Terrorism, Risk and International Security

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2008 39: 221Security DialogueGabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate

Terrorism, Risk and International Security: The Perils of Asking 'What If?'

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Terrorism, Risk and International Security:The Perils of Asking ‘What If?’

GABE MYTHEN & SANDRA WALKLATE*

School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Liverpool, UK

In this article, we explore the ways in which cross-disciplinary theoriesof risk can enable us to grasp salient issues that arise out of the con-struction, assessment and regulation of terrorism in contemporarysociety. First, we demonstrate how risk society theory can be utilizedto unpack the changing nature of terrorism. Second, deployingFuredi’s work on the culture of fear, we show how the discourse of ter-rorism nestles into a broader politics of risk that is disproportionatelydirecting economic and political policies and encouraging a climate ofpublic anxiety. Third, utilizing the tools of the governmentality perspective, the linkages between measures designed to combat theterrorist threat and authoritarian domestic law and order policies areelucidated. We go on to analyse the contents and practices of the ‘waron terror’, arguing that the offensive and pre-emptive strategies that itlegitimates are wedded to a creeping shift in risk assessment from retrospective estimations of harm to an outlook based on futurity. It isposited that this shift ushers in a number of contradictions and dilem-mas around the political deployment of discourses of risk.

Keywords risk • terrorism • governance • security

Introduction

CONSEQUENT TO THE EVENTS OF 9/11, issues of national securityand transnational crime have risen up the political agenda (Fletcher,2006; Furedi, 2007; Mythen & Walklate, 2006b). Since that time, a

string of high-profile incidents, including the Bali bombings, the Madrid trainexplosions, attacks on the London Underground and the car bomb atGlasgow Airport, have fixed international terrorism as a critical social problem. In many Western nations, terrorism has assumed centre stage inpolitical exchanges about risk and human security, driven by the belief that anew form of global terrorism has emerged (Furedi, 2005: 319; Gregory &Wilkinson, 2005; Lacquer, 2000). This ‘new terrorism’, typified by the actions

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of extreme Islamic fundamentalist groups, has been distinguished from pre-ceding forms of violence practised by terrorist organizations such as ETA andthe IRA (Morgan, 2004; 9/11 Commission, 2004). Instead of operating withunified ideological aims and delineated hierarchies, ‘new terrorist’ groupsare defined by their amorphous objectives, scattered following and ability tostrike across different continents (Ould Mohamedou, 2007: 3). Rather thanbeing locally self-financed, ‘new terrorism’ is said to be funded by a wider net of sources around the globe, including donations by private financiers,charities and NGOs (9/11 Commission, 2004: 57). What is more, extreme terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda are described as willing to launch spectac-ular assaults that specifically target the civilian population (Gregory &Wilkinson, 2005: 3). We will return to the conceptual and descriptive utility ofthe term ‘new terrorism’ shortly, but it needs to be stated at the outset that terrorism is a historically embedded entity, regardless of whether it is prefixed with ‘new’. Insofar as the concept of ‘new terrorism’ is contested andcontestable, dominant media and political discourses post 9/11 have accepted and perpetuated its ideological existence. Accordingly, political dis-cussions in the West have focused on a cluster of interlinked issues, includingthe increased magnitude of threat, novel modes of attack, the robustness ofemergency management procedures and the efficacy of counter-terroristmeasures. Of course, it is easy to see why terrorism has become a fundamen-tal political concern in Western capitalist cultures. Terrorist attacks effectivelyundo the liberal myth that the state is able to secure order and maintain terri-torial control (Garland, 1997: 448). It is important to note also that currentpolitical discussions about the destructive consequences of terrorism havebecome embedded in a broader set of discursive formations that have encour-aged the public to be vigilant and ‘think security’ (de Lint & Virta, 2004: 466).This command to think security extends beyond the ideological and the symbolic. The prevailing discourse of (in)security acts as a linchpin for political decisions that have produced – and are reproducing – economic andmaterial effects (Burkitt, 2005; McLaren & Martin, 2004; Neocleous, 2006).1

The key objective of the present article is to examine the utility of theories ofrisk in extending understanding about the nature, regulation and manage-ment of terrorism. To this end, through the lens of the risk society perspec-tive, we illustrate how the conceptual framework provided by Ulrich Beckcan illuminate the changing nature of terrorism in contemporary society. Wesubsequently draw on Frank Furedi’s work on the culture of fear, to arguethat the discourse of terrorism constitutes part of a safety-conscious politics ofrisk that is acting as a lever for a wide range of social policies. Finally,

222 Security Dialogue vol. 39, no. 2–3, April 2008

1 Government spending on counter-terrorism in the UK will top £2 billion in 2007/08, as compared to £1.5billion in 2004/05 and less than £1 billion prior to 11 September 2001.



