Bringing it Home
Community-based approaches to counter-terrorism
Getting tougher on terrorism, tougher on the causes of terrorism?...
at 6:19am on Tuesday, 18th July 2006
From the other side of the Atlantic, we instinctively feel that the US has totally over-reacted to the threat of terror. Sitting in my hotel room just around the corner from the White House, and after scores of discussions about the Bush administration's record in this area, this instinct seems pretty spot on. What's more, I'm sure that the security at Heathrow on Thursday morning will remind me that we are not far behind that ourselves.
I've been wondering about whether the current reaction is really any different from what has gone before it. Isn't it all just history repeating itself?...
Today I met well known Brookings scholar, Jeremy Shapiro. His view was that goverments always overreact to terrorism because it takes them by surprise and fundamentally challenges their legitimacy as states. From 9/11 and 7/7 to ETA, the IRA, and the Red Brigade in the 1970s, Shapiro says that governments always overreact at first in an attempt to reassert their control on the situation. They might also do this to buy themselves valuable time to work out what to do next.
Over time they reassess, realise that civil liberties are the cornerstone of security, not its arch enemy (yawn, yawn), work out the importance of community engagement, and stumble their way towards some kind of peaceful conclusion.
But in an age of globalisation, where the power and legitimacy of nation states is being brought into question by all sorts of new forces (not just terrorism), I am starting to wonder whether the overreaction we are seeing now is considerably more intense than that which we have seen in the past, even just 10 years ago. And if so, whether this might herald an entirely new phase in politics and the relationship between citizen and state.
According to Shapiro, the overreaction is to be expected. But, as his theory goes, the curve falls off once the government realises the error of its ways and gets better at catching the bad guys.
But if you buy into Briggs' armchair analsis, the changed global political environment, the continuing sense of uncertainty and the difficulty of the task ahead might just mean that the curve doesn't tail off. For both practical and political reasons, governments will no longer be able to let go of the security agenda and as a result it will become one of the big political issues to dominate the next generation. The balance between civil liberties and security will not bounce back and and be righted by common sense.
If this is the case, we can't wait for the pendulom to swing - because it might not happen for another generation. We need to articulate a new and progressive story about security that has at its heart the marriage of civil liberties and personal and collective securities. It is not a fuzzy leftist compromise on security - we are not talking third way here. But if the left can't find a convincing way to push the pendulum back we might be facing 20 years of more of the same. Or worse.
Trust me. I've seen the States. It can get worse.
I've been wondering about whether the current reaction is really any different from what has gone before it. Isn't it all just history repeating itself?...
Today I met well known Brookings scholar, Jeremy Shapiro. His view was that goverments always overreact to terrorism because it takes them by surprise and fundamentally challenges their legitimacy as states. From 9/11 and 7/7 to ETA, the IRA, and the Red Brigade in the 1970s, Shapiro says that governments always overreact at first in an attempt to reassert their control on the situation. They might also do this to buy themselves valuable time to work out what to do next.
Over time they reassess, realise that civil liberties are the cornerstone of security, not its arch enemy (yawn, yawn), work out the importance of community engagement, and stumble their way towards some kind of peaceful conclusion.
But in an age of globalisation, where the power and legitimacy of nation states is being brought into question by all sorts of new forces (not just terrorism), I am starting to wonder whether the overreaction we are seeing now is considerably more intense than that which we have seen in the past, even just 10 years ago. And if so, whether this might herald an entirely new phase in politics and the relationship between citizen and state.
According to Shapiro, the overreaction is to be expected. But, as his theory goes, the curve falls off once the government realises the error of its ways and gets better at catching the bad guys.
But if you buy into Briggs' armchair analsis, the changed global political environment, the continuing sense of uncertainty and the difficulty of the task ahead might just mean that the curve doesn't tail off. For both practical and political reasons, governments will no longer be able to let go of the security agenda and as a result it will become one of the big political issues to dominate the next generation. The balance between civil liberties and security will not bounce back and and be righted by common sense.
If this is the case, we can't wait for the pendulom to swing - because it might not happen for another generation. We need to articulate a new and progressive story about security that has at its heart the marriage of civil liberties and personal and collective securities. It is not a fuzzy leftist compromise on security - we are not talking third way here. But if the left can't find a convincing way to push the pendulum back we might be facing 20 years of more of the same. Or worse.
Trust me. I've seen the States. It can get worse.
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