Terrorism Discourse and the Militarization of U.S. Counterterrorism: The Reagan Years
Keywords:
Terrorism, counterterrorism, Reagan administration, dispositive, United StatesCopyright (c) 2016 Relaciones Internacionales
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
This article analyzes the emergence of the militarization of U.S. counterterrorism policy, showing that militarization as well as preemption as a doctrine of fighting terrorism originate in the mid-1980s – counter to the prevailing assumption that the current militaristic counterterrorist approach is both without precedent and largely the result of the 9/11 attacks. Following a radical shift in terrorism discourse in early 1987, the Reagan administration suddenly reverted to a law enforcement approach towards terrorism, which was retained by the George H.W. Bush and the first Clinton administration. The article further demonstrates that counterterrorism measures were strongly contingent to preceding and legitimizing discursive practices that produced knowledge, popular images and mythical narratives of terrorism, and were exploited as a power strategy by the U.S. government. I therefore suggest that the discursive practices that construct terrorism, and thereby structure the potential field of action for both policy makers and security services, and the non-discursive counterterrorism practices should be regarded as an analytical entity connected by a Foucauldian dispositif.
** N.d T. Se mantiene el término dispositif en francés porque así lo hace el autor.
Downloads
References
ALLEN, Gardner W., Our Navy and the Barbary Corsairs, Scholar’s Bookshelf, Cranbury, NJ, 2005.
ANDREW, Christopher, For the President’s Eyes Only. Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush, HarperCollins, New York, 1995.
ARQUILLA, John, The Reagan Imprint. Ideas in American Foreign Policy from the Collapse of Communism to the War on Terror, I.R. Dee, Chicago, 2006.
BAXI, Upendra, “The ‘War on Terror’ and the ‘War of Terror’. Nomadic Multitudes, Aggressive Incumbents, and the ‘New’ International Law. Prefatory Remarks on Two ‘Wars’” in Osgoode Hall Law Journal, vol. 43, no. 1 & 2, 2005.
BOHN, Michael K., The Achille Lauro Hijacking. Lessons in the Politics and Prejudice of Terrorism, Potomac Books, Washington, 2004.
BURNETT, Jonny and WHYTE, Dave, “Embedded Expertise and the New Terrorism” in Journal for Crime, Conflict and the Media, vol. 1, no. 4, 2005.
CASSESE, Antonio, Terror, Politics, and the Law. The Achillo Lauro Affair, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1989.
CHASDI, Richard J., ”Counterterror Failure. The Fadlallah Assassination Attempt” in WEITZ, Richard (ed.), Project on National Security Reform. Case Studies Working Group Report, vol. 2, 2012.
CLARKE, Richard A., Against All Enemies. Inside America’s War on Terror, Free Press, New York, 2004.
CLARRIDGE, Duane, A Spy for All Seasons. My Life in the CIA, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1997
COLL, Steve, Ghost Wars. The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin, London, 2004.
CRANDALL, Russell, America’s Dirty Wars. Irregular Warfare from 1776 to the War on Terror, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2014.
FOUCAULT, Michel, “The Confession of the Flesh” in GORDON, Colin (ed.) Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings, Pantheon Books, New York, 1980.
FOUCAULT, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, Vintage Books, New York, 1988.
FULLER, Christopher, The Eagle Comes Home to Roost. The Historical Origins of the CIA’s Lethal Drone Program, PhD Dissertation, University of Southhampton, 2014.
FULLER, Christopher J., “The Eagle Comes Home to Roost. The Historical Origins of the CIA’s Lethal Drone Program” in Intelligence and National Security, vol. 30, no. 6, 2015.
GATES, Robert M., From the Shadows. The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996.
HÄNNI, Adrian, Terrorismus als Konstrukt. Schwarze Propaganda und Politische Bedrohungsängste in Ronald Reagans Amerika. PhD Dissertation, University of Zurich, 2015.
HARCLERODE, Peter, Secret Soldiers. Special Forces in the War against Terrorism, Cassell, London, 2001.
HINCKLEY, Ronald H., “American Opinion toward Terrorism. The Reagan Years” in Terrorism, vol. 12, no. 6, 1989.
JÄGER, Siegfried, “Diskurs und Wissen. Theoretische und methodische Aspekte einer Kritischen Diskursund Dispositivanalyse” in KELLER, Reiner et al. (ed.), Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse, vol. 1: Theorien und Methoden, Leske + Budrich, Opladen, 2001.
JACKSON, Richard, Writing the War on Terrorism. Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2005.
JACKSON, Richard, “Genealogy, Ideology, and Counter-Terrorism. Writing Wars on Terrorism from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush Jr” in Studies in Language & Capitalism, vol. 1, no. 1, 2006.