borrowing from the governmentality perspective, we unspool the threadwhich joins the international ‘war on terror’ to domestic law and order poli-cies.2 Although the theories considered here historically predate both 9/11and the formation of discourses of ‘new terrorism’, we will demonstrate thateach perspective provides a different aperture through which the problem ofcontemporary terrorism can be surveyed. To be clear, the object of the articleis not to evaluate the wider integrity of theories of risk nor to comment onwhich has the greatest social utility. Rather, we are seeking to discuss thepotentialities of cross-disciplinary theories of risk in unravelling the construc-tion, deployment and governance of terrorism. In addition to considering thepossibilities of risk theories, we wish to problematize the creeping transferamong security agencies from retrospective estimations of harm to a future-driven outlook and tie this to the political deployment of risk. Although wedraw on examples from several countries, our lens is most firmly fixed on theUK. Not only has Britain been the site of two recent terrorist attacks, it alsohas developed comparatively extensive legal and security countermeasurespost 9/11, factors that make it an important site of examination.3

Terrorism in the Risk Society: The Globalization ofInsecurity?

The major political and security issues that have affected Western nationsover the last two decades have been conceptualized in a number of wayswithin the social sciences. One of the most renowned attempts to grasp recentsocietal transformations can be found in Beck’s (1992) ubiquitously cited RiskSociety. Developed there and in subsequent texts (Beck, 1995, 1996), the risksociety thesis documents the deleterious effects of environmental risks oneveryday life while paradoxically championing the emancipatory capacity ofrisk to generate productive dialogue in the political sphere. In précis, Beckrecounts an epochal shift from industrial society to the risk society, which issupported by three pillars (Mythen, 2004: 17). First, contemporary securityrisks are defined as unique in their degree of temporal and spatial mobility.In comparison to the restricted harms arising in pre-industrial cultures, thethreats of the risk society cannot be temporally or geographically enclosed. Ineffect, the localized hazards common in industrial society have been sup-planted by the de-bounded dangers of the risk society. As the international

Gabe Mythen & Sandra Walklate Terrorism, Risk and International Security 223

2 For analytical purposes, we will use the more commonly used US term ‘war on terror’, rather than the ‘waragainst terrorism’ that is widely used in the UK.

3 It should further be added that the UK already has a relative glut of counter-terrorism laws, which wereadvanced in the years of struggle between the British government, Loyalist paramilitaries and the IRA.



reach of terrorist networks demonstrates, ‘national security is, in the border-less age of risks, no longer national security’ (Beck, 2002b: 14). Second, it isargued that risks have come to possess greater potential for harm in the modern age. Not only do manufactured risks stretch the globe, they also generate irremediable effects. Beck (2002b: 9) believes that the acceleration oftechno-scientific development has served to intensify, not alleviate, risk pro-duction: ‘the risks of terrorism exponentially multiply with technologicaladvancement. With the technologies of the future – genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics, we are opening a new Pandora’s box’. Third,the destructive force of manufactured risks shatters extant methods of insur-ance, as typified by the Chernobyl incident. In industrial society, hazards arepredicted and managed through insurance policies, welfare support systemsand legal rules. By contrast, in the global risk society, the violent force of‘worst imaginable accidents’ (WIAs) overpowers methods of institutionalregulation. Beck (2003) has it that these fluctuations in the composition anddistribution of risk reshape notions of security and alter the content of politics and public policy. As the focus within Western capitalist societies tiltsaway from the positive problem of acquiring ‘goods’ (e.g. income, healthcare, housing) toward the negative issue of avoiding ‘bads’ (e.g. environ-mental despoliation, AIDS and terrorism), overriding political conflicts areno longer about possession, but avoidance. Given that the foremost threats ofthe world risk society remain constant across space and place, the globality ofsecurity threats effectively democratizes the distribution of risk. While thelogic of the class society is sectoral – some win and some lose – the logic of the risk society is universal – everyone loses. In a perverse twist of fate, thesystemic risks produced as side-effects of capitalist expansion produce a‘boomerang effect’, returning to haunt affluent Western nations.

