Creating the enemy: How a risk-averse West has inflamed the terrorism it fears.
Could the West's risk-aversion inflame terrorism, and even create it? [...]
New forms of terrorism are certainly emerging. However, the problem today is not that the terrorists have become all-powerful, but that society feels powerless to deal with the threat they pose. The same corrosive process that has given rise to new forms of violence also allows that violence to have a disproportionate impact. Terrorists are not more threatening; rather, the West is more easily terrorised. [...]
The events of 9/11 may have further consolidated the contemporary virtues of precaution and risk-management, but they existed long before September 2001.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, the politics of fear and caution have come to dominate Western societies. [...]
The war on terror transforms the targeting of terrorist movements into an international military campaign, and as some commentators have pointed out, the notion that you can declare 'war on a concept' is nonsense. [...]
The problem for Aznar, Bush, Blair and the rest is that they are attempting to overcome internal problems through an external focus; they are seeking to forge a consensus around fighting terrorism, when there is little consensus on much else in the domestic sphere. Because their starting point is a lack of consensus, in the shape of political crises and uncertainty at home, the war on terror, however loudly it is declared, does little to resolve their problems; in fact, it exacerbates them. The focus on terrorism as the gravest threat facing humanity has the effect of encouraging the terrorists, while at the same time exposing a hole at the heart of the West.
The real problem of terrorism, in terms of both its origins and its impact on contemporary society, begins at home, in the struggle for moral consensus and moral authority. Instead of launching wars in far-off lands, surely what our societies need are debates about what we stand for and why; about the values we hold dear and wish to pass on to future generations; about our vision of the Good Society and how we might achieve it. Such debates might help to move us away from the deep moral uncertainties that can give rise to nihilistic violence, and make us more resilient against those who execute such violence.
