Politics, media and war: 9/11 and its aftermaths

Introduction

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 not only cost some 3,000 lives; they also deeply scarred the American consciousness and made a deep impact on both US foreign policy and the world at large. This module aims to help you understand the nature of terrorism in the post-9/11 world, including its causes, manifestations and ideologies.

The module assesses the wider consequences of 9/11 on domestic and world politics, along with the military and political response of the US and the UK to terrorist threats and the changing role of the media (via such methods as embedded reporting), and explores how the British state attempts to balance security and civil liberty in the face of the sudden and shocking arrival of home-grown terrorism on its shores.

This is a short course, covering international politics and media sociology.

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 2 study in Politics.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• construct an argument with appropriate use of evidence, concepts and theories from the humanities and social sciences

• communicate arguments, ideas and conclusions effectively, using styles and language appropriate to the subject, and be aware of your purpose and audience

• demonstrate a familiarity with and ability to selectively and appropriately refer to key concepts, theories and debates relevant to understanding the phenomenon of and debates about contemporary terrorism and the international consequences of 9/11.

1 Politics, media and war

Welcome to Politics, media and war: 9/11 and its impacts.

1.1 Introduction

In this section we will introduce you to the course and identify the key subjects, themes and issues you will be exploring. We’ll begin by covering the course’s objectives and structure, before moving on to discuss the events of 11 September 2001, the US responses to those events and finally, the causes of 9/11.

1.1.1 Course objectives and structure

1.1.2 The events of 11 September 2001

President Franklin Roosevelt said that 7 December 1941, the day of the attack on Pearl Harbour, ‘would live in infamy’. The same has to be said of the dark day of 11 September 2001, when terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (New York City) and the Pentagon (Washington DC) robbed some 3,000 people, mostly civilians, of their lives. The victims, while largely American, numbered nationals from some 90 countries. In addition to the destruction of a much loved architectural landmark, the attack on the World Trade Center cost the global economy countless billions in economic losses. The response of the US and its allies, notably the UK, but also Italy, Spain and others, was to launch a ‘war on terror’, which we will discuss in future sections. It also led to US-led interventions in Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban regime, which had provided safe haven to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and in Iraq in March 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

9/11 is, for millions of people throughout the world, a rooted memory. Just as a generation can recall where they were and what they were doing when they heard of the assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963, so we can quickly recall our own personal experience – how we felt and what we thought – as witnesses of 9/11. Few modern events have attracted such a global audience, which is something we will study later in the course. This owes much to the immediacy of the attacks and their relevance to Western audiences. Also important was the fact that the events were visually reported by the news media in real time and, by being subsequently and endlessly replayed and dissected, were reinforced among audiences well beyond the US.

The New York Times, unsurprisingly, has provided detailed reportage of the events of 9/11 and its aftermath. The newspaper’s website provides a timeline of the events of that day, which you may wish to look at briefly should you need to remind yourself of that day. (You may wish to browse the additional resources that have been posted by the New York Times on this webpage, but bear in mind that this is a huge resource. For the purposes of this course, you need only to remind yourself of the timeline and immediate consequences of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC.)

In the aftermath of the attacks, two New York Times journalists wrote a book reporting in detail the terrible personal experiences of some of those caught up in the events of the awful day in lower Manhattan. A review of this book – Dwyer, J and Flynn, K. 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers – provides some indication of the stories the authors unfold in their book. Please read the review now.

In January 2008, Guardian journalist Ed Pilkington wrote a very short newspaper article, where he tries to capture the moment of 9/11 and, however briefly, to identify its global impacts (many of which we will discuss in this course). Please read the article now.

Also writing in the Guardian newspaper, but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the novelist Martin Amis commented in his customary style on the initial impact of the terrorist attacks. The article foreshadows many of the geopolitical debates that would be prompted by that day’s events in New York City and Washington DC. Please read this article now.

1.1.3 US responses to 9/11

The international impacts of 9/11 are obvious, when seen from the vantage point of 2008.

Since that date, as the US academic Phillip Bobbitt observes:

Yet at the same time, as Bobbitt also observes,

Of course, terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Before 9/11, as Tony Judt of New York University observes:

Open and liberal modern societies, when attacked by terrorists, are sometimes tempted to respond in illiberal ways. This is why, as you’ll see later in the course, the UK has to debate carefully the trade off between the security needs of society and the civil liberties of individuals.

Click to view The lesser evil: Political ethics in an age of terror

1.1.4 Peter Bergen on ‘the causes of 9/ 11’

To consider the impacts and consequences of 9/11, we need to first briefly consider some of the ‘causes’. In the article ‘What were the causes of 9/11’, Peter Bergen addresses and comments on some of the most widely held views and opinions of the causes of 9/11 expressed by politicians, commentators and the general public.

The rest of this section sets out the schedule and introduces you to the themes, issues, and subject matter you will encounter during the course of this course.

1.2 Preview: International relations and 9/11

Introduction by Richard Heffernan

Richard Heffernan

Hello, and welcome to Politics, Media and War: 9/11 and its Impacts. I'm Richard Heffernan, Reader in Government at the Open University.

We can all remember, quite easily, where we were and what we were doing when we heard of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Most of us saw footage of the attacks and the destruction of the twin towers on television or online, either in real time on the day itself or on subsequent days. It’s widely recognised that the events of that terrible day, which saw some 3,000 people (mostly civilians) lose their lives, have had a considerable impact, not only in the United States, but throughout the world, and here in the United Kingdom. 9/11 can, in some respects, be seen as a pivotal event in helping shape the contemporary world in which we live.

By exploring the varied geopolitical causes and consequences of 9/11, this course will provide a simple introduction to some of the cutting-edge issues in international politics. It will help you understand recent global events, make sense of the public policies 9/11 prompted, and help you be best placed to evaluate contemporary debates.

Throughout the course, you’ll encounter a number of readings drawn from a wide range of perspectives and reflecting the views of a variety of opinion formers, among them politicians, policy makers, commentators and academics.

Along with my colleague Paul Lewis, I’ve authored the first part of this course – sections two through to five – where you’ll examine the international consequences of 9/11. You’ll do this by considering the varied impacts of the terrorist threat posed by individuals and groups who claim Islamic legitimisation for their actions. You’ll also assess how Western governments, specifically the United States and the United Kingdom, have sought to respond to this threat.

Modern terrorism can be witnessed at work before and after 9/11 in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel and Indonesia. Increasingly, this threat reflects the modern phenomenon of ‘asymmetrical warfare’ as is waged by non state and state-sponsored actors. As you will see, such trans-border terrorist violence constitutes a direct challenge to the authority of all states. But it particularly challenges the right of a ‘great power’ such as the United States, currently the dominant world power, to regulate the international use of violence. Now, perhaps more than ever before, every country is or can be affected by what goes on inside other states, particularly those we define as ‘failing’ or ‘rogue’ states, which may possess weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and can be seen to pose a threat to their neighbours, their region and, quite possibly, the wider world.

In the wake of 9/11, then, the United States and many of its allies, foremost among them the United Kingdom, re-orientated their foreign and defence policies. This was an effort to counter the threats they felt they faced from such states and from non-state actors who could use weapons of mass destruction and other non-conventional means to attack them. This strategy was evidenced, in different forms, in the intervention in Afghanistan from October 2001 and in the war in Iraq from March 2003. In sections two through to five, then, you’ll examine the case the United States makes for its ‘war on terror’; consider the scholarly interpretations of the US’s policy that have been offered by a number of leading international relations academics; and explore the claims made by supporters and opponents of the US-led ‘war on terror’.

1.2.1 Section 2: Terrorism and its meanings

In the next section we will consider terrorism and its meanings and explore legal and ‘official’ definitions of the term. Terrorism, as Tony Judt mentions below, is ‘nothing new’.

Section 2 focuses specifically on one academic study of the historical nature of terrorism and will briefly review the particularities of the modern threat posed by al-Qaeda. The section then considers the ways in which politicians, particularly US President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, have tried to characterise it. It also considers academic analysis of the historical forms terrorism takes and briefly explores the nature of al-Qaeda itself and modern Jihadist terrorism.

1.2.2 Section 3: States and sub-state actors in global politics

International politics reflects the notion of nation-state sovereignty, which embraces two broad principles.

• Territoriality, where the state has a monopoly on the use of organised violence.
• Non-interventionism, where states do not interfere in the internal affairs of other states unless they are themselves threatened by that state.

Both these principles are under challenge in today’s world. Wars were previously fought between competing nation states but in today’s world it is unimaginable that modern, advanced, liberal democratic nation states with market economies could go to war with one another. In the post-Cold War period, the commonest form of war is intra-state civil war. Inter-state disputes invariably pit liberal democratic states against non-democratic states or else involve disputes between less developed, non-democratic states.

Section 3 therefore considers the two contemporary military threats posed to modern liberal democratic states.

• First, the perceived threat posed by non-liberal democratic, so-called ‘rogue states’ such as Iran, North Korea, and Iraq under Saddam Hussain.
• Second, the threat posed by non-state and sub-state actors, particularly from terrorist organisations, guerrilla armies and insurgent movements. These can be supported or sponsored by rogue states.

War-making is no longer the monopoly of nation states because a new type of warfare has emerged, one described as ‘asymmetrical warfare’. This is increasingly fought out between states and non-state or sub-state actors that employ terrorist methods to advance their cause.

1.2.3 Section 4: The war on terror

In section 4, we explore the argument that states may engage in military pre-emption to protect themselves as well as to prevent evil and secure order. This section also considers the changed military and diplomatic politics of the US in the light of 9/11 (evidenced, in different forms, in both Afghanistan and Iraq). It explores how democratic states now face threats not only from conventional nation-states but also from terrorists and ‘rogue states’ that would use weapons of mass destruction and other non-conventional means to attack them.

In this section, you will also explore the role played by US neoconservatives in re-orientating US foreign policy in the light of the perceived threat posed by Islamic terrorism. The section then concludes with a brief assessment of British foreign policy and some discussion of how it has been affected by events since 9/11.

1.2.4 Section 5: The US as global hegemon – the practice of global dominance

Section 5 considers the role played by the US in the international system. By 2001, the US occupied a position of unprecedented dominance in world affairs and was aptly perceived as a unique kind of ‘global hegemon’. (By ‘hegemon’ we mean a world power that is so powerful it can help determine the policies of other powers in its vicinity, and is technically able to defeat any other power or combination of powers with which it might go to war.)

As we shall see, what this means in terms of US capacity to exercise power on a global scale and achieve the objectives it set itself is, however, a matter of considerable practical concern and extensive intellectual debate. The content of this debate and what it meant for the subsequent war on terror provides the subject matter of section 5. We examine:

• what US hegemony has actually meant
• the response of some of its major international partners to the way in which the US has used its unprecedented power
• the subsequent emergence of what many have seen as a new kind of legitimacy crisis surrounding US global leadership
• the implications for the future of the global ‘US empire’ that emerged with the demise of the Soviet Union.

1.3 Preview: The media and 9/11

Introduction by David Herbert

David Herbert

Hello, and welcome to the media section of this course. I'm David Herbert, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University, and I'm responsible for sections 6-8 of the course. I wrote section 8 myself and asked Mark Banks and Ben O'Loughlin to write section 6 and section 7, respectively.

The media play a crucial role in shaping how we understand people, places and politics. In section 6 Mark Banks, Reader in Sociology at the OU, looks at how television frames our view of events such as 9/11. So you’ll begin with the question ‘What is the role of television in creating the ‘spectacle’ of war, and in particular, how did the televising of the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001 affect its social and political impact?’ You’ll then examine how both terrorists and governments are now involved in what critics have termed an 'image war' – a battle to control public opinion by manipulating the daily flow of media events, images and discourses - that is ways of writing and talking. You’ll then consider how the power of the media is double-edged, because it’s not only used by the state and government to try to shape or influence public opinion, but it also provides a platform for various opposition groups to question or challenge the policies and actions of these elite interests. In this context, you’ll examine the role of the ‘embedded reporter’, asking the question ‘How free are television and newspaper journalists working within military units to report the facts as they see them?’ In response to this, section 6 contains an interview with Stewart Purvis, former chief executive and editor in chief of ITN, who was in charge of ITN at the time of the Iraq war in 2003.