So, how can we draw on risk society theory to make sense of the changingnature of terrorism? In many respects, terrorism serves as a classic risk soci-ety problem, bearing the principal hallmarks of the manufactured risk(Mythen & Walklate, 2006a). It is worth solidifying this supposition by alluding to the three pillars of risk. In relation to the first pillar, which accentsmobility, dominant political narratives in the USA and the UK have re-inforced the idea that the terrorist threat is geographically universal. In thewords of former British prime minister Tony Blair (2004), ‘we have got to betotally vigilant in the face of the threat because all major countries around theworld face the same threat’. The topography of the terrorist threat thusinvites parallels with Beck’s claims about the universality of manufacturedrisks. Insofar as the distribution of threats in industrial society tracks hier-archical class structures, it might be argued that the terrorist risk forms a circular arc that effectively encircles extant ladders of affluence and poverty.Ultimately, avoiding a terrorist attack is impossible, even for the affluent. AsBeck (1996: 32) puts it, ‘there are no bystanders anymore’. For risk society




thinkers, the mobility and permanence of the threat of terrorism stretches theboundaries of time and space.4

Taking the second pillar of risk, the catastrophic nature of consequences, themodes of attack open to terrorist groups can be linked to the developmentaldynamics of the risk society. Constructed as a dominant political rhetoric, the ‘war on terror’ defines an existential threat that, owing to itsmagnitude, necessitates that exceptional security measures be taken (Gill,2006: 42). Politicians and security experts have routinely warned the publicabout all manner of potential threats, including radiological dispersaldevices, biological and chemical attack and airstrikes against nuclear facili-ties. For some, Al-Qaeda carries the most dangerous threat ever presented bya non-state group (Gregory & Wilkinson, 2005: 2). This kind of apocalypticvision can be aligned with Beck’s (2002a: 46) dramatic cautioning: ‘the theoryof world risk society is not just another kind of “end-of-history” idea: thistime world history does not end with the resolution of political and social ten-sions, as Marx and Fukuyama believed, but with the end of the world itself’.There are doubtless elements of a ‘boomerang effect’ in the way in which terrorist groups have been able to turn techno-scientific advances againsttheir creators. For instance, the dubious fruits of neoliberal capitalism havebeen skilfully harnessed by terrorist groups through activities such as phish-ing, money-laundering, tax evasion and identity theft (Sassen, 2002: 235).

Third, it could be postulated that terrorism cannot be effectively insuredagainst. The creation of generalized anxiety is a strategic terrorist objective,directed through the targeting of quotidian areas of civilian use. Owing touncertainty about the nature and location of forthcoming attacks, it is difficult to perform dependable risk assessments and to identify safe spaces.The unpredictable nature of terrorist attacks makes it impossible for securityagencies and governments to guarantee public security. For Beck, the no-warning suicide-bomb method used in recent attacks in the UK wipes out theprinciples of social insurance and criminal justice: ‘in a strict sense, the actand the suicide bomber are one. A suicide bomber can neither commit a suicide attack more than once, nor can State authorities convict him. This singularity is marked by the simultaneity of act, confession and self-extinguishment’ (Beck, 2002b: 8).

Despite its apparent theoretical applicability, there are also limits to Beck’sthesis and problems associated with its appeal to the novelty of terrorism (seeAradau & van Munster, 2007; Mythen, 2005; Mythen & Walklate, 2006a). In contrast to the positive dovetails above, there are also incongruities.Although the ‘new terrorist’ threat may be potentially universal, in practicecertain countries – largely those with histories of economic, cultural, politicaland religious imperialism – are more endangered than others. We may not be


4 Individuals and groups inspired by the philosophy of Al-Qaeda, for example, are thought to reside in atleast 60 countries across the globe (Barnaby, 2002: 131; ISP/NSC, 2005: 1).



completely surprised if the UK or the USA were subjected to future attacksby Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups, but it may puzzle us if Sloveniawere. Further, Beck’s meta-narrative of global bads needs to be rigorouslyprobed and evidentially validated. Although the spectre of WIAs may induceanxiety, it is debatable whether catastrophic events are more or less likely tohappen today than in bygone eras.5 Despite recent attacks in Spain and theUK, we need to remember that – in Western nations at least – terrorismremains a high-consequence, low-probability risk. Once we make the distinc-tion between risk as hypothetical possibility and risk as actual harm, the universalizing language of the risk society narrative comes unstuck. Clearly,certain classes of people living in certain areas and regions are more at riskthan others. As the recent miscommunication of Iraq’s weapons of massdestruction ‘capability’ in the UK and the USA demonstrates, a propensity to believe the worst-case scenario among political elites can lead to raw, slap-dash militarism, bringing ruinous consequences.6 Hypothetical risksmay operate along a sliding scale, but there are no degrees of death. Despitewell-documented and widely mediated fears about chemical, biological andradiological attacks, the methods recently used by individuals and groupsassembled under the banner of ‘new terrorism’ have been low-tech and rela-tively crude, as borne out by the 2005 attacks on the London Undergroundand the 2007 car bomb at Glasgow Airport. Consequently, it would beunwise to hastily concur with notions of a paradigm shift in the nature of terrorism and sagacious to deconstruct the claims forwarded by proponentsof the ‘new terrorism’ thesis (Mockaitis, 2007; Whyte & Burnett, 2005).Although Beck is right that traditional methods of calculating risk are theoretically confounded by the suicide bombing, such incidents areextremely rare in Western countries. Furthermore, as we will demonstrate,the political aftershock of such attacks can be used to extend as well as threaten the powers of dominant institutions.

