The United States “War on Terror” Strategy: Classic and Contemporary Concepts of War

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue XII, December 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

The United States “War on Terror” Strategy: Classic and Contemporary Concepts of War

Dr. Arash Sharghi^1*, Irina Dotu^2
1 IPE Club, Turkey
²International Relations Department, Near East University, TRNC

Abstract: This study sought to explore the classical and contemporary conceptualization of war and terrorism and to discuss the derivation of US “War on Terror” strategy within the related literature. Notwithstanding to the high number of terrorism-related studies, the major part of those defines terrorism considering the assumptions on the clash of ethics, ideologies, identities and ideas, and see “war on terror” as the security or defense response against nihilist insurgency movements. On another hand, a literature on terrorism was developed, which is disclaiming terrorism and “war on terror” as the objective geopolitical instruments used for the US hegemony and in accordance with the US demands. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to look at the “War on Terror” strategy through the lenses of classical and contemporary concepts of war and terrorism. The research method is descriptive and qualitative through using the secondary sources. This study will show how the US “war on terror” was legitimized by the terrorism industry and finds its place within classic war paradigm.

Keywords: Terrorism, Terrorism Industry, Warfare, “New Terrorism”, “War on Terror”

I. INTRODUCTION

It is obvious that 9/11 events have generated the new, more intensive wave of terrorism research. Comparing to the pre-9/11 period, now about six books are published in a week with terrorism in the title (Dunne, 2011). Terrorism became a subject that is discussed, conceptualized, written about, published, uploaded and downloaded all the time. It was developed into a so-called “terrorism industry”, a term which was used by John Mueller in his book “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them”. For him, “terrorism industry” is presented by politicians, bureaucrats, media, experts, academics and risk entrepreneurs who profit by cultivating the fear of the threat international terrorism presents (Mueller, 2006).
According to E. Herman and G. O’Sullivan’ international “terrorism industry” is formed by American and British (with Israeli contribution) academicians, governmental institutions, national and international think tanks, research centers, specialists and special security companies which develop comprehensive research concepts, models and theories related to the terrorism (Herman and O’Sullivan, in George (eds.), 1991).

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