KITZEN, Michael L.S., Tripoli and the United States at War. A History of American Relations with the Barbary States, 1785-1805, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 1993.
LAMBERT, Frank, The Barbary Wars. American Independence in the Atlantic World, Hill and Wang, New York, 2005; LEINER, Frederick C., The End of Barbary Terror. America’s 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006.
LIVINGSTONE, Neil C., The Cult of Counterterrorism. The ‘Weird World’ of Spooks, Counterterrorists, Adventurers, and the Not Quite Professionals, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 1990.
LONDON, Joshua E., Victory in Tripoli. How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Built a Nation, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2005.
LÖWENHEIM, Oded, Predators and Parasites. Persistent Agents of Transnational Harm and Great Power Authority, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2007.
LYNCH, Edward A., The Cold War’s Last Battlefield. Reagan, the Soviets, and Central America, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2011.
LYNCH, Orla and RYDER, Christopher, “Deadliness, Organisational Change and Suicide Attacks. Understanding the Assumptions Inherent in the Use of the Term ‘New Terrorism’” in Critical Studies on Terrorism, vol. 5, no. 2, 2012.
MARTIN, David C. and WALCOTT, John, Best Laid Plans. The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism, Harper & Row, New York, 1988.
MCNEAL, Gregory S., “Targeted Killing and Accountability” en The Georgetown Law Journal, vol. 102, no. 3, 2014.
MICHEL, Matthias, “Das Virale. Politologie des Körpers: Das ‘Eigene’ und das ‘Fremde’” in MICHEL, Matthias (ed.), Virusexpress. Rendez-vous im Überall, Stroemfeld/Roter Stern Verlag, Basel, 1997.
MOUFFE, Chantal (ed.), The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, Verso, London, 1999.
NAFTALI, Timothy, Blind Spot. The Secret History of American Counterterrorism, Basic Books, New York, 2005.
NETANYAHU, Benjamin (ed.), Terrorism. How the West Can Win, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1986.
NORTH, Oliver L. and NOVAK, William, Under Fire. An American Story, HarperCollins, New York, 1991.
PERRY, Mark, Eclipse. The Last Days of the CIA, Morrow, New York, 1992.
PERSICO, Joseph E., Casey. From the OSS to the CIA, Viking, New York, 1990.
RAPHAEL, Sam, Terrorism Studies, the United States and Terrorist Violence in the Global South, PhD Dissertation, King’s College, London, 2010.
SEALE, Patrick, Abu Nidal. A Gun for Hire, Random House, New York, 1992.
SLOGGETT, Dave, Drone Warfare. The Development of Unarmed Aerial Conflict, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, 2015.
STANIK, Joseph T., El Dorado Canyon. Reagan’s Undeclared War with Qaddafi, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2003.
ST JOHN, Ronald Bruce, Libya and the United States. Two Centuries of Strife. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002.
SYMONDS, Craig L., “’A Squadron of Observation’. Thomas Jefferson and America’s First War against Terrorism” in White House Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2004.
THORUP, Mikkel, An Intellectual History of Terror. War, Violence and the State, Routledge, London, 2010.
TOALDO, Mattia, Origins of the US War on Terror. Lebanon, Libya and American Intervention in the Middle East, Routledge, London, 2013.
TSUI, Chin-Kuei, Tracing the Discursive Origins of the War on Terror. President Clinton and the Construction of New Terrorism in the Post-Cold War Era, PhD Dissertation, University of Otago, April 2014.
TURSE, Nick and ENGELHARDT, Tom, Terminator Planet. The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050, Dispatch Books, London, 2013.
WEITZ, Richard (ed.), Project on National Security Reform. Case Studies Working Group Report, vol. 2, 2012.
WHIPPLE, A.B.C., To the Shores of Tripoli. The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines, Morrow, New York, 1991.
WHITTLE, Richard, Predator. The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2014.
WILLIAMS, Brian Glyn, Predators. The CIA’s Drone War on Al-Qaeda, Potomac Books, Washington, DC, 2013.
WILLS, David C., The First War on Terrorism. Counter-Terrorism Policy during the Reagan Administration, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2003.
WINKLER, Carol K., In the Name of Terrorism. Presidents on Political Violence in the Post-World War II Era, State University of New York Press, Albany, 2006.
WOODWARD, Bob, Veil. The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987.
ZIZEK, Slavoj, “Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post-Politics” in MOUFFE, Chantal (ed.), The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, Verso, London, 1999.
ZULAIKA, Joseba and DOUGLASS, William A., Terror and Taboo. The Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism, Routledge, New York, 1996.
ZULAIKA, Joseba, Terrorism. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010.