In section 7 Ben O’Loughlin, Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway and Bedford College, University of London, asks the question ‘Who influences who in the relationships between political leaders, the media and citizens?’, and with a special focus on the role of journalists. First, you’ll examine Chomsky’s view that the commercial interests which shape news production and their relationships with political elites influence what counts as news to such an extent that any alternative voices have little chance of being heard. However, contrary to this view there are some examples where journalists have broken news stories that challenge political elites. One example examined took place during the Vietnam War, and you’ll consider Hallin’s argument that journalistic criticism can influence politics if there is already a division of opinion amongst political elites. This, however, remains a fairly conservative account of the circumstances under which journalists can challenge the political status quo. So you’ll also consider other examples of the political impact of journalists breaking news stories that challenge the interests of political elites.

In section 8, you’ll turn your attention from journalists to the public as viewers and readers of news, though again concerned with the impact of post 9/11 developments on democracy. New technologies have had a big impact on how we receive news this includes the multiplication of channels; the inclusion, even in mainstream news outputs, of non-Western sources of news such as al-Jazeera; and the development of interactive technologies using the internet. In some ways these changes push us to become more active viewers of news, having to choose between more sources and potentially having more perspectives available to us; yet we can also choose to select only those sources that don’t challenge us. It’s also arguable that commercial pressures in the market place produce increasingly similar global news ‘products’, dominated by a few powerful news organisations. So you’ll look at examples of how audiences are reacting to these changes, beginning with an American study of how the news channels that people watched shaped their understanding and misunderstanding of certain key facts in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. You’ll then look at a study that questions the British government’s motives and policies in its emphasis on public security post 9/11, asking whether what’s been called the securitization of politics may be used to hide or mask other political issues. A third study examines how mostly Bangladeshi youths in Tower Hamlets in the East end of London viewed and interpreted the news post 9/11. This links to an audio transcript which focuses on British Muslims and the media post 9/11. Ammar al-Ghabban, the author of that study, and other experts are interviewed on how different audiences interpret British media coverage of Islam and Muslims, the development of a British Muslim press, and the impact of government security policies on British Muslim youth.

1.3.1 Section 6: Media and the production of spectacle

The media, as we shall see, make a vital contribution to the ways in which we understand people, places and politics. The impacts of television, newspapers, radio, the internet and other media should not be underestimated; for the majority of Western populations they now provide the primary sources of information about what is happening in the world. With this in mind, sections 6–8 provide a three-part examination of the role of the media in framing the ‘war on terror’ and post-9/11 conflict. We will look predominantly at how television is implicated in the presentation of conflict.

• First, given the media is a ‘mediator’ of the ‘spectacle’ of war, we ask how did the televising of the 9/11 attacks affect its social and political impact?
• Second, to what extent is the media used by both terrorists and governments to pursue what critics have termed an 'image war' – the battle to control public opinion through manipulating the daily flow of media events, images and discourses? How far have the US government and TV networks become complicit in the creation of media images? To what extent has reporting been specifically designed to promote the apparent strategic success (as well as moral legitimacy) of post-9/11 US military activity?
• Third, we examine how the power of the media can be simultaneously used by state and government interests to try and shape or influence public opinion. Does it provide a platform for those who wish to question or challenge the policies and actions of these elite interests? Television has been identified as a source of critique as news journalists attempt to fulfill their long-established professional and ethical responsibility to strive for ‘objective’, ‘factual’ and ‘critical’ (rather then simply ‘government-friendly’) reporting. In this regard, the ambivalent role of the ‘embedded reporter’ is examined. How far, we ask, do television and newspaper journalists working alongside and within military units possess the freedom to report the facts as they see them?

Section 6 concludes with the suggestion that the media is comprised of many diverse organisations, which in themselves contain many individual views and perspectives. So while the media can appear to act simply as a ‘tool’ of the powerful, promoting US (and UK) state and military interests, it also offers the prospect of dissent and a contradiction of the pro-military consensus.

1.3.2 Section 7: Interactions between policy makers, media and citizens

This section focuses on the operation of power in relationships between political leaders, the media and citizens, based on the underlying question: who influences who?

One approach is to consider the individual investigative journalist or 'news hound' sniffing out a story, undaunted by vested interests, determined to uncover facts and to break his or her story to the public at any cost. This might be called 'the heroic journalist narrative'. Another is to argue that the ownership and system of media production is such that the news contains stories and interpretations of them that systematically favour the ruling elite, and as a result is biased against non-mainstream views and voices. This has nothing to do with the views or actions of individual journalists: the argument is rather that in a capitalist society, audience share and commercial interests determine what counts as news.

An alternative approach, based on a study of US media coverage of the Vietnam War, focuses on relationships between political elites and journalists, rather than on the media production process as a system. In this perspective, news is not determined by the relationships between elites and production processes, but rather an outcome of the struggles both within and between social groups (including political elites and journalists). It is shaped by the particular cultures and histories of those groups in different contexts.

This section also explores just how much autonomy there is at the level of media culture and examines the degree of freedom that contemporary (and indeed public-corporation based) journalism can enjoy, and further explores the notion of the ‘heroic journalist’.

1.3.3 Section 8: Media audiences and users after 9/11

The section examines the relationships between the media, politics and audiences/users, with a particular emphasis on audiences/users post 9/11. Several changes in the media landscape since the 1980s have had a major impact on media audiences. These include:

• the growth and diversification of the media (linked to new technologies and media deregulation)
• the increase of 'media contra-flows' – especially into the historically dominant West from other parts of the world
• the increasing element of interactivity brought about by new media technologies, particularly the internet.

In a different way, each nudges audiences into more active roles, pushing us to make more to decisions about what we watch, which perspectives we engage with, and who we interact with. To a considerable extent this makes the media a public sphere – ‘a space' or 'spaces' for discussion of issues of shared concern.

This section will contrast ‘liberal’ theories of the media, which essentially see the media in a benign light, providing information and opinion that a democratic public needs to make up its own mind; and ‘critical’ theories, which see the media as shaping public opinion in the interests of those who produce, own or control the media. Television news can lead to high levels of misperception concerning the invasion of Iraq, but ordinary individuals can also be highly sceptical of television news sources, even if they lack access to alternative sources of information. While media input can help shape people’s views, a whole range of social, cultural and individual differences can also shape audiences interpretations. Even biased news sources can produce critical and engaged audience responses, questioning the liberal stress on the importance of access to 'neutral sources'.

1.4 Preview: Political impacts in the UK – matching civil liberties with security

Introduction by Paul Lewis

Paul Lewis

Hello and welcome to sections 9 and 10 of this course.

I’m Paul Lewis, Professor of European Politics at the Open University, and I’ve been responsible for this part of the course, which is concerned with the impacts of 9/11 on British society, and the civil rights issues it has raised. Although the primary events of 9/11 took place in the US, both the origins of the actions and the response to them were international or global in character. You’ll have examined these developments in the first five sections of the course. More recently, you’ve seen how these perceptions have filtered through the media. In sections 9 and 10, we will turn our attention to the consequences of 9/11 and the effects they have had on British society.

The primary development that followed 9/11 in Britain concerned the bomb attacks in London in July 2005 – as well as the discovery of a number of further terrorist plots. This turned attention from global issues to far more local concerns, most of which focused on the position and diverse attitudes of the British Muslim population. What motivated young Muslims, many of them born in Britain, to contemplate terrorist action and perpetrate such violence? What part did religion play in their mind-set? How far were they influenced by high-profile Muslim clerics with close ties to extremist international groups? How has the British Muslim population as a whole viewed these developments?

You’ll examine a range of sources to explore these questions, including the writings of Muslim scholars working in Britain; the views of polemical journalist Melanie Phillips; and the findings of Jason Burke, an investigative journalist and leading expert on al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism. They trace the emergence of what is now seen as the ‘Muslim issue’ in British politics, starting with the Rushdie affair of 1989, through what Phillips calls the ‘Islamisation’ of parts of London and other major cities, to what she sees as the irresponsibility of the British authorities in tolerating the presence and activities of foreign extremists. You’ll also consider the problems of social exclusion and sense of disconnection from mainstream British society felt by many Muslims, and the rather slender evidence that exists about why a very, very small minority do become motivated to commit acts of terrorism.

In section 10, you’ll look at other ways in which the events of 9/11 and the spread of global terrorism have impacted on British politics. The British government, like those in other parts of the world, has responded to the rise of the terrorist threat by passing new laws to increase security, enhance police powers and protect citizens from new dangers. Such measures have, of course, been open to conflicting interpretations. Police protection for some people necessarily means restricting the activities and freedoms of others and enhanced security goes hand in hand with limitations on freedom. Some would go so far as to argue that the British state is effectively doing the terrorists’ work for them by undermining the ‘British way of life’ and eroding its core values.

Again, we use a range of sources to explore these issues. Key features of the British response to the terrorist threat are outlined by Sir Richard Mottram, the former permanent secretary to the Cabinet under Tony Blair for security, intelligence and resilience. Meanwhile, Open University professor Michael Saward identifies key features of post-9/11 British legislation. Finally, the prominent writer and journalist Henry Porter argues why Britain needs a new Bill of Rights, which is a subject also discussed by Richard Mottram and Henry Porter.

1.4.1 Section 9: The impacts of 9/11 on British society

Sections 9 and 10 explore the complex and diverse issues surrounding the impacts of 9/11 on British society as the ‘war on terror’ has progressed and further bombs were detonated in Bali, Morocco and in Spain – and then in London on 7/7. This action in particular directed attention to the position of British Muslims; how they were affected by the impacts of 9/11 and the actions taken in response to it; and how in turn they have responded in various ways to these developments. The position of British Muslims and their attitudes is an issue of major significance to the UK as a whole. Their attitudes are incredibly complex, and there is little firm evidence. In Section 9, we present some of the major approaches that have been taken to understanding these issues.

In this area there are some big questions that have yet to receive any clear answers.

• Were the perpetrators of the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks motivated primarily by religious or political convictions?
• Are acts of terrorism best understood in terms of individual psychology or by motives derived from the socio-cultural context?
• What are the perceptions and judgements of the overwhelming majority of the British Muslim population, who have no connection with the criminals nor any association with their activities?

There are no accepted answers to any of these questions and Section 9 presents a range of articles and extracts from books that explore them from some informed sources, and provides some of the best evidence that is currently available to help answer them.

1.4.2 Section 10: Security impacts on civil and human rights in Britain

Historian Timothy Garton-Ash states:

The war on terror and developments since 9/11– reinforced by 7/7 – have had distinct (if mixed and controversial) consequences for British society and its constituent groups. Similarly, the legislation and legal changes these developments gave rise to had diverse consequences for civil and human rights in Britain. Some people have seen the legislative and legal response as a natural and acceptable consequence of a manifest terrorist threat. Others have interpreted them as unacceptable infringements on established civil and human rights and a distinct threat to the democratic principles and practices that have become deeply embedded in British society.

According to the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, ‘police data ... suggests there are currently [in the UK] at least 2000 known terrorist suspects, 200 organised networks and 30 terrorist plots’ (Brown, 2008). The government is obliged to protect the public and ‘match a change in our laws with stronger safeguards, so we protect both the civil liberties of the individual and the security needs of all individuals’ (ibid).

Section 10 spells out the nature of the British government’s response to the terrorist attacks, the legal changes and legislation that has been enacted, and the implications of these developments for human rights in Britain. Are our freedoms being eroded by the war on terror? Critics of the government’s approach suggest that new legislation and the introduction of new surveillance techniques are indeed endangering the privacy of British citizens.

2 Terrorism and its meanings

In this section, you will consider a number of definitions and discussions of terrorism, particularly relating to the international situation, post-9/11.

The notion of terrorism can be problematic. It is often challenged and contested, something expressed in the aphorism (which for some is now largely a cliché) ‘One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.’ For instance, while it is widely acknowledged in the UK that the Provisional IRA was a terrorist movement, few would accept the then South African government’s characterisation of the African National Congress in similar terms. There is no commonly accepted ‘official’ definition of terrorism, something that reflects the fact that neither modern states nor groups designated as ‘terrorist’ apply the term to themselves.

