Naming Terror: US and European Counterterrorism Strategies since the 1970s

Abstract

One of the problems in the study of terrorism is defining it, since definitions and perceptions of it change so much over time. Because the United States and EU Europe define threat differently, it is no surprise that they perceive terrorism differently. The domestic violence that erupted across the West in the 1970s, and that predominantly targeted what was defined as the corrupted state, was given different names in the United States and Europe. Most of the affected European governments named the violence terrorism and had counterterrorist policies in place by the end of the decade. These strategies and policies emphasized a law and order approach and criminalized terrorism. The United States experienced similar types of domestic violence in the 1970s, and while it also developed a law and order approach to counter these acts, Washington did not define the problem as one of terrorism, or as a mortal threat, but rather of domestic radicalism, hooliganism, or militarism. Terrorism was viewed in the United States largely as a foreign and foreigners’ problem, one to which Washington was slow to respond and for which the American public had no developed sense of threat. While the Reagan Administration began systematically developing counterterrorism policies in the early 1980s, when terrorism itself was changing, a robust sense of threat to America and a counterterrorism strategy to deal with it did not emerge until after 9/11.