Terrorism, Fear and the Politics of Risk

Having discussed the functionality of the risk society thesis as a tool forunpicking the changing nature of terrorism, we now turn to our second theory of risk, commonly associated with the work of Frank Furedi. Servingas a counterpoint to Beck’s predominantly realist perspective on risk,


5 Amid rumours about the perilous possibilities of hi-tech weaponry, we should remember that the bluntforce of territorial warfare claimed over 100 million lives in the course of the 20th century (Eagleton, 2001:15).

6 Figures released by Iraq Body Count indicate that between 77,333 and 84,250 civilians have been killedsince the ongoing military intervention in Iraq; see http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ (accessed 26November 2007).



Furedi’s ‘culture of fear’ approach is strongly constructionist. Furedi (2002,2005, 2007) posits that the current preoccupation with security threats isindicative of a tendency to focus on the destructive aspects of everyday life.In Furedi’s opinion, a culture of fear has taken root, promoted by politicians,journalists and security professionals. The constant media fixation withfuture threats to human security is said to encourage individuals to becomemore inward-looking and fearful, obscuring the fact that contemporaryWestern societies remain comparatively safe places to live. Furedi reasonsthat the cultural fixation with risk detracts attention from more severe anddeep-rooted global problems of poverty, malnutrition and disease.

Despite its scattered method, Furedi’s approach reminds us that risks arenot simply things ‘out there’. Although institutional methods of risk assess-ment may seek to objectively measure threats, the categories utilized arethemselves the products of cultural values and choices. Ways of measuringrisk are not objective, nor are they necessarily based on quantitative rational-ity (Sparks, 2001: 169). Security discourses are socially constructed by domi-nant institutions such as government, the police and the media. Whetherintentionally or otherwise, Furedi (2005, 2007) believes that these agencieshave been complicit in creating a climate of fear around terrorism. In both theUK and the USA, government officials have worked hard to keep terrorismhigh on the political and media agenda, particularly in times of relative calm.In the UK, there have been a number of alleged instances of threats to national security being leaked by the police and/or government to the media(Morris, 2004; Mythen & Walklate, 2006b). A series of foiled plots hatched byfundamentalist Islamic networks have been revealed, including the crashingof a plane into Canary Wharf Tower, the launching of surface-to-air missilesat Heathrow, explosive strikes on the Houses of Parliament and the detona-tion of a bomb at Old Trafford football stadium. Similarly, in the USA,President George W. Bush announced in February 2006 that Al-Qaeda hadintended to fly a plane into the tallest building on the west coast, the 73-storey Library Tower in Los Angeles. It later transpired that this plannedattack, allegedly to be executed by members of Jemaah Islamiah, was uncov-ered by intelligence services back in 2002. President Bush’s revelation fouryears later prompted the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, tocomplain that this was ‘the first he had heard about it’ (Webb, 2006). Suchexamples give credence to Furedi’s (2007: 4) claim that a culture of fear isbeing moulded around the terrorist threat, encouraged by institutions andagencies involved in security management:

The fact that more and more areas of life are seen as targets for terrorists – buildings,power stations, the economy and so on – has little to do with the increased capabilitiesof terrorists; rather it reflects the growth in competitive claims-making around fear andterror.




This is not to blithely state that raising public awareness about terrorism orencouraging the public to be vigilant in preventing terrorist attacks is a base-less enterprise. It is, however, to say that the calculated leaking of informa-tion about possible attacks for political gain is disingenuous and has sociallymalign consequences (see also Oborne, 2006; Mythen & Walklate, 2006b). It isprobable that each exposure of a ‘terrorist plot’ serves to ratchet up levels ofpublic concern about terrorism. Indeed, the attempt to manipulate popularemotions has historically proven to be an integral component of the governance of terrorism (Burkitt, 2005). Following Furedi (2007: 2), we canboth chart the discursive construction of terrorism while also grasping thatpublic feelings of anxiety are not always proportional to the degree of threat.Further, Furedi is alert to the manner in which the creation of a politics of fearcasts a shadow over informed debates about the causes of terrorism and thedevelopment of security policy. As Furedi (2007) recognizes, as well as radi-ating outwards into foreign policies, the politics of fear also circles inwardsand impacts upon domestic law and order programmes. There have beenseveral examples of transference of security practices deployed as specialmeasures to combat terrorism to other areas of crime control. In 2007, envi-ronmental protestors at Heathrow Airport were charged with a string ofoffences under anti-terrorism legislation, while in 2005 an octogenariansporting a T-shirt accusing Tony Blair of war crimes was cautioned under theTerrorism Act. Despite its being acknowledged by political elites as a globalphenomenon, crucial penal decisions about terrorism are being made on anad hoc basis within the boundaries of the sovereign nation-state, according tothe political preferences of presiding parties. Amid the legitimate concernexpressed about the terrorist risk, there is a need to ensure that legislativeresponses are commensurate with the level of threat. As we shall see throughthe eyes of the governmentality thesis, the shadow of fear shades into andobscures the rationale underpinning domestic anti-terrorism measures andinternational military interventions.