Some people adhere to a broad definition of terrorism in which nation states, not just non-state actors, can themselves be guilty of terrorism. Left-wing critics often claim that Western policy makers use the term ‘terrorist’ simply to demonstrate – and to generate – hostility toward groups of which they disapprove. Others strongly reject this view, describing terrorism as ‘the use of violence against civilians by non-state actors to attain political goals’ (Kydd and Walter, 2006, p1).

The term can also serve ‘an ideological function, for it implies crude extremism and indifference to human life’ (Freedman, 2007, p327). It is thus used not only to classify and explain particular groups and individuals, but also to condemn and marginalise them.

2.1 Some ‘official’ definitions of terrorism

The Encyclopedia Brittanica

The Encyclopedia Brittanica defines terrorism as ‘the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective. Terrorism has been practised by political organisations with both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies, intelligence services, and police.’ (Jenkins)

The European Union

In 2000, the European Union (EU) adopted the following definition of terrorism as encompassing acts that ‘… given their nature or context, may seriously damage a country or an international organisation where committed with the aim of: seriously intimidating a population; or unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act; or seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation’. (European Union, 2002)

The United Nations’ unadopted definition

In 2005, the United Nations (UN) proposed to define terrorism as something that involved ‘any act intended to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international body to act’ and constituted ‘one of the most serious threats to international peace and security’. However, in 2006 the 192 nation states comprising the UN failed to agree a formal definition. This was largely because of disagreements among members on whether a definition should encompass armed conflicts that take place in ‘situations of foreign occupation’. (United Nations, 2005)

The British government’s legal definition

Below is the British government’s legal definition of terrorism, applied by British courts, which is set out in Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (as amended by the Terrorism Act 2006, indicated by square bracket).

1. In this Act "terrorism" means the use or threat of action where–
   • (a) the action falls within subsection (2),
   • (b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government [or an international governmental organisation] or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
   • (c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
2. Action falls within this subsection if it –
   • (a) involves serious violence against a person,
   • (b) involves serious damage to property,
   • (c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
   • (d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
   • (e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
3. The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.

2.2 Bush and Blair on the post-9/11 terrorist threat

Terrorism has been described as being ‘a weapon of the weak, turned to out of desperation, because better and more direct means of achieving objectives, which are invariably set high, are not available’ (Freedman, 2007, p327). Others, especially Western policy makers, see terrorism only as being a violent expression of anger and hatred.

US President George Bush

On 20 September 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush declared the attack to be ‘an act of war’ in an address to Congress. For him this meant the US and its allies had to embark on a ‘war on terror’ in response to the attacks – and the likelihood of further attacks – waged on the US. Bush’s impassioned speech, delivered very soon after the event, reflected the global revulsion sparked by the attack.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair

In a scholarly article written for Foreign Affairs in 2007, Blair, who was soon to step down as prime minister, outlined his attitude toward terrorism in the wake of events that had followed 9/11. While Blair and Bush shared many beliefs about how to deal with the problem, Blair’s article reads differently in tone to Bush’s speech. Bush’s speech to the nation will use very different language and structures then Blair’s article for a scholarly journal. As a result, Blair’s article, being retrospective, appears more analytical. It places the modern terror threat in a wider global context.

Both Bush and Blair’s references to terrorism (delivered by politicians charged with the leadership of their countries) should be seen as political statements that not only set out their attitudes toward terrorism, but also their response to it. Both, particularly Bush, spoke for the overwhelming majority of their citizens in the aftermath of 9/11. Leading politicians, expected to express their opinion on all forms of happenings, have to both explain the opinions they hold and justify the action such opinions prompt. They have to deal with the threat that terrorism poses. Commentators and academics, in contrast to politicians, often lay claim to being able to independently analyse phenomena like terrorism. Of course, while they may provide ‘fact’ and ‘analysis’, their commentary will also reflect their opinions, beliefs and political agenda.

2.3 What is al-Qaeda?

Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, set out his organisation’s principal objectives in a 2002 broadcast.

Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorism (and, more specifically, the terrorist threats posed by individuals and groups who associate themselves with – or are inspired by – the group) claims Islamic legitimisation for its actions. For President Bush, however:

Of course the descriptions we apply to terrorist groups can be culturally loaded and are often contested. Some suggest that we should describe terrorists as ‘militants’, not necessarily as ‘extremists’ or ‘fundamentalists’; others strongly disagree. Some suggest that the links terrorist groups claim with political Islam should be highlighted so as to better understand the problem; others argue that the links should be disregarded and that terrorist activity be characterised as ‘anti-Islamic’ activity. The choice of terminology is, of course, a choice for each citizen to make.

Jason Burke on al-Qaeda and terrorism

The Observer’s Jason Burke is a leading expert on al-Qaeda. In the interview below, he provides some useful background on the nature of the terror threat posed by al-Qaeda, which he describes as a ‘label’ or a ‘franchise’, not in itself an organisation.

2.4 Who are the ‘jihadist terrorists’?

Who, then, are the terrorists? In a short review of Marc Sageman’s book, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), The Spectator reviewer Alan Judd summarises the author’s analyses of the key features of the modern Islamist terrorist found as far afield as the UK, Spain, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Egypt and Indonesia.

2.5 Summary

Contemporary terrorism is a transnational problem. Advanced, modern nation states now no longer engage in open combat with one another. As we shall see in following sections, terrorism – whether it is the product of freestanding groups or of groups allied with particular states – reflects the rise of ‘asymmetrical warfare’. Terrorist acts therefore from part of a strategy reflecting war between two or more actors who have vastly different military capabilities.

The US has a state-of-the-art military capability: the 2007 US defence budget was some US $439,300,000 (which was larger than the 2005 military budgets of 168 nations combined). Yet on 11 September 2001, the US was attacked by 19 people armed with boxcutters who were able to hijack four aircraft. These attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon cost something in the region of US $450,000 to execute. Next section, you’ll be considering the impacts that modern terrorism has had on the foreign policy and defence strategies of major nation states, particularly the US, and further explore the role that non-state actors can have in contemporary international politics.

3 State responses to threats posed by non-state agents

The notion of state sovereignty, which emerged from the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, established the territorial integrity of the nation state; ensured that state interests would automatically transcend those of individual citizens; and made states the undisputed central actors in both local and global politics. Nation-state sovereignty was subsequently established by two broad principles:

• territoriality, in which the state acquired a monopoly on the use of organised violence
• non-interventionism, where one state would not interfere in the internal affairs of another state unless it was itself threatened by that state.

Of these two principles, the first eventually ensured that wars took place between competing nation states. Such wars - fought by states deploying their military might in pursuit of their own perceived political, economic, and sometimes ideological interests - are best illustrated by the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-15 and the World Wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45.

In today’s world, however, it is unimaginable that modern, advanced liberal democratic nation states with market economies would go to war with one another again. In the post-Cold War period, the commonest form of war is intra-state civil war. Inter-state disputes invariably pit liberal democratic states against non-democratic states or else involve disputes between less developed, non-democratic states.

Modern liberal democratic states, while no longer faced by military threat from states similar to themselves, face two contemporary military threats:

• the perceived threat posed by non-liberal democratic, so-called ‘rogue states’ such as Iraq under Saddam Hussain, Iran and North Korea
• the threat posed by non-state and sub-state actors, particularly from terrorist organisations, guerrilla armies and insurgent movements. These can be supported or sponsored by rogue states.

3.1 Lowenheim: Predators and Parasites

Oded Lowenheim (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), is interested in why states, especially the most powerful states – the ‘Great Powers’ referred to in the extracts – react differently to different kinds of non-state agents that harm them and their societies. In his book Predators and Parasites: Persistent Agents of Transnational Harm and Great Power Authority, Lowenheim (2007) makes two key claims:

• that control over a territory cannot be readily maintained without legitimate authority (and vice versa)
• that a state cannot long maintain its sovereignty unless both internal and external actors recognise its legitimate authority to exercise political control over its territory.

Click to view Predators and parasites

3.2 Haass: The Opportunity

Richard Haass is currently President of the United States Council of Foreign Relations and was previously Director of Planning at the United States State Department.

3.3 War, terrorism and ‘asymmetrical warfare’

Before the twentieth century, while civilian were often casualties of war, warfare drew a distinction between combatants from non-combatants. Combatants rather than non-combatants were the principal targets of their enemies (although non-combatants were frequently endangered and civilian casualties common). Modern asymmetric warfare abandons this non-combatant immunity. Guerrillas (being invariably non-state or sub-state combatants, not the organised force of an established state) target cultural, political, or population targets rather than military ones. As a result, civilians have been increasingly placed in the front line of modern warfare. Such guerrillas fight on their own terms, not those of their enemy, and use unorthodox means such as terrorism to attack the stronger opponent. In such asymmetrical warfare, the terrorist or insurgent often has the advantages of selectivity and surprise.

As Mary Kaldor (London School of Economics), observes, this means that:

Of course, we must remember that civilians, especially in the twentieth century, probably the most violent century known to man, have long found themselves in the front line of war. The Second World War may have been fought out between opposing armies, but civilian casualties were appallingly high: Nazi barbarity, not least on the Eastern front, led to the targeting of non combatants and the horrors of the holocaust suffered by European Jews and others. Still, bearing in mind the longstanding reality of civilian casualties, past wars – even when one side was more powerful than the other – tended to be state-versus-state conflicts. They were fought between the armies, navies and air forces of two or more states. These had a symmetrical disposition. Since 1945, with less state-versus-state wars, states face wars with non-state and sub-state actors. In these wars, states engage enemies much less powerful than themselves located within the civilian population. Such war has an asymmetrical disposition. These combatants seldom wear uniform, are difficult to distinguish from the general population, and are more willing to fight and die for their causes. The weaker side in an asymmetrical war does not fight pitched battles or defend territory, and cannot prevent the opposing force from going where (or doing what) they want. Rather, while hiding among civilians, they attack their enemy whenever – and however – they can.

Today, asymmetrical warfare, because it does not involve battles waged between states, is fought between belligerents of unequal strength. It can be usefully likened to the battle fought between a champion boxer and a viral infection. In a battle between ‘occupiers’ and ‘insurgents’ (perhaps the most common form of asymmetrical warfare), insurgents may only win by not losing. As can be glimpsed in Iraq since 2003, their objective in waging war is not necessarily to militarily defeat their larger, more powerful enemy, but impose a cost upon them that they will not want – or be able – to bear.

3.4 The clash of civilisations?

In this part, we look at the following subjects:

• whether modern-day wars take place on cultural and religious grounds as opposed to economic or ideological grounds
• attitudes towards religion, culture, society and culture around the world.

3.4.1 The clash of civilisations? (i)

For many commentators and politicians, 9/11 typified the new threats presented to states by non-state and sub-state actors in an age where warfare is asymmetrical and where civilians are placed on the front line of conflict. In 1996, well before 9/11, Samuel Huntington (Harvard University) published The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Here he extended an argument he had first presented in 1993 in Foreign Affairs: that wars, previously fought out between states and involving economic or ideological differences, would now be more likely to take place on cultural and religious grounds.

For Huntington, such civilisational differences were particularly prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims. His argument drew much criticism, particularly from commentators who argued that wars were just as likely to be within civilisations as between them. Critics also observed that the civilisations he identified were not homogenous and should not be considered unitary actors.

Many politicians and commentators saw 9/11 as being a ‘tipping point’ in international politics, if not necessarily a herald of Huntington’s clash of civilisations. At the 2001 Labour Party Conference, held in the shadow of 9/11, Tony Blair made his views plain. He believed that the terrorism attacks in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania had – and would continue to have – a profound impact on contemporary geopolitics.

