Criminalizing Insurgents: The United States and Western Europe Response to Terrorism, 1968-1984

Abstract

The United States, Germany, and other Western industrialized countries began seeking multilateral anti-terrorism agreements in the 1970s. In that decade, transnationally operating terroristic actors tapped into the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial global discourse of the 1960s to justify themselves as national liberation fighters. This dissertation is a case study of Western state officials who interacted with one another and with recently independent states in response to the activity of such ostensible insurgents. The dissertation reveals how Western officials worked to define and deploy the terrorism label against these non-state actors. U.S., German, and other Western officials generated international conventions that treated terrorists as ordinary criminals and ignored their political motivations. The resulting multilateral agreements stipulated that terrorism was an illegal and criminal act. These solutions undermined national liberation actors’ claims to protected status as wartime combatants. This dissertation clarifies some of the mechanisms which permitted Western states to shape the norms about who is or is not a terrorist. However, Western efforts to define and regulate terrorism also led to the institutionalization of terrorism as a global security threat without providing long-term solutions. These agreements did not prevent terrorist attacks. In addition, the Western multilateral conventions were deeply controversial. They triggered still unresolved debates amongst states worldwide about the conditions under which non-state actors had rights under international law to commit politically motivated violence.