Governing Through Terrorism?

While Beck’s risk society theory enables us to track the global dimensions ofcontemporary terrorism and Furedi brings into view the political orchestra-tion of fear, thinkers inspired by Michel Foucault’s work have commented on the disciplinary effects of discourses of risk and security on human behav-iour. Building on Foucault’s (1978, 1980, 1991) writing, theorists such asCastel (1991), O’Malley (2002) and Dean (1999) have highlighted the role ofneoliberal social institutions in constructing understandings of human security that regiment human behaviour. Governmentality theorists argue




that, in contrast to preceding epochs, the operation of power in society is nowdecentred rather than direct and requires the active involvement of citizens(Dean, 1999: 19). In the contemporary context, the idea of governmentalityalludes to the neoliberal project to govern health and security risks as ameans of maintaining order through various modes of incitement and provo-cation (Denney, 2005: 35). Central to governmentality is the circulation of discourses generated by dominant institutions through which people cometo recognize and understand risk. Discourses condition human behaviour bygenerating ‘truths’ about society that are ‘interiorized’ by individuals(Foucault, 1978, 1980). In this way, power relations are reproduced not byforce but by activated individuals consenting to discourses that encouragepatterns of self-regulation. Not only do institutional discourses of risk makeindividuals responsible for their own safety management; they also encour-age the allocation of blame by attributing risk to marginalized groups.

There is clearly much mileage in applying elements of the Foucauldianapproach to the current regulation and management of terrorism. In particu-lar, the material effects of the squeezing together of national and interna-tional crime and security policies can be glimpsed through the Foucauldianlens (Mythen & Walklate, 2006a). At the level of institutional discourse, whatis being stitched together is much more than simply concern about the terrorist threat. Safety/security discourses around terrorism are mergingwith and subsuming existing ‘problem groups’. In this way, fears about terrorism become linked to contemporary folk devils: immigrants, bogusasylum-seekers, religious zealots and dole scroungers. Thus, the treatment ofterrorism forms part of a broader sweep of classifying and identifyingoffenders by risk values, rather than addressing them as rational social actors(Hudson, 2003: 42). Yet, such risk values easily become attached to anddraped over particular groups – for instance, young male Asian Muslims –who find themselves positioned as dangerous and ascribed risk identities.Whether intentionally or otherwise, the discourse of terrorism makes suspectpopulations out of particular ethnic groups. Police and security services inthe UK have mounted so-called ‘fishing expeditions’ among the Muslimcommunity to signal the extent of their surveillance. Such panoptic opera-tions form part of the wider criminalization and marginalization of theMuslim community, potentially alienating an already disadvantaged andunderprivileged minority group. A Metropolitan Police Authority surveyfound that the number of Asians stopped and searched by police jumped by41% between 2000/01 and 2001/02, and among black people by 30%, com-pared to 8% for whites in the same period. This categorization of safe andrisky kinds of people under conditions of high anxiety can lead to suspicionand distrust, encouraging ‘a constant scanning of all with whom we comeinto contact to see whether or not they pose a threat to our security’ (Hudson,2003: 74). Once attributed a risky identity, ‘othered’ groups can act as ‘a




punch-bag, a repository for blame’ (Joffe, 1999: 22). As governmentalitythinkers are aware, the process linking exclusion to blame is historicallyentrenched and culturally malleable.