Blair’s widely shared comments reflected the view that 9/11 heralded the beginning of a different and dangerous world order: terrorist groups backed by rogue states would now present an ongoing threat to the peace of the world and the security of the West. This view was prominent among policy makers who led the ongoing war on terror waged in response to 9/11, particularly in the US and British-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

3.4.2 The clash of civilizations? (ii)

However, not everyone agrees that 9/11 ‘changed everything’. International-relations theorists Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (University of Warwick) and Nicholas Rengger (St Andrews University) claim that:

3.4.3 The clash of civilisations? (iii)

The World Values Survey is a questionnaire conducted at regular intervals since 1980 across an increasing range of societies across the world. It provides a unique insight into attitudes towards religion, culture, society and politics. All the surveys are conducted with large samples of respondents across nationally representative samples of the population, making them a reasonably reliable source of data.

4 Military pre-emption in foreign policy

In response to 9/11, and the perceived threats of ‘rogue states’, a case for states to engage in military pre-emption has been made. The idea is that states may, in certain circumstances, pursue a ‘just war’ to protect themselves as well as prevent evil, restore peace, ensure justice and secure order.

Click to view Defending the West

The notion of a defensive ‘just war’ – one waged ‘to protect the innocent from certain harm’ through ‘proportionate force’ – reflects a long historical tradition. In Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power, Jean Bethke Elshtan argues that 9/11 again demonstrated that it is no longer ‘wise or prudent or even decent to wait for threats to develop fully, courting the potential loss of massive numbers of civilians’ (Elshtan, 2003, p190). In an open letter issued by the Institute for American Values, he argues (alongside many other US academics and intellectuals) that a just war should:

In this argument we can see clear reflections of the state sovereignty thesis that you encountered last section.

Click to view The opportunity (2)

The idea of a preventative war, one waged in the face of a ‘clear and present danger’, has been endorsed by the US in recent years, particularly as outlined by the statement of policy issued by the US State Department in 2002 and again in 2006.

4.1 The US national security strategy in 2002 and 2006

The publication of the US National Security Strategy in 2002 – updated in 2006 – shifted US foreign policy. It has moved away from decades of deterrence and containment (using power to forestall attacks by promising to respond with deadly force when attacked) towards a more aggressive stance of being prepared to attack an enemy before it attacks the US or its allies:

The key objective of this strategy, described as the Bush Doctrine, is that the willingness to wage war to prevent a threat need not entail pre-emptive war (war waged against an opponent who is just about to attack), but rather a preventative war (a war fought, according to the US National Security Strategy, in order to ‘act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed’ (ibid)). In addition, it asserts that formal structures such as the United Nations or North Atlantic Treaty organisation (NATO) may at times be less effective than ‘coalitions of the willing’, or groups responding to particular situations, such as in the case of the intervention in Iraq in 2003.

The US, because it, again in the words of the US National Security Strategy, ‘possesses unprecedented – and unequalled – strength and influence in the world’ (ibid), enjoys safety from conventional, peer competitors. The US National Security Strategy of 2002, however, focuses on the belief that the greatest threat to the US no longer comes from conquering states, but from failed ones and an ‘embittered few’ who possess ‘catastrophic technologies’. Hence, in 2006, the US singled out seven nations as prime examples of such ‘despotic systems’: North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe. According to one US military analyst, Lt Col Arnel Enriquez, the US now faces threats not from conventional nation-states, but from terrorists and such ‘rogue states’ who would use weapons of mass destruction and other non-conventional means to attack – not necessarily to conquer but to instil fear. (Enriquez, 2002)

To prevent dangers, the National Security Strategy sets out new ‘use of force principles’:

In this regard, the US National Security Strategy of 2002 – heavily influenced by the experience of 9/11 – marked a significant departure from US military strategy. It had previously argued that the US should use its military might sparingly, only when absolutely necessary, and should bring overwhelming and decisive force against the enemy, minimizing US casualties. This would end conflict quickly by forcing the weaker force to capitulate. For many commentators, then, the National Security Strategy of President Bush could be the most important reformulation of US foreign policy in over half a century.

4.2 Neoconservatism and the Bush Doctrine

(The course team would like to thank Dr. Simon Bromley for his invaluable contribution to pages 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 of this section. You can read an interview with Simon in section 4.4.)

For both the US’s critics and supporters, foreign policy under Bush has been marked by what is called a neoconservative agenda. The neoconservative moment in US foreign policy marked a departure from the interregnum presided over by Presidents George Bush Snr and Bill Clinton. The interregnum began with the dissolution of communism in Eastern Europe and the break-up of the Soviet Union (1989–91). It was marked by an apparent triumph of liberal democracy and market capitalism as the only viable models of politics and economics. 9/11 posed a stark challenge to that optimistic reading of historical and geopolitical development. In the context of the shock of 9/11 and the fears it generated, a distinctive neoconservative interpretation of international politics was able to gain a wide audience in US society.

The political analysts Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that the neoconservative vision and its resonance with US political culture after 9/11 was ‘one of fear’ (Halper and Clarke, 2004, p178). It was based on the view that, notwithstanding the US victory in the Cold War, liberal values and institutions were not widely shared outside the US and had to be (if necessary forcibly) imposed if the US was to have a benign, long-term geo-strategic environment. This was a ‘fear’ grounded in a premonition of potential future challenges: a recognition of the fact that the dissolution of the Cold War on US terms was not at all the same thing as the rest of the world adopting liberal–democratic and US values.

The basic premise of the neoconservative reading of international politics was that with the collapse of the Soviet Union (and hence the end of the Cold War) there was a single and unifying source of order in the international system – the combination of universal values and unrivalled military power embodied in the US. A prominent European analyst of international relations and US power, Christian Reus-Smit, says that neoconservatives believed that ‘America’s material preponderance and universal values [gave] Washington the means and the right to reshape world order’ (Reus-Smit, 2004, p3).

The degree to which neoconservatism represented a break with previous frameworks of thought about the US’s role in the world should not, however, be overstated. Nonetheless, the emerging geostrategic predicament that animated both the neoconservatives and (at least after 9/11) nearly all conservative US nationalists, centred around three principal concerns.

1. The ability of the most powerful states in the world to maintain more or less exclusive control over the means of mass destruction.

   Proliferation of nuclear weapons threatened to undermine the nuclear oligopoly of the major powers, thereby creating a more competitive environment in which less stable powers eager to challenge the status quo gained access to nuclear (and other) weapons and ballistic missile systems. In addition, a rising level of general technological competence and capacity meant that technologies of mass destruction were becoming more widely accessible, including to non-state actors. This latter concern was not merely an artefact of 9/11: President Clinton had identified the prospect of non-state actors gaining access to weapons of mass destruction as early as 1995. These worries were the origins of the notion of preventative action, since both kinds of proliferation were seen as a threat not just to the US, but to the international system as a whole. As Robert Cooper, diplomat and sometime adviser to Prime Minister Blair, explained: ‘A system in which preventative action is required will be stable only under the condition that it is dominated by a single power or a concert of powers. The doctrine of prevention therefore needs to be complemented by a doctrine of enduring strategic superiority’ (Cooper, 2004, p63).

2. The recognition that the rise of new regional powers, in addition to the emergence of a global terrorist threat, was likely to be a source of instability and potential conflict in the international system.

   While the neoconservatives were confident of the ability of the US to maintain its role as the sole global military power, the fall of the USSR and the rise of China (and, to a lesser extent, India) were seen as profoundly unsettling to the balance of power. The future alignments of such powers as Turkey, Ukraine, Iran and the like were also of concern, states that were themselves not of the first rank but whose strategic choices and alignments were crucial for the system as a whole. The fear was that there were ‘many countries that could become too powerful or too aggressive for regional balance’ (Cooper, 2004, p64).

3. The concern that the unitary leadership of the US that was forged during the Cold War was unravelling.

   The most specific concern, articulated most clearly by Robert Kagan (2003), was that Europe – that is the European Union – was set on a perilous course of internal indulgence and external neglect. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) had always had an important element of internal Western confidence building about it, but during the Cold War it was also a functioning strategic and military alliance. However, NATO’s war against Serbia over Kosovo convinced US policy makers that NATO was now only a means of extending the zone of peace in Europe, a loose form of collective security. Even staunch defenders of the US commitment to Europe through NATO lamented the fact that it was no longer a functioning military alliance. More reassuringly from the neoconservative point of view, there was considerable confidence that – for the foreseeable future – Japan would stick to its alliance with the United States (given its potentially threatening competition with China). However, neoconservatives worried that Europe was becoming less pro-US than it had once been.

4.3 US power questioned and asserted

The yawning gap between military and economic considerations was seen by some as the true Achilles’ heel of US power. Although the US would not face a global competitor any time soon, the position of the US itself – in the Asia-Pacific, north Atlantic and western hemisphere – depended on the legitimacy created by institutionalising shared interests such that none of these regions sought to act independently, let alone counter to US priorities. In this respect, the Middle East was the outlier: a region where the US was unavoidably and deeply entangled because of oil and its longstanding support for Israel, but where it had no institutionalised presence and precious few common interests.

Consistent with the main thrust of US liberal–democratic values (and the strand of its political culture that emphasises its unique role in the world as the exemplar and bearer of progress), the neoconservatives discounted the idea that these challenges could be met merely by a balance of power and a reaffirmation of state sovereignty. Taming the threats of proliferation from ‘rogues’ and ‘evil doers’; bending rising regional powers towards the status quo; and forging a new basis for US international leadership all required addressing the internal or domestic constitution of states and societies as well as the foreign policies of friends and enemies alike. The National Security Strategy of President Bush (extracts of which you read earlier) represented some important continuities with pre-9/11 ideas. However, it also established two distinctive departures from established procedure.

1. The notion that where the US led then others would follow.
2. If there was a neoconservative doctrine – beyond asserting the legitimacy of unilateral preventative war and a determination to maintain military strength ‘beyond challenge’ – then broadly speaking, it was that a unilateral and coercive exercise of US power, especially military power, could reshape the world to the US’s advantage, and specifically reshape the Middle East to the US’s advantage.

The underlying premise was that the US would therefore be able to secure – especially in light of the challenge of 9/11 – an unchallenged and unchallengeable geopolitical leadership. The root idea was that the US could overcome the rivalries inherent in the balance of power not only by virtue of its military supremacy, but also by the example and universal appeal of its ideology and leadership.

4.4 Neoconservatism questioned: foreign policy beyond Bush

Some critics of neoconservatism argued that there were inherent limitations to the ability to use military power to bring about political change in a post-colonial world. The power to rule foreigners, either directly by occupation or indirectly by imposing compliant regimes, is undermined by the likelihood of widespread national resistance. Michael Mann wrote of an ‘incoherent empire’ that was incapable of producing durable political rule or even widespread economic order. Military supremacy, said Mann, is ‘not nuclear weapons or weight of numbers but global deployment and fire power’, but this cannot guarantee desired political outcomes, only a ‘massive intimidatory presence … vis-à-vis any which dares to stand up to it’ (Mann 2003: 24). Similarly, Emmanuel Todd charted the sharp economic and demographic constraints on US global power, speaking of a ‘“theatrical micromilitarism” that was becoming less and less convincing’ (Todd, 2003).

Moreover, while the ‘return to force’ was accompanied by an enhanced presidential initiative and autonomy in the use of force, the continuing price to be paid for the Iraq war was the subordination of political ends to military means and tactics. Bush could only order the strategic use of force by surrendering control over military tactics to the generals. If the military tactics then turned out to be inappropriate for the strategic objective – as was the case in Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s armed forces could be defeated but a new pro-Western state could not then be quickly imposed – Bush was left with little room for manoeuvre. Not surprisingly, therefore, critics also questioned whether the relations between means and ends were sustainable given the inability of the US military to conduct long-term counter-insurgency operations.

Of course neoconservatism suffered when the Bush Administration struggled to negate these constraints on the unilateral exercise of military power aimed at imposing political change on other societies. Emmanuel Todd writes:

Richard Hofstadter, US commentator and social critic, once said that ‘the most prominent and pervasive failing [of American political culture] is a certain proneness to fits of moral crusading that would be fatal if they were not sooner or later tempered with a measure of apathy and common sense’ (quoted in Lieven, 2004, p6). And indeed domestic opposition to the war in Iraq, not least among Bush’s political opponents, and geostrategic realities soon tempered the application of the Bush Doctrine, though the consequences of – and for – Iraq and the rest of the Middle East will be long-standing.

