Reflecting on the Ethical and Legal Implications of the State-Led War Against International Terrorism

Abstract

This article takes critical issue with the state-led global war against international terrorism, focusing specifically on the ethical and legal implications of that protracted international conflict. Following others, the paper conceptualises terrorism as an aspect of modern political violence that tends to service the overall interest of extant liberal global political economy at the expense of the human security challenges. To this end, the article seeks to shed light on the flux of alliances and allegiances between formal state agents and informal political actors (e.g. religious extremist or terrorist groups and left-/right-wing para-militias, etc.), whose bellicose political activities not only underscore the global war on terror but in part also inform the post-Cold War liberal international order. It is only in viewing the ongoing state-led global war against international terrorism through the prism of the state system’s perennial bellicose activities that we would be able to fully appreciate the adverse effects the global war on terror on the development of both domestic and international law that is critical to safeguarding the security and/or protection of civilians in times of peace and war.