Naturally, such social labelling around who is risky and the punitive measures coupled to it cannot be easily disassociated from wider politicalgoals and strategies (see Sparks, 2000: 8). Feeley (2003: 126) has previouslydescribed the embedding of crime as a ‘master theme’ that has acted as atouchstone for political debate and policymaking. Within this master theme,the threat of terrorism appears not only to have risen to the surface withinpolitical discourses, but also to have had an impact on areas of social policypreviously considered peripheral to crime control, such as immigration andwelfare. Working beyond governance through crime, it would appear thatthere is a presently a movement toward ‘governing through terrorism’(Mythen & Walklate, 2006a). Widespread concerns have been raised in theUK by civil rights campaigners, academics and journalists about the effects ofanti-terrorism legislation on fundamental democratic freedoms and liberties(Barnaby, 2002: 7; Biglino, 2002). The controversial use of control orders inthe UK affords the home secretary personal power to tag and track suspectsand to keep them under house arrest without formal charges being levied.Basic legal rights – such as the right to a fair trial, privacy, asylum and freemovement – are being curtailed because of the fear of terrorism. Since 9/11,extraordinary rendition has been used by the US government to transportdetainees to countries where torture is accepted. This practice effectivelybypasses due process required for extradition and is tantamount to kidnap-ping by the state (Gill, 2006: 24). The threat of state violence is doubtlessbeing deployed as a technology of control, through the geographically andideologically expansive ‘war on terror’ (see Jabri, 2006). As Oates (2005: 7)reasons, in such a climate ‘it is easy to slip into prejudices and assumptionsabout the enemy rather than focussing on any erosion of citizens’ rightsresulting from the war on terror’.

It is important to recognize that dominant notions of security are labile,socially situated and discursively defined (Bubandt, 2005). In the UK, thelegal governance of terrorism has effectively been redrawn via a raft of counter-terrorist legislation, including the Anti-Terrorism, Crime andSecurity Act (2001), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005) and the TerrorismAct (2006). While these forms of legislation have been formally imposed torestrict the freedom of terrorists, widespread concerns have been raised bothabout possible infringements of civil liberties and about the impact of newlaws on the surveillance and policing of ethnic minority groups. In otherWestern countries where anti-terrorism legislation has accelerated since9/11, such as Italy and Germany, similar concerns are being expressed aboutthe rebalancing of security and liberty within the criminal justice system(Patane, 2006; Safferling, 2006). The UK’s 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act




includes offences such as incitement to terrorism, acts preparatory to terror-ism, and giving and receiving terrorist training. Not only are these offencesdifficult to define, they augment the spectre of surveillance that hangs overthe Muslim community. The incitement to self-surveillance is further typifiedby the establishment of Muslim Contact Units designed to proactively seekout intelligence about suspicious activity. The UK government has also pro-posed that a database be constructed of individuals who have demonstrated‘unacceptable behaviour’, and it has vowed to increase surveillance of foreign students studying at UK universities (Oliver, 2005). Insofar as theremay appear to be little wrong with these proposed offences in principle, asprevious examples illustrate, it is the vagueness of definition and the ways inwhich such powers may be enacted that give rise to concern. Though politi-cally expedient, it may not be ethically appropriate to be pushing throughdraconian law and order measures in the present climate of high anxiety. Byfollowing the arc of the governmentality thesis, we are able to discern theimpact of the deployment of risk technologies for citizens. Government campaigns to increase awareness about terrorism launched in Australia andthe UK provide two apposite examples of ‘responsibilization’ in practice. Aspart of its ‘be alert, but not alarmed’ campaign mobilized after 9/11, theAustralian government sent all citizens an information kit, which included afridge magnet bearing the details of the ‘24-Hour National Security Hotline’through which the general public were encouraged to report suspiciousbehaviour (Lee, 2007: 161). In a parallel initiative, the UK governmentlaunched an £8.3 million campaign to inform the public about how torespond to emergency situations, disseminating an advice booklet to 25 million households. The specified objective of the campaign was to relayinformation about what members of the public should do to prepare formajor emergencies, such as a terrorist attack. The information in the emer-gency advice booklet is appreciably weighted toward the individual – ‘whatyou can do to protect yourself against risk’ – and away from the state – ‘whatwe are doing to protect you’. As such, the advice offered tends to individual-ize emergency situations and to ‘responsibilize’ people for their own riskmanagement, rather than laying out institutional security strategies (seeKearon, Mythen & Walklate, 2007).

Theorizing the Terrorist Risk: The Power of ‘What If?’

Thus far, we have demonstrated some of the ways in which cross-disciplinary risk theory can be put to work to read processes around the construction, deployment and regulation of the terrorist threat. Before wemove on to look at the political impacts of shifting forms of security assess-




ment, it is worth providing a capsule account of the modes and means bywhich different theories enable us to get a handle on the diverse politicaleffects of risk and its role in the management and governance of terrorism.