Walter Russell Mead states that the US political system has never yet been able to ‘develop a coherent, politically sustainable strategy for American world leadership in peacetime’ (Mead, 2002, p321, emphasis added). The US impulse to spread its values and mores abroad, while never far from the surface in US politics, has been discredited and chastened by the Bush Administration’s blunders in the Middle East and the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq.

Critics of the Bush Doctrine, among them Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University, have long argued that the international costs of cooperation offers the best way to deal with terrorism (Nye, 2008). Nye argues that that the unilateral exercise of coercive military power prevents such cooperation, not least by undermining US ‘soft’ power. By ‘soft’ power, Nye means the ways in which broader elements of US society and culture act as a target of positive example, encouraging other states to identify with – and perhaps even imitate – the US. This could, it is suggested, help make the US a pole of attraction for other forces and states in the international system. Such ‘soft’ power (cultural strength, economic advantage, modernist values), should it be used as a complement to the US’ ‘hard’ power (population size, economic clout, military might), could therefore advantage the US by making it a positive pole of attraction for other forces and states in the international system.

On the 20 January 2009, George Bush was succeeded as president by the Democrat Barack Obama. Obama made clear in his inaugural address that the US was still ‘at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred’ and declared to ‘those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you’ (Obama 2009).

For Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, the US has to now secure its longstanding objectives, including defeating terror, by making best use of what she has called ‘smart power’. By this Clinton means ‘the full range of tools at [its] disposal – diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural – picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy’ (Clinton 2009). Such ‘smart’ power – a combination of the aforementioned ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power – will, it is envisaged, enable the US to make more effective use of both international diplomacy and military might; and renew and strengthen its international alliances. It means the US might choose, whenever possible, to pursue US leadership by working multilaterally with and through others as well as, whenever necessary, being always prepared to take unilateral military action. When facing its enemies, the US may now be willing to ‘extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist’ (Obama 2009), but will remain as determined as ever to protect and advance its security, interests, and values and those of its allies. As a result, the US may now recognise – in Secretary of State Clinton’s formulation – that it ‘cannot solve the most pressing problems on [its] own, and the world cannot solve them without America’ (Clinton 2009).

However, the US under Obama may well seek only to refine, not necessarily abandon its neo-conservative certainty. At the time of writing (March 09), it remains too early to say exactly how Obama’s foreign policy will differ from that of Bush. It is likely, however, given US history and Obama’s preferences, that there will be considerable policy continuity amid some change; the US-led ‘war on terror’ (even if that particular phase is not deployed) will certainly continue.

4.5 Criticisms of pre-emption or a preventative war

Robert Kaplan writes that Sam Huntington, the author of The Clash of Civilizations, whose work we briefly considered last section, considers the world

Yet, for other commentators, anti-American sentiment is fuelled just as much by the US’s actions as by its existence. Peter Bergen is one of the few Western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden. For him, bin Laden’s hostility toward the US owes much to his opposition to:

Writing in May 2003, Noam Chomsky – a longstanding left-wing critic of US foreign policy – argued that the US is not interested in pursuing

4.6 Criticism of the war on terror

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 virtually the whole world and all state leaders sympathised with the US and stood behind the Bush administration in its response to the terrorist threat and its declaration of a ‘war on terror’. This mood, however, began to dissipate in early 2002. For Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford, this was because:

Critics pointed to distinct signs of this approach in the 2000 neoconservative statement on Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century (Donnelly 2000). It was not difficult to link parts of this statement with the view that attack was the best form of defence and – in its arguments for the need to renew and expand the US’s military capacity – the idea that power not extended or used would soon weaken and atrophy. Thus, although the US’s unprecedented contemporary power was recognised and taken as the premise of the argument, the grand strategy of the US should be ‘to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible’ (Donnelly, 2000 p21, emphasis added). Yet, as controversy about the invasion of Iraq and its consequences strengthened, scepticism about the nature and implications of ‘the war on terror’ grew stronger in many quarters.

One more complicating issue is the precise meaning of the term ‘war on terror’ itself – and, indeed, whether such a concept really makes much sense. You have already encountered discussion of what terror and terrorist activity mean in a contemporary context, but there are similar – and perhaps yet more complex – issues surrounding the idea of a war on terror. The Observer correspondent Jason Burke, a leading analyst of these issues, tackles these problems in his work Al Qaeda and concludes that the term ‘war on terrorism’ is ‘effectively nonsensical’ (Burke, 2007, p22). Others pointed out that the term itself might be strictly nonsensical, but that it did perform certain political functions for the administration. One highly critical version of this view was expressed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter:

4.7 A war for oil?

In this part, we look at the following subjects:

• the suspicions that the “war on terror” was actually a “war for oil”
• the rebuttals for those suspicions.

4.7.1 A war for oil? (i)

Opponents of the Iraq intervention claimed that the war was essentially a ‘war for oil’ that owed much to the fact that the US and the UK were beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. Former UK Labour minister Michael Meacher was one proponent of this view:

This line of argument contains two distinct components:

1. That ‘the war on terror’ was intimately bound in with (and conditioned by) the US’s commitment to exercise and maintain its hegemonic role in global affairs.
2. That the pursuit of this objective was equally closely linked with activity to preserve and enhance control over global oil resources.

While the first component sounds like a criticism of US foreign policy in the early twenty-first century, and could indeed appear as such in many formulations and in terms of specific US actions, it was also to a large extent just a matter of fact. There was no doubt that at the beginning of the new century the US did occupy a position of unprecedented global dominance and was in many respects the global hegemon. (Next section we will examine the nature of this hegemony and the problems faced by the US in exercising its role with due wisdom and effectiveness, so we shall not pursue this further here.) It should be noted, though, that while US global hegemony itself might be a fact, both the way it is exercised and the degree to which the US might be committed to transform de facto hegemony into outright global control is another matter. The latter aspect in particular remains a matter of great controversy.

The second component, and a specific basis for criticism of US actions in the war on terror, is that of whether the US’s overriding concern to secure its control of oil resources as a primary economic asset and guarantee of security in the foreseeable future has been a major motive for the war on terror. This line of argument sees the invasion of Iraq, a country that on the face of it had few links with al-Qaeda, but which is oil-rich, as evidence for this. The link has been an easy one to draw in the popular mind. Other public figures drew the same connection, among them no less an establishment figure than Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Greenspan made this point in his memoirs: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil’ (Sunday Times, 2007).

4.7.2 A war for oil? (ii)

Other radical critics of the war on terror and post-9/11 US foreign policy find the role of oil as a motivating factor less easy to define. In the opinion of the left-wing US Retort Collective, a self-styled ‘gathering of some thirty or forty antagonists of the present order of things’, the oil lobby certainly gained an unprecedented degree of influence in core US decision-making circles:

Proof of the strength of the oil lobby in Washington is, however, not the same thing as acceptance of the idea that the pursuit of oil was the pre-eminent driving force in the war on terror. The Retort authors do not deny the significance of oil but aim to place it:

In terms of the oil issue, then, the precise nature and motives underlying the war on terror can again be seen as complex and indeterminate.

4.8 Europe, the US, and the war on terror

There are, it is argued, significant differences between the ways in which the US and Europe view the world and with it the present terrorist threat. For Professor James Sheehan of Stanford University:

In contrast:

European states, then, in contrast to the US (and, as we shall see, Britain), may:

There is therefore, beyond the tactical differences of what to do about Saddam Hussain and Iraq, a crucial difference between the US and Europe.

This, for Sheehan, is why when

4.9 Britain: between the US and Europe

In international politics, Britain, while European, tends to stand between the US and its fellow members of the European Union. Britain has long been the closest international ally of the US and this association, sometimes referred to as the ‘special relationship’, was strengthened in the aftermath of 9/11. As prime minister, Tony Blair endlessly argued that Britain had to act as a ‘bridge’ between the US and Europe if it were to defend its national interests:

Click to view Security policy in an insecure world

Bush and Blair were in complete agreement over the need to wage a war on terror and Britain played a key role in the US led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many people criticised this.

Click to view The collapse of British foreign policy

The Iraq war has demonstrated that the US is not always and everywhere able to impose its will. However, it is still the undisputed global hegemon and British foreign policy, alongside numerous geopolitical developments, is largely structured around this fact. It is the concept of the US as global hegemon that we turn our attention to next section.

5 The US as global hegemon – the practice of global dominance

The 9/11 attack took place, of course, in New York and it is the US that has taken the leading role in fighting the ‘asymmetric war’ provoked (examined in sections 3 and 4). In 2001, the US occupied a position of unprecedented dominance and was aptly perceived as a unique kind of ‘global hegemon’. What this meant in terms of its capacity to exercise power on a global scale and achieve the objectives it set itself was, however, a matter of considerable practical concern and extensive intellectual debate.

This section we shall examine:

• what US hegemony has actually meant
• the response of some of its major international partners to the US’s use of its unprecedented power
• the emergence of a new kind of legitimacy crisis surrounding US global leadership
• the implications for the future of the global ‘US empire’ that emerged with the demise of the Soviet Union.

5.1 The US as hyperpower before 9/11

The term ‘hyperpower’ was coined to describe the new US status of planetary dominance in 1999, eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union (a competing superpower for several decades) and two years before 9/11. The removal of the USSR as a global competitor – most notably in its role as potential nuclear adversary and ideological competitor – left the US free to expand its global dominance. However, it also presented the US with major problems concerning the validity of its authority and how this enormous power might be exercised. At the onset of the twenty-first century, the US accounted for between 40 and 50 percent of global defence spending (more the double the total spending of its European allies, their number now augmented by former Soviet allies) and possessed military technology far superior to any potential opponent. Unlike imperial powers of earlier historical periods, it also had very substantial resources in other areas. The US was the third most populous country in the planet, had a birth rate at or near replacement rate (not the case in the great majority of developed countries), and accounted for nearly a third of the world’s economic production (Cohen, 2004). In this sense, it certainly merited description in terms that surpassed other current or previous global powers. But even before 9/11 uncovered the physical vulnerabilities of such a great power, it was apparent that the international position of the US left it with major challenges and political problems that stemmed from the very extent of its dominance.

In early 2001, before the Al Qaeda attack, G. John Ikenberry confronted the growing unease already felt at that stage about a global order so strongly dominated by US power (Ikenberry, 2001). He recognised that the US clearly had a ‘hegemony problem’: having started the 1990s as the world’s only superpower, growing disparities in economic and military power resulted in an 'extremely lopsided distribution of world power’ (p18). But it also retained an ‘unusual ability to co-opt and reassure’ (p20) and Ikenberry suggested that a key feature of the international status of the US after the end of the Cold War was that its power was largely accepted by the other democratic great powers.

5.2 The US as hyperpower after 9/11

Click to view History and the hyperpower

5.3 Domestic critics of US power

During the same year, in fact, the dangers of unwise statesmanship arising from imperial hubris were fully demonstrated in the view reportedly expressed by a senior Bush advisor that ‘we are an empire and when we act we create our own reality ... we are history’s actors and it is left to others to observe and study what we do’ (Suskind, 2004, p2). This was the kind of outlook that helped create a context in which the wisdom of the policies pursued by the Bush administration was critically challenged by many politicians and concerned citizens outside the US at the time of the invasion of Iraq. President Bush enjoyed a high level of domestic support in the early stages of the Iraq War and received little criticism from the Democratic Party as the formal opposition.

Different positions were, however, taken outside the political mainstream. Noam Chomsky is an eminent linguist, psychologist and philosopher. Since the nineteen-sixties and the war fought by the US in Vietnam, he has also been a major political figure and vehement critic of US foreign policy. His views on Iraq were equally pungent.

While there may be no easy answer as to how the hegemonic power of the US should be exercised, many Americans would agree with Cohen that ‘wise statesmanship’ is a sound prescription – although by no means all would share Chomsky’s view.

5.4 International critics of US power

Many influential politicians outside the US also thought the invasion of Iraq unwise and a misuse of US military power. Major voices from this position are presented here: Jacques Chirac (the President of France), Joschka Fischer (German Minister for Foreign Affairs) and Robin Cook (British Foreign Secretary 1997–2001 and Leader of the House of Commons until his resignation in March 2003). They all point to a number of weaknesses in the strategy developed by the US.

