). Indeed, a broader pattern became even clearer. Similar European states have been developing different and often contrasting understandings of what constitutes terrorism-related insecurities and how they should be addressed. The fight against terrorism can be, and in practical terms is, fought on different levels using diverse instruments. Investigating the ways states decide to adopt the best option is a useful exercise to approach the difficulties and challenges of what it means to fight terrorism today. It can, also, provide some elements for reflection concerning the factors shaping these responses.

On these premises, the purpose of this study is to explore the contents of cultural factors and to assess their role in counterterrorism dynamics. More specifically, the responses to terrorism of two European countries, France and Italy, will be analysed, questioned, and examined through the instruments offered by the culturalist approaches to strategy. By exploring policy choices as constructions beyond “objectivity” and therefore focusing on whether national cultural specificities have a role to play in processes of counterterrorism formulation, this study reflects, paraphrasing Butler (2004), the aspiration of undoing counterterrorism. In these terms, the case of counterterrorism has been chosen as it provides “raw material” for debating whether cultural elements can shed light on certain aspects of contemporary security choices. The challenges inherent to this task are multiple and will be addressed as they arise in the subject matter of each chapter.

Considering the most recent contributions in both security and strategic studies, it appears that “strategic culture,” as an approach, has remained largely isolated (Haglund 2014). In many instances, the discussion of strategic culture was restricted to audiences of scholars who were already committed to a cultural understanding of security issues, and even then, the concept was seen as a mere tool for political analysis. Despite a slightly renewed interest in the last few years, strategic culture has remained very much a secondary theoretical research agenda that is rarely engaged and addressed in broader debates concerning the novelties and developments within the study of security. Despite the tendency to be obscured by dominant paradigms, it is argued here, strategic culture today constitutes a complementary, but recognised, research agenda.

However, stating that the aim of this study is evaluating cultural dynamics in states’ responses to terrorism makes it imperative to address the primordial challenge any research on terrorism and counterterrorism is confronted with: the definition of terrorism. This is not as simple a task as it may sound, as we shall see in the following section.

The elephant in the room: the problem of defining “terrorism”

Despite its alleged and often accepted newness, terrorism is anything but a new type of warfare (Carr 2007), especially in Europe. Historical reports of terrorism mostly refer to the Zealots, also known as the Sicarii, from the Classical era, the Assassins from the Middle Ages, and the Thugs who existed between medieval and modern times, as three of the groups representing historical examples of perpetrators of terrorist violence (Richardson 2006). Rapoport (1984) was among the first academics to examine ancient religious forms of terrorism, while also more recently (Rapoport 2004) exploring and describing more general forms of terrorism in the modern era. In “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism,” he proposes to focus on four waves of terrorism’s history: the anarchist wave of the 1880s, the anti-colonial wave of the 1920s, the new left wave beginning in the 1960s, and finally the religious wave of terrorism from 1979 onwards.

The anarchist wave at the end of the 19th century found its origins in Russia with the formation of Narodnaya Volya (often translated as “People’s Will”), a terrorist organisation with a discernible anarchist-revolutionary project that progressively developed in other parts of the world. Their operative capacity was based on the doctrines elaborated by revolutionaries such as Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, who theorised a “positive” connotation of terrorism as they interpreted violent attacks as “propaganda of the deed”¹ or, succinctly, as a means to polarise society and stimulate a revolution against the Russian autocracy.

The anti-colonial wave of the 1920s was motivated by a different ethos and was essentially directed against British and French colonial rule around the world in a struggle for self-determination. During this period, guerrilla-type tactics (i.e. “hit and run”) were privileged by fighting groups, who preferred to call themselves “freedom fighters” rather than terrorists. The Vietnam War (1955–1975), according to Rapoport, represented a key moment for terrorist organisations and groups to spread across regions and to strengthen the “third-world” mass opposition. The next phase started in the 1960s and was characterised by the activities of “new left” groups, of which the most notorious are the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Red Army Faction (RAF), and the Italian Red Brigades (BR).

Finally, in 1979, we reach the beginning of what Rapoport identifies as the religious wave. For the author, two main events were crucial in starting and then spreading this new trend: the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet military occupation of Afghanistan. In terms of modus operandi, this wave is characterised by a broader set of tactics, which can include, but are in no way limited to, assassinations, hostage hijackings, and suicide bombings. It would seem that, as Rapoport would argue, this is still the predominant type of modern terrorism. Not surprisingly, over the last two decades, the attention of worldwide politics, media, and public opinion has been almost exclusively absorbed by the religious claims and messages surrounding terrorist violence. Yet, history tells us that terrorism can mean several things and can be used by a diverse range of actors to refer to different actions. Among many, two specific features are, nonetheless, generally highlighted to define terrorism.

First, terrorism includes an element of warfare. This means that, as a stand-alone strategy, terrorism is usually discussed as being the tool of the weak deployed against superior military powers (Crelinsten 2009). Second, because its action is aimed to target beyond the immediate victims, an instrumental element of communication is also often highlighted. Because of the strong emotional reactions it generates, the use of terror against civilians is considered an effective communicative strategy (Pape 2003). In other words, the strategy of terror plays on the subjective dimension of security. This is because unexpected terror can lead people to interiorise the fear of always being in danger and the feeling of being a potential target at all times. In this way, terrorist organisations can strengthen their position by increasing the perceived level of menace to counterbalance their weaker military capacity.

According to the US Department of Justice’s 1976 special report:

Terror is a natural phenomenon; terrorism is the conscious exploitation of it. Terrorism is coercive, designed to manipulate the will of its victims and its larger audience. The great degree of fear is generated by the crime’s very nature, by the manner of its perpetration, or by its senselessness, wantonness, or callous indifference to human life. This terrible fear is the source of the terrorist’s power and communicates his challenge to society.

[1976: 3]

Terrorism, therefore, entails a special relationship between fear and power. Through the terror generated by random and unpredictable acts of violence, terrorist organisations can increase their power. Used for the first time in contemporary history in the 1789 Dictionnare de l’Academie Française as “system, regime de la terreur,” the term terrorism was originally employed by Jacobins to positively describe their own conduct (Laqueur 2012: 6). Today, no positive connotations or features are associated with the concept. To this day, Schmid and Jongman’s study (1998) represents one of the most notable attempts to address the problem of the definition of terrorism, by isolating some key elements of terrorist violence that emerged from the opinions and evaluations of a range of experts. Hoffman (1998: 32), for instance, defines terrorism as “the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change.” More specifically, it can be argued that terrorism “embodies the exerting and implementing of power, and the attempted redressing of power relations; it represents a subspecies of warfare, and as such it can form part of a wider campaign of violent and non-violent attempts at political leverage” (English 2010: 24). Nonetheless, beyond these agreed upon dimensions, definitions of terrorism remain largely unsatisfactory. Many have indeed highlighted that its meanings and significance can be geographically and situationally specific and have consistently changed throughout history, as they are likely to change again in the future.

There are several reasons why the definition of “terrorism” is problematic (Schmid 2004; Weinberg et al. 2004). However, literature usually specifically highlights two critical positions with respect to defining terrorism: first, terrorism is not a useful analytical categorisation and should therefore be abandoned as pejorative meanings are usually attached to it, and there are too many broad de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of acronyms and abbreviations
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Appendix: Sources, data collection, and data analysis through NVivo 11
• Index