President Chirac expressed the view that:

Joschka Fischer’s views ran on similar lines.

Robin Cook resigned as Leader of the House of Commons for similar reasons.

5.5 The US’s legitimacy crisis

Robert Kagan is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a member of the US Council on Foreign Relations, and foreign policy adviser to the Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In his view, the widespread perceptions of the lack of US wisdom regarding the invasion of Iraq has led to a general weakening of US legitimacy in the international arena. The nature and outcome of weakening US legitimacy are analysed by Kagan in ‘America’s crisis of legitimacy’.

5.6 The US’s problematic future as an empire

A general overview of the US’s imperial status is provided in the article ‘Empire by denial: the strange case of the United States’ by the British scholar Michael Cox. Cox identifies the particular problems facing US policy makers and the characteristics of contemporary US power. He goes on to develop his own view of the US ‘empire’, discusses the usefulness of this term as a description of the US, and asks what kind of future it now faces. He also identifies a number of particular problems, which again raise questions about the nature of contemporary US power and how it might establish legitimacy for its current global activities (Cox, 2005).

5.7 The US administration in 2008

In this part, we look at whether the war on terror has been a success for the US, using opposing viewpoints to argue the case for and against.

5.7.1 The US administration in 2008 (i)

Not all observers have shared the doubts about US power reported in the previous section, and some have remained more sanguine about its global exercise. For example, in ‘An American foreign policy for a unipolar world’, Charles Krauthammer argues that US power remains unique.

Click to view An American foreign policy for a unipolar world

Others also endorsed the globalist, democratic realist approach. Edward Luttwak, for one, thought that the Bush conduct of the war on terror has been largely successful:

5.7.2 The US administration in 2008 (ii)

An alternative view to both Krauthammer’s and Luttwak’s is presented in ‘Winners and Losers in the Post-9/11 Era’ by Professor Joseph Nye (Harvard University). Nye concludes that while the US won the first round of the post-9/11 conflict, it lost the second by invading Iraq without sufficient international support. Writing in 2006, he leaves the question of a third, or subsequent, rounds open although he does makes some suggestions as to the factors that might be decisive (Nye, 2006).

Professor Francis Fukuyama acquired instant fame in 1989 when he proclaimed ‘the end of history’ and was later identified as a member of the neoconservative camp. In a 2007 article, ‘A self-defeating hegemony’, he spelt out ‘four key mistakes’ made by the Bush administration in its responses to 9/11. He also directs attention to the problematic nature of the global system that exists today and the absence of restraints on the imprudent exercise of power by the US.

Fukuyama takes Nye’s argument a little further and expresses strongly negative view of US foreign policy under Bush (although you may have recently seen other views and fresh evidence that support a different conclusion). His reference to the fundamental problem faced by the US in terms of ‘the lopsided distribution of power in the international system’ relates to other views presented this section about the position of the US as a global hegemon. (Nye, 2007)

5.8 Middle Eastern views of current US administration

Finally, what are the perceptions in other parts of the world, in the Middle East and the Arab World, an area of critical importance in terms of current military commitments and the ongoing struggle against jihadist terrorism? Some information on this question emerged in a symposium on the Middle East held in Washington in 2006. Shibley Telhami, holder of the Sadat Chair at the University of Maryland and Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, stated that:

5.9 Reflection

6 Media and the production of spectacle

The media have become increasingly integral to the organisation of contemporary societies. Indeed, for the majority of Western populations, it is now television, newspapers, radio and the internet that provide the primary sources of information regarding political events. Thus, for the next three sections we will be concentrating on how the media have a distinctive role to play in framing public understandings of war and terror, examining both the production and consumption of post-9/11 media images and discourses.

While the media often appear to provide a clear and impartial analysis, it is first important to recognise that media production is rarely a politically neutral process. The information or images offered up by the media do not simply mirror some ‘objective’ or ‘factual’ reality that exists 'out there', but tend to be selected and shaped (explicitly or implicitly) in ways that support the world-views or interests of the people and organisation(s) making the media text. This is not to say that the events portrayed in, say, news and current affairs are simply works of fiction invented by journalists, but rather to suggest that what is often authoritatively presented as real, factual and objective is actually constructed through a process of selection. This process, when examined, can often reveal how embedded social and political values and organisational processes can work to produce different 'realities' of any given situation. You should bear this selectivity in mind as you tackle the readings chosen for this section's study.

6.1 The media spectacle of 9/11

The attack on the World Trade Centre on 11 September provided a set of powerful and dramatic images that, as a result of modern telecommunications, were able to be rapidly transmitted around the globe – images that in the immediate aftermath were exhaustively repeated, analysed and pored over by horrified and fascinated media audiences. Indeed it was perhaps the striking and shocking visual spectacle of the attack that made it so amenable to constant replay and expert analysis. Thus, as well as being a catastrophic act of terror, we can say that 9/11 was also a shared media experience.

6.1.1 Activity: the media spectacle of 9/11

In an extract from Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, Brigitte Nacos discusses the relationship between terrorism and the media. She takes as her starting point the ways in which the 9/11 attacks were initially interpreted by eyewitnesses and television viewers. The second part of the extract is concerned with the ways in which the manipulation of the media has now become central to operations of contemporary terrorism.

One argument suggested by Nacos, that political groups now fully understand the power of the media for disseminating and amplifying the impacts of their actions, has also been taken up by Retort (2005). (You will have already touched on their arguments regarding the war on terror and the oil lobby in section 4.) Like Nacos, they identify not just the human costs and material impacts of the 9/11 attacks, but their particular function as highly symbolic visual 'spectacles' and media events. Retort suggest that (unlike most historical acts of terror) the 9/11 attacks were deliberately designed to be witnessed by the (global) public, and that the perpetrators knew in advance the likely consequences of such a visible act of violence –widespread panic and a significant undermining of public confidence. This is controversial in so far as we may never know the precise motivations of the hijackers, or how they could guarantee in advance that the media would be on hand to witness the event directly. Yet Retort are surely correct in their assertion that the attacks helped underline how the media have now become a crucial vehicle for the public dissemination of terrorist causes and actions. Retort further argue that both terrorists and governments are now involved in what they term an 'image-war' – a battle to control public opinion through manipulating the daily flow of media events, images and discourses.

6.2 Government and spectacle

While terrorists increasingly look to the media as a means of promoting their causes, a number of critics have argued that the US and allied governments – especially since 9/11 – have themselves become more active in the 'image-war', attempting to ensure favourable media coverage of the 'war on terror' and its related military campaigns. The next reading deals with this issue.

6.2.1 Activity: Government and spectacle

In an extract from ‘9/11, Spectacles of Terror, and Media Manipulation: A Critique of Jihadist and Bush Media Politics’, Douglas Kellner offers a highly-charged condemnation of the (predominantly) US media. He does this first for its apparent abjection towards (and, indeed, explicit endorsement of) the Bush administration's aggressive rhetoric in the sections following the 9/11 attacks, and, secondly, for the ways in which its highly selective and partial (pro-US) reporting has helped to publicly legitimate post-9/11 military campaigns. Kellner provides an overview account of the activities of US (and other) media and George Bush's Government, in the early days of the 2003 Iraq War. He takes the controversial position that not only did Bush seek to use the war as a platform for boosting his own waning political popularity, but that both Government and the media became complicit in the creation of media 'spectacles' specifically designed to promote the apparent strategic success (as well as moral legitimacy) of post-9/11 US military activity.

6.3 Reporting the spectacle

A further criticism of Kellner's account might be that it underestimates the possibility of embedded reporters providing more objective and critical accounts of US (and other allied forces) government and military operations. It may also be the case that he somewhat idealises the degree to which independent and 'accurate' (p.17) reporting can be obtained by non-embedded 'unilateral' reporters.

6.3.1 Activity: Reporting the spectacle

We now turn to two readings on embedded reporting that illustrate some of the complexities and ambiguities of this role. In 'Embedded Lines in the Sand in Basra', journalist David Smith deals with the ambiguities of 'embedded reporting'. The second reading, an extract from Lewis et al’s Shoot First And Ask Questions Later: Media Coverage of the 2003 Iraq War, considers research undertaken by a team led by Lewis at Cardiff University that examined the role of embedded reporters operating in British and US military units in Iraq.

6.4 Conclusion

In conclusion, this section we have identified the ways in which the execution and the reporting of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq War have relied upon the production of media 'spectacles' in the context of an ongoing 'image-war'. The media is now seen as a vital tool for both terrorists and governments, offering a means to disseminate and communicate causes, values and beliefs, providing a channel for provoking (and assuaging) fear, creating moral legitimacy and swaying public opinion.

While the Western media tend to create spectacles and reports that promote only US and allied interests, we should note that the media spectacle is always somewhat unstable and inconsistent – and that independent and critical media images and discourses can disrupt the dominant message, providing a crucial corrective to more conventional and established pro-war arguments. Indeed, the idea that the media are a diverse constituency, containing a plurality of critical perspectives, dissenting voices – and, indeed, discerning audiences – is something that we will examine in the forthcoming sections.

7 Interactions between policymakers, media and citizens

During the course of this section, you’ll focus principally upon two approaches to the study of relations between policymakers (or political leaders), media, and citizens, based on the underlying question: who influences who? Both approaches have generated a large body of research in political communication, yet each understands these interactions very differently.

The intention of this section’s readings are to steer away from general terms used to describe relations between policymakers, media and citizens – ‘spin’, ‘propaganda’, ‘bias’ and so on – to develop an understanding of the importance of cultures both within organisations and within which organisations operate. You should reflect on the national, historical trajectories of media in any country; how these histories shape media engagement with their publics; and how governments try to ‘use’ media to generate consent among publics.

7.1 Manufacturing consent

In Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky provide an explanation for why mass media systematically ‘manufacture consent’ for government and large private corporations in the US. By analysing the political economy of mass media, they show how ownership and commercial demands lead to the privileging of a dominant ideology and its social hierarchy. This then leads to the marginalisation of ‘radical’ or other points of view that might challenge the dominant order. For Herman and Chomsky, this bias is structural: it is not caused by the particular viewpoints of the journalists involved, but simply the only way news can be within a capitalist society in which audience share and commercial sponsors dictate what counts as ‘news’.

They also suggest that professional journalistic practices such as over-reliance on official sources and fear of lawsuits from powerful interests contribute to the manufacture of consent. For these reasons, the mass media become little more than propaganda instruments for a dominant elite. Herman and Chomsky go on to use this framework to explain why the US news media bolstered the legitimacy of US military interventions in Latin America and Indochina. In light of the failure of US journalists to uncover the lack of WMD in Iraq in 2002-03, this approach seems to offer much. We might consider, then, the relevance and utility of this framework for explaining UK and US media coverage of the 2003 Iraq War, including not only the build-up to the war, but also the ‘actual’ phase of military engagement, and the aftermath or reconstruction period.

7.2 The uncensored war

Daniel Hallin’s study of US media coverage of the Vietnam War, The Uncensored War: the Media in Vietnam, sets out to demonstrate empirically that critical media reporting of the war did not cause the United States to ‘lose the war at home and so lose the war abroad’. He describes how both liberal and conservative commentators subscribed to a myth that by showing the reality of the war, citizens-cum-audiences turned against the US military involvement in Vietnam. In fact, media coverage of US action in Vietnam only became critical once the US political elite became divided. Media simply reflected these divisions. They did not ‘manufacture dissent’. Once elites became divided, journalists reported these divides, such that opposition to the war became a legitimate position.

Hallin suggests reporting is ‘indexed’ to the degree of consensus among elites. Political ‘elites’ (including political parties, different branches of state, and opinion-formers or intellectuals) enjoy complex relations that must be explained in each case under study. Just as audiences are not homogeneous, and ‘the media’ is not a singular body, so political elites are plural. Hallin’s study complicates Herman and Chomsky’s argument that US mass media necessarily and inevitably manufacture consent for war by showing the conditions in which media can come to play an opposition role to government.

7.3 What is the media doing to our politics?

In May 2003, the BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan accused the British Prime Minister Tony Blair of publicly lying. Gilligan stated that Blair used claims from a dossier he knew were inaccurate to justify a war in Iraq. The central, disputed claim was that Saddam Hussein could launch missiles against British targets within 45 minutes. This began a battle between the BBC and Blair government in which the Director General of the BBC lost his job; a scientist advising the government, David Kelly, took his own life; and a major enquiry into the build-up to war was conducted (the Hutton Enquiry). The case is interesting because the BBC is funded by the British state (or its taxpayers), yet must demonstrate its independence. It did so here by playing an oppositional role to the Prime Minister himself. In his book What the Media are doing to our Politics, John Lloyd, a Financial Times journalist, gives an account of the news broadcast, and argues the BBC was guilty of poor journalism.

7.4 Who lied to whom?

Seymour M. Hersh has spent several decades as an investigative reporter and presently works for The New Yorker. He has received most acclaim for his reports on the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq in 2004. When reading it, bear in mind that – as we saw in Herman and Chomsky’s work – it is common practice for journalists at mainstream newspapers to rely on official sources for daily information. This makes for an easy, cheap story, and these sources are usually reliable. However, such a close relationship between government and journalists can sometimes lead to problems. In ‘Who lied to whom?’ Hersh investigates claims by US officials that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had obtained ‘yellow cake’ uranium as part of a covert nuclear programme. The US officials claim to have received this ‘intelligence’ from British sources, and indeed the British government made public similar claims about the uranium. Hersh’s investigative report suggests how intelligence might be used by politicians as ‘evidence’ to support particular policies. This article was published a fortnight into the war.

In the next section we will turn to studies of how audiences/users of the media have understood and responded to media and government presentations of post-9/11 issues and stories.

8 Media audiences and users post 9/11

This section you’ll be considering several perspectives on how audiences use and are influenced by different media in understanding issues and events post 9/11. In the process, our interactions with a variety of types of communication and media forms will be considered, including TV news, political speeches, government ‘leaks’ and official publications, satellite television, the internet and downloads to mobile phones. Different ways of researching media audiences will also be introduced, including surveys, critical readings, focus group studies, and ethnographic interviews.

Two particular changes in the media landscape since the 1980s have had a major impact on media audiences – each in a different way inviting (perhaps even forcing us) into more active roles, shifting our relationship with the media from that of viewer to that of user. The first change is the growth and diversification of the media. This is perhaps most obvious in the broadcast media with the explosion of the number of channels available to viewers, as a result of media deregulation and the development of satellite, digital and cable technologies. Some UK viewers currently still rely on analogue broadcast services, where choice remains limited to five television channels; but for increasing numbers a choice of viewing can be made between 100 channels or more.

But, perhaps more significantly, diversification is also a reality in media production, including limited but significant penetration of Western markets by non-Western media products such as Bollywood movies or, of particular relevance to post-9/11 discussions, non-Western news sources such as al-Jazeera television. (Al-Jazeera was launched in Arabic in 1996 and in English in 2006.) Thus we are presented with an increasing range of choice not just of channels, but of perspectives.

The second change in the media landscape is the growth of the internet, which greatly increases access to a wide range of information sources (and hence potentially to diverse perspectives). It also presents possibilities for interaction at a distance. As Cottle comments ‘New media technologies ... add new communicative ingredients into the media ecology mix ... unsettling established flows of 'top-down' communication and facilitating new political forms of organization and expression’ (Cottle 2006: p52-3).

You’ll look more at Cottle’s work this section, and how he considers the impacts of both news media diversification and the internet on media audiences/users. He also introduces the idea of the media as a public sphere – a 'space' or 'spaces' for discussion of issues of shared concern.

Discussions of media use raise questions about media effects. Ways of understanding how the media influence people have changed over the years. Historically, there has been a long-running debate between what Livingstone (2005) identifies as ‘liberal’ and ‘critical’ positions. The ‘liberal’ position sees the media in a positive light as providing the information and range of opinion that people in a democracy need to help make up their minds. By contrast, the ‘critical’ position sees the media as shaping public opinion in the interests of those who produce, own or control the media.

The arguments you’ll consider this section will provide evidence to support both positions, and perhaps also point beyond them. Thus, in support of the critical position, Kull et al. (2003–4) present evidence that suggests watching some television-news sources relates to misperceptions of the facts concerning the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, even when other factors such as political orientation and social background are taken into account. But al-Ghabban (2004) presents evidence that exposure even to biased media sources can stimulate critical debate and perhaps political action. This supports the central argument of the liberal position: the media provide information that aids democracy by enabling informed public debate. It also addresses a key contention of the critical position; news sources are likely to be biased and should be treated with scepticism. Al-Ghabban also makes the point that much more than media input shapes people’s views; a whole range of social, cultural and individual factors also come into play.

(Please note that, although you may find it interesting to do so, we do not expect you to read each of these sources in full.)

8.1 Perceptions, misperceptions, and the media: 9/11, Iraq and 7/7

In this part, we look at how people perceive the war on terror and where they get their information (or misinformation) from.

8.1.1 The media and US perceptions of the reasons for going to war in Iraq

Kull et al.’s article ‘Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War’ is a study of US television news audiences. It examines how certain misconceptions influential in shaping people’s support for the war in Iraq continued to circulate during 2003, in spite of evidence that should have undermined them becoming publicly available. The researchers also examined the influence of misperceptions on people’s support for the war, their distribution across different television audiences, and their prevalence in relation to certain political attitudes. They then perform an overall analysis to find out which were the most important factors in shaping support for the war.

The study raises some serious concerns about the relationship between the political executive, the media, and the public – at least in the US context. It suggests that, while the President cannot lead people to adopt positions that contradict their own values, he can ‘lead members of the public to assume false beliefs in support of his position’ (p597). This is undertaken in conjunction with a media willing to disseminate his statements in a supportive manner, Furthermore, it suggests that ‘the media cannot necessarily be counted on to play [the] critical role of doggedly challenging the administration’ (ibid.).

8.1.2 Implications of public misperceptions for democracy

Deliberative understandings of democracy (Elster 1998, Dryzek 2002) stress the importance of public argument for democracy. This relies both on public access to accurate information (ensured in part by the media's willingness and capacity to question the authorities and other vested interests), and on public access to a variety of shared spaces in which a range of different voices can be heard, listen to each other, and debate matters of shared concern.

Later this section, especially in the work of Simon Cottle, we will consider the implications of new communications technologies and news media diversification for the development of such spaces, and hence the prospects for deliberative democracy in the post 9/11 media landscape.

We now turn our attention from US to British interpretations of media sources. Dr Elizabeth Poole has studied representations of Islam and Muslims in British newspapers over the last 20 years (1988–2008), and also how different groups within the British public interpret these changing representations.

8.2 Media flows and public debate

In Mediatized Conflict: Developments in Media and Conflict Studies, Simon Cottle reflects on the use made by Western news networks of material from al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera was founded in 1996, initially as an Arabic language news service and satellite broadcaster. It is based in Qatar in the Persian Gulf, and funded by the Emir of Qatar and (El Oifi, 2005, p75). An English language service based in London has been available since November 2006. In the extract provided, Cottle introduces Iskander and El-Nawawy's concept of 'contextual objectivity' to describe al-Jazeera's journalism, and then goes on to discuss several critical voices that have emerged within the West since 9/11 that use a mixture of media genres (e.g. documentary and satire). Figure 1, which is contained within the PDF downloadable below, maps these features of the contemporary media landscape alongside internet developments, presenting these environments as providing a range of public spheres or 'spherecules' (mini public spheres) within which public debate takes place. The size of the circles roughly represents the size (in terms of viewers/participants) of the public sphere, with the minority and new media forums described as spherecules because they each involve much smaller numbers than broadcast media. Nonetheless, because they tend to be densely networked together, collectively these spherecules can involve large numbers of people.

8.2.1 Developments in the British Muslim press

The next activity examines another kind of contra-flow – the development of an independent English language Muslim media, especially newspapers and magazines, in the UK. In this transcript from an audio interview, Dr Sameera Ahmed sketches developments in the British Muslim press from 1988-2008.

8.3 Communicating risk and promoting community cohesion

In this part, we look at the following subjects:

• the British government’s strategy of communicating the risk of terrorism to the public
• working with local government to implement ‘anti-radicalisation’ policies.

8.3.1 Communicating terrorist risk

Gabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate’s ‘Communicating the Terrorist Risk: Harnessing a Culture of fear?’ offers a critical analysis of the UK government’s strategy to communicate the risk of terrorism to the British public. It examines how this strategy fits and interacts with broader notions of risk, crime and security circulating in British culture, framing the debate in terms of Ulrich Beck’s ‘risk society’ thesis.

Beck (1992) argued that there has been a shift in advanced industrial societies from seeing social progress in terms of gaining positive things (‘e.g. income, health care, education, housing’, (Mythen and Walklate, 2006, p124)) to a more negative notion of avoiding bad things (‘e.g. crime, … pollution, AIDS and terrorism’, ibid.). In this context, the optimal strategy becomes one of minimising risk. Mythen and Walklate argue that this description captures something of a shift in how politicians talk about their aims, and has had a material impact on policy decisions, such as the increase (‘more than doubling’) of UK government expenditure on national security between 2004 and 2008 (ibid. p139, note 2). As well as mapping shifts in political discourse, the article also examines how increased concern with risk avoidance impacts on how we as individuals live our lives.

8.3.2 Anti-radicalisation: youth work and the government agenda 2001–8

Shamim Miah has more than a decade’s experience working with young Muslim people in Oldham, Greater Manchester, and has more recently become and advisor to local government on the implementation of ‘anti-radicalisation’ policies. In the following transcript from an audio interview, Miah assesses the impact of these policies on young Muslim people.

Please click ‘Reveal comment’ to read the interview.

8.4 Young people’s media use

In this part, we look at the following subjects:

• How communications about terrorist threats have been understood by the public
• Finding out how students perceive their own security post-9/11.

8.4.1 Young people’s media use (i)

Our final article this section is again UK based, but focuses on a specific place and time: Tower Hamlets between September 2004 and December 2005. Al-Ghabban examines the experiences of young adults of white, Bengali and mixed race backgrounds who watch and use a variety of television, internet and mobile-phone mediated news sources. We change methods too, from inferences based on the critical reading of texts, to the conversations about media use that is characteristic of media ethnography. As you approach this article, a good reading strategy will be to try to answer one of the questions raised by Mythen and Walklate: ‘How [have] communications about the terrorist threat have been converted into meaningful understandings by members of the public?’ (ibid: p129).

8.4.2 Young people’s media use (ii)

Ammar al-Ghabban is a secondary school teacher with more than a decade's experience working in Tower Hamlets, East London, an area with a large Bengali Muslim population. From 2004–5 he took part in a national study as a researcher, interviewing his students about how post-9/11 media coverage was influencing their perceptions of security. In 2008 Ammar was interviewed about his reflections on that research; the result is the following audio.

8.5 Conclusion (Media)

Over the past three sections we have considered interactions between the media, politicians and the public in the post-9/11 environment, especially in the UK and US. We have seen how the media have been central to the strategies of ‘terrorists’, governments and anti-war protesters; discussed different perspectives on the possibility of critical independent journalism and the influence of government and big business on how news gets presented; and examined some specific studies of how audiences make sense of an increasingly diverse but also commercially oriented media, including US TV audiences in the wake of the US invasion of Iraq, and multicultural UK news audiences. Next section we return to a more political-science oriented approach, examining the domestic impacts of 9/11 in terms of civil liberties and the impacts on particular groups, including British Muslims.

9 The impacts of 9/11 on British society

The readings and activities this section focus on developments in British society since 9/11. The main immediate effect of the attacks in the US in Britain was, of course, to provoke feelings of great shock and sympathy for the victims of the tragedy. However, as the years have passed and the response of US policy-makers has evolved, so British views of the causes and consequences of 9/11 have become more complex. A similar view may be expressed about the impacts of 9/11 on British society. These, too, have become more complex as the ‘war on terror’ has progressed and further bombs were detonated in Bali, Morocco, Spain – and then in London on 7 July 2005. This action in particular directed attention to the position of British Muslims, how they were affected by 9/11 and the actions taken in response to it, and how in turn they have responded in various ways to these developments. As well as being an issue of major significance to the inhabitants of the United Kingdom as a whole, the position of British Muslims and the range of attitudes they display are questions of great complexity. Moreover, there is very little firm evidence regarding these attitudes. This section, we present some of the major approaches that have been taken to understanding this issue and examples of the limited evidence that is available.

In this area there are some big questions that have yet to receive any clear answer. Were the perpetrators of 9/11 and 7/7 motivated primarily by religious or political convictions? What are the perceptions and judgements of the overwhelming majority of the British Muslim population who have no connection with the criminals nor any association with their activities? Are acts of terrorism best understood in terms of individual psychology or motivations derived from some socio-cultural context? Should we see Muslim extremists as isolated individuals defined in terms of some singular pathology, or as actors situated in a particular cultural context? There are no accepted answers to any of these questions, and the best that the readings presented here can do is to present a range of perspectives from the most informed sources and provide the best evidence that is currently available.

9.1 The emergence of the ‘Muslim issue’ in British politics

We start with an extract by Tahir Abbas, Reader in Sociology at the University of Birmingham. It comes from the introduction to Islamic Political Radicalism: a European Perspective, which he edited. He surveys the developments in Britain since the Rushdie affair that have brought the Muslim community into prominence and impacted negatively on its position in British society.

9.2 The growth of ‘Londonistan’ and domestic terrorist activity

One prominent view of the problems of multiculturalism focuses on the concentration of jihadi activists in certain parts of contemporary Britain. This is outlined in British journalist and broadcaster Melanie Phillips’s book Londonistan.

She expresses a view widely held in many sectors of British society that parts of the country have, over the past few decades, become dominated by immigrant groups and in some cases dramatically Islamised. Districts of London have thus taken on the appearance of a ‘Londonistan’ and similar developments have taken place in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham (p34–35). In the wake of 9/11 and 7/7, this has given rise to different perceptions of the behaviour of immigrant communities and become strongly. The language used by Phillips conveys this sense of threat in several ways. For example, she sees religious dress as ‘outlandish’ and conveying a sense of antagonism, provoking ‘insecurity and unease’, not least because of the possibility it might offer of ‘deliberate concealment’ and thus develop into a ‘security issue’ (p33–34).

Another aspect of this development is the way in which London ‘has become a major global centre of Islamist extremism’ and a centre for the promulgation of extreme forms of politicised Islam that have been espoused by known terrorists (p36–42). While decrying these developments in themselves, Phillips is also strongly critical of ‘the supine response by the British establishment’ that allowed this to happen and has since been widely understood to have been a major security error. Phillips’ perceptions and the tone of her account are certainly different from some of the other readings presented in this course, which focus on diverse media concerns. You might want to consider Phillips’ perceptions alongside those reported by al-Ghabban in Section 8. There young Londoners (British Bengali Muslims and non-religious white English school students) were conscious of a British government determination to promote the notion of a terrorist threat and a media determination both to demonise Muslims and emphasise the violent implications of the Muslim faith and its prescriptions. You should not forget, of course, that Melanie Phillips is herself a ‘media person’.

Click to view Londonistan

9.3 The impact of 9/11 and 7/7 on British Muslims

In a piece specially commissioned for this course, Dilwar Hussein (Research Director of a Muslim College of Higher Education in Leicester) focuses on the Muslim community in contemporary Britain and the way it has been affected by recent developments.

Click to view The impact of 9/ 11 and 7/ 7 on British Muslims

9.4 How do British Muslims become radicalised?

In this part, we look at the factors that contribute towards radicalisation.

9.4.1 How do British Muslims become radicalised? (i)

There are certainly plenty of ideas about the place of Muslims in British society and the association with political and security issues since 9/11. What is more lacking is any firm grasp of the roots of terrorism in this context and, in particular, how the London bombers came to take the course of action they did in 2005 (as well as others who seem to have been equally prepared to embark on such activities). Dilwar Hussein refers to the inclinations and tendencies of those who committed the acts and then discusses the five factors that contributed to the context of radicalisation. But it is not possible to know precisely what motivated the four London bombers.

There are certainly some major theological currents that contributed to the recent rise of politicised Islam. Both Hussein and Phillips direct attention to the historic role of Muslim ideologues like Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, although they interpret their role and significance in rather different ways. Phillips also draws a direct link between the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood and the emergence of a whole series of UK-based terrorists.

What is difficult to establish, however, is how far such ideologues and extremist centres have impinged in the British Muslim population more generally and actually influenced locally raised bombers and potential terrorists. An article by journalist and experienced reporter Jason Burke presents the results of recent investigations into these matters. Burke provides some interesting material on this situation and overturns, he suggests, several myths. The role of extremist mosques has, it seems, been exaggerated but the influence of propaganda and the role of media seems to be critical.

9.4.2 How do British Muslims become radicalised? (ii)

Further insight into the background to the London bombing is provided by Shiv Malik’s account ‘My brother the bomber’. Malik worked for the BBC and researched a programme (never actually made) on the 2005 bombers, three of whom came from the Beeston area of Leeds. He was able to get in touch with Gultasab Khan, brother of the leader of the conspiracy, Mohammad Sidique Khan, as well as other members of the local community. His account of Khan’s personal circumstances and involvement in terrorist activities provides a useful individual account that supplements Burke’s more general analysis in a number of interesting ways. He directs attention to Khan’s activities as a leading member of a group reclaiming young Pakistani drug addicts that, after 9/11, became increasingly religious. As Khan and others began marrying outside the family circle (which generally favoured marriage between first cousins) they grew apart from the local community and increasingly identified with the jihadi network. For a number of reasons, then, British Muslim youths who had drifted towards fundamentalist or Islamist organisations were susceptible to the violent global jihadism that emerged in the mid-1990s.

9.5 Managing the myth of Muslim religious extremism

These various accounts, both general and specific, shed some light on the dynamics of British Muslim communities and the evolution of the attitudes of the younger generation. They provide some insight into how a very, very few have taken to political violence in the name of a very specific form of Islam. But the insights are far from comprehensive and there are broad differences of interpretation. Tahir Abbas, for example, states that:

So both Malik and Abbas argue in the above extracts that the radical Islamic terrorist response is more political than religious. Yet the language used to justify acts of terror is generally more religious than political, and the Islamic context is far from irrelevant. At the core of the issue is a volatile mixture of the two and, as Peter Bergen has suggested, 9/11 itself was essentially ‘collateral damage in a civil war within the world of political Islam’ (Bergen, 2006). A think-tank organised by the Bush administration came to a similar conclusion, although stressed more the Islam than the politics (Woodward, 2007, p84).

Not surprisingly in this context, some observers stress the ‘centrality of psychological factors’ to the radicalisation process and dismiss as secondary the purely ideological or religious elements (Silvestri, 2007, p69). But Burke points out that militants are by no means ‘lone wolves’ or isolated psychopaths either (Burke, 2008). Nor, Malik suggests, do suicide bombers as a group seem to be deranged or schizophrenic, or suffer from some other mental illness in the normal sense of the term. It is, he argues, ‘the psychology of the group, not the individual, that is the key’ (Malik, 2007). Views on such matters clearly differ, but dynamics within the broader Muslim community certainly seem to play a large role.

10 Security impacts on civil and human rights in Britain

The war on terror and developments since 9/11 and 7/7 have had distinct – if mixed and controversial – consequences for British society and its constituent groups. Equally, the legislative and legal changes developed as a consequence had diverse effects on civil and human rights in Britain. Some people have seen the legislative and legal responses as a natural and acceptable consequence of a manifest terrorist threat. Others have interpreted them as unacceptable infringements on established civil and human rights and a distinct threat to the democratic principles and practices that have become deeply embedded in British society. This section presents a number of articles that spell out the nature of the government’s response to the terrorist attacks; the nature of the legal changes and the legislation that has been enacted; its implications for human rights in Britain; and the degree to which current changes can be interpreted as a direct threat to British freedoms.

10.1 Government perceptions of the terrorist threat

Sir Richard Mottram is an eminent civil servant who was a Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet in the area of Security, Intelligence and Resilience (the formal appellation in this context) and Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee from 2005 to 2007. In an extract from ‘Protecting the Citizen in the Twenty-First Century’, he outlines the distinctive nature of the contemporary threat from international terrorism, and explains what the British government set out to achieve in this context.

Click to view Protecting the citizen in the twenty-first century

10.2 British policies and the background to post-9/11 legislation

Michael Saward is Professor of Politics at The Open University. In an extract from ‘The state and civil liberties in the post-9/11 world’, he details the response of the British government to 7/7 and places it in the broader context of discussions about security issues and civil liberties.

10.3 Are our freedoms being eroded by the war on terror?

Writer and columnist Henry Porter is an active campaigner on civil rights issues. He argues – in particular contrast to Richard Mottram – that new legislation and the introduction of new surveillance techniques are indeed endangering the privacy of British citizens and threatening civil liberties. In a piece for The Observer entitled ‘Why I Told Parliament: you’ve failed us on liberty’, he argues that we are currently seeing not only the most serious attack on personal freedom and privacy ever mounted in peacetime, but also the advent of the ‘database state’. On this basis, he advocates the introduction of a new Bill of Rights. Few of the threats he identifies are linked purely with the ‘terror laws’ he mentions in the summary, but a range of other measures are also linked with the security issue and the restrictions of personal freedoms introduced in order to prevent terrorist activity.

We have also conducted an interview with Henry Porter, and his responses can be heard in the audio you will listen to later this section.

10.4 Changing attitudes

In his article Porter alluded to ‘a profound but unacknowledged crisis in this country. Our liberties have been attacked, but we have also suffered a collapse in what I would call the liberty reflex, both in and outside Parliament’. This is an interesting observation, and one on which some empirical research has recently been published.

In a 2007 publication, Conor Gearty presented evidence on public attitudes to civil rights in general and to those of political extremists in particular as they have changed over time. Particularly notable is the evidence of significantly less commitment to civil liberties where the rights of ‘revolutionaries’ are concerned:

Factors like the rate of ageing do not seem to be viable explanatory factors for this change, and a more likely explanation seems to lie with the different ways in which political parties discuss these matters, and particularly the Labour Party. A ‘startling’ change among Labour supporters (who would not, of course, been the same individuals 20 years on) is thus detected, whereby the proportion thinking that public meetings should definitely be allowed declined from 67 per cent in 1985 to 45 per cent in 2005. The support among Labour sympathisers for the pro-civil liberties position has fallen by roughly twice as much as it has for Conservative supporters. The fear of terrorism also seems to have had some impact on the commitment to civil liberties, although there is no evidence on this issue before 2005. Nevertheless, a majority of those surveyed before 7/7 – 44 per cent – thought that people exaggerated the risk of a terrorist attack (39 per cent did not), while only 20 per cent of those polled after 7/7 thought the same (and 69 per cent now disagreed). A large majority of adults now also thought that adults should have compulsory identity cards and that major restrictions on privacy and civil liberties were permissible for those just suspected of terrorism. It is therefore concluded that:

10.5 The impact of the war on terror on British civil liberties

During this section, you have encountered a range of views on what has changed in Britain since 9/11 and the effect government responses have had on civil liberties. We finish this section with interviews recorded in May 2008 with Sir Richard Mottram, Permanent Secretary to the Cabinet (and thus closely associated with the Government for part of this period), and campaigning journalist Henry Porter, who holds strong views on the state of civil liberties in contemporary Britain, and what should be done to defend them from further attack.

The interview consists of two sections:

• the first asks how the traditional role of the state has changed since 9/11 and whether it has had much of an impact on civil liberties
• the second confronts the question of whether there really is the need for a new Bill of Rights, as Porter and others have argued.

The presentation of these different views gives you the opportunity to survey the material studied this section, to reflect on different views, and to develop your own ideas about the impact of security issues on civil rights.

10.6 Reflection (2)

Conclusion

This free course provided an introduction to studying politics. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

References

Acknowledgements

This course was written by:

Dr Mark Banks, Department of Sociology

Dr Richard Heffernan, Department of Politics and International Studies

Dr David Herbert, Department of Sociology

Professor Paul Lewis, Department of Politics and International Studies.

Course image: Justin Brown in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

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