The risk society perspective – and, in particular, the notion of manufacturedrisk – can be used as a heuristic to map out the changing nature of terrorism inbroad brush strokes. Risk society theory is able to grapple with the globalparameters of terrorism and casts a projective line forward to speculate aboutfuture threats. This said, in application, Beck’s theory serves to accentuate thenovel features of contemporary terrorism and muddies the waters betweenthe possible and the probable degree of threat. In his recent work on cosmo-politanism, Beck (2006) has moved beyond conceptualizing terrorism as amanufactured risk and grappled more fruitfully with the underlying causesof terrorism. In particular, Beck promotes greater tolerance of religious difference and deeper awareness of some of the politically unspoken driversof terrorism, such as poverty, economic inequalities and cultural imperialism.

While the risk society framework permits us to tap into the changing natureof terrorism and the globalization of political violence, the governmentalityapproach can be used to deconstruct the discourse of ‘new terrorism’ and tohighlight its role in maintaining social order. In particular, governmentalitytheory steers us towards the ways in which coercive counter-terrorism measures extend the control of the neoliberal state. Following Foucault, thelegislation assembled in the UK to protect against the terrorist risk has reinforced state governance and intensified the classification and control ofcitizens. As discussed earlier, the dissemination of dominant discourses canfunction as a tactic of disciplinary control through which right-thinking citi-zens are encouraged to come to order. We can identify governmental policiesthat are designed to actively securitize individuals, recruiting them as atten-tive foot soldiers in the ‘war on terror’. Dominant political discourses of terrorism are disseminated by a matrix of institutional agencies that make theterrorist threat thinkable. The discourse of the ‘war on terror’ is an attempt tounify a disparate set of problems that places distinct limits on what can besaid and done about terrorism. As inferred in the examples discussed, the‘war on terror’ ideologically renders discrete populations dangerous andfunctions to endorse a myriad of extraordinary security measures. Moving astep beyond the descriptive capacity of the risk society perspective, the governmentality approach thus brings into the spotlight both the discursiveconstruction of the terrorist threat and the efforts of the state to (re)establisha mandate for social control.

So far as Furedi’s work is concerned, it is possible both to discern the fabri-cation of a culture of fear around terrorism and to consider the role of the terrorist threat in the broader formation of a politics of fear. It is feasible thata culture of fear around terrorism has thrived, promoted by media sensa-tionalism and the rhetoric and hyperbole of political leaders. In Western




countries threatened by terrorism, neoliberal politicians have become practised in nurturing and harnessing fear as a tool to sanction domestic andforeign policies (Burkitt, 2005). As we shall argue, institutional fixation withthe catastrophic possibilities of future terrorist attacks is just one dimensionof a ‘politics of fear’ in which worst-case scenarios drive the introduction oftighter law and order measures. Such overzealous counter-terrorist measures– which are themselves a product of the politics of fear – loop back into andreinforce a more expansive culture of fear. Not only has fearfulness about terrorism become part and parcel of the modern condition, the perception ofsociety being at risk is pervasive and self-conditioning (Tudor, 2003: 238;Furedi, 2002: 20).

To varying degrees, each of the theories of risk discussed recognizes that the contemporary governance of security involves various methods ofmeasuring, evaluating and estimating risk. Historically speaking, govern-ment through risk has been a common and ingrained practice in Western cultures (Dean, 1999; O’Malley, 2001: 85). Yet, in the late 20th century, we canidentify a caesura in relation to the political management of risk. As Lupton(1999: 98) reasons, a shift occurred from the immediate language of need and welfare toward the future-leaning language of risk. Having offered uptheoretical avenues into the problem of terrorism, it is now necessary to askwhat the drive toward future-oriented risk-based approaches means for theregulation of terrorism and how the political desire to manage terrorism propels the neoliberal quest to discipline the future.

Quite understandably, it is the duty of government to protect citizens,ensure free movement in public spaces and guard against terrorist attacks. Acentral plank of counter-terrorist strategy involves gathering intelligence anddata that can inform threat assessments and predictions. But, as Beck(2002a,b) warns, contemporary terrorism presents conspicuous problems forregulatory institutions, both nationally and internationally. There are per-ceptible and definite limits to the ‘knowability’ of terrorism (Whyte &Burnett, 2005: 6). Just three weeks before the 2005 bomb attacks in London,the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre (JTAC) – which includes representativesfrom MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the police force – issued a report that stated: ‘atpresent, there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability toattack the UK’ (Sturcke, 2005). Following on from the discovery of un-exploded car bombs in London in June 2007, police stepped up security at theWimbledon International Tennis Tournament and the Gay Pride event in thecapital (Dodd, 2007). A day later, a jeep full of explosives was driven into theentrance of Glasgow International Airport. None of the suspects chargedwith the car-bomb attack at Glasgow Airport were on MI5’s database of 1,600individuals classified as presenting a terrorist risk at home or abroad(Norton-Taylor & Cobain, 2007: 7). This institutional failure to accurately predict the future is partly a consequence of the changing shape of terrorist




groups alluded to earlier. Rather than a hierarchical organization, Al-Qaedais best described as a movement or idea that motivates a series of looser net-works and individuals (Gregory & Wilkinson, 2005: 2). In such indeterminatecircumstances, political decisions about security regulation take place underconditions of pervasive uncertainty and incomplete knowledge:

The ultimate deadlock of risk society . . . resides in the gap between knowledge and deci-sion: there is no one who really knows the global outcome – at the level of positiveknowledge, the situation is radically ‘undecideable’ – but we none the less have todecide . . . risk society is provoking an obscene gamble, a kind of ironic reversal of pre-destination: I am accountable for decisions which I was forced to make without properknowledge of the situation (Beck, 1999: 78).

This climate of not knowing enough – and, moreover, knowing about notknowing enough – has had a visible impact on the authority of security insti-tutions. So far as regulating terrorism is concerned, there has been a palpableshift toward futurity in practices of risk analysis and the language of gover-nance. A precautionary approach that suggests that security professionalsmust act in advance of possessing conclusive evidence has become prevalentin policing and military operations (Durodie, 2006: 2). The very impossibilityof estimating the terrorist risk can provide a mandate for the hasty imple-mentation of legislation that threatens civil liberties. The net result of thecreeping ‘presence of the future’ is that perceived forthcoming events cometo direct contemporary policies (Rasmussen, 2001). As Rigakos & Hadden(2001: 77) surmise, once institutions become consumed by the future, they areduty bound to assume responsibility for control. Speculating about and try-ing to anticipate terrorist attacks has been an ongoing theme in contemporarypolitical discourses. The battle against emergent forms of terrorism is cast asa conflict of the present and the future (Rasmussen, 2007). Whereas riskassessments have traditionally predicted future outcomes based on past performance, the calculus of risk used by politicians and security experts wasreprogrammed after 9/11. The new calculus does not assess the future byfocusing on the past – ‘What was?’ – nor indeed the present – ‘What is?’.Instead, security assessments are directed by the question: ‘What if?’. Thistransformation dictates that the basis of evidence changes under the risk ofterrorism. Once one assumes a projective ‘What if?’ position, presumption ofinnocence metamorphoses into presumption of guilt. As the indefinite deten-tion of non-UK subjects at Belmarsh Prison and the confinement of ‘enemycombatants’ at Guantánamo Bay illustrate, ‘What if?’ questions produce‘solutions’ that are extremely problematic at the level of both law enforce-ment and criminal justice. If citizens are detained because they might be planning terrorist attacks in the future, what charges can reasonably bebrought? Even in the event of a hypothetical charge being levelled, what legaldefence can the accused have?




Augmenting and cementing its use in judicial, intelligence and securitycommunities, the ‘What if?’ question has been prevalent in the realm of politics, with figurehead politicians such as George Bush and Tony Blair frequently using hypothetical attack scenarios to concretize the idea that it isinaction (nonviolence) rather than military action (state violence) that isimpractical. Implicit in such ideological manoeuvres, which form the build-ing blocks of Furedi’s politics of fear, is the assumption that pre-emption isthe only reasonable way of resolving terrorism. If political vistas are drivenby the hypothetical appearance of future dangers, the end point is invariablyworst-case-scenario thinking, as the Iraq WMD affair points up. A fixationwith projective horizon-scanning also supports and legitimates the mis-guided militarization of domestic policing. Following on from the 7/7 bomb-ings in London, an innocent Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes,was killed by eight close-range shots to the head as part of the MetropolitanPolice’s ‘shoot to kill’ policy, operationalized in response to the terroristthreat. It later transpired that the police had mistaken him for a suspectedsuicide bomber (Hinsliff, 2005). In a further example of overzealous action,250 police officers stormed a house in Forest Gate, London, in search of achemical weapon. In the arrest, Mohammed Kahar was shot in the chest as hewas detained with his brother Abul. After being held under the TerrorismAct and questioned for eight days, both men were later released withoutcharge (Dodd, 2006: 2). Following the London and Glasgow bombings, serious concerns have been expressed by the Asian community about a backlash against British-born Muslims. To cite one stark example, theMetropolitan Police reported an alarming 600% rise in religious hate crimesin the month directly following the 7/7 bombings.7

It is important to point out that there is nothing natural or inevitable aboutthe elements that constitute the ‘war on terror’. Rather, the ‘war on terror’ isa heterogeneous and orchestrated set of security processes and practices(Aradau & van Munster, 2007; Kellner, 2002; Rasmussen, 2004). What is moststriking about the ‘war on terror’ is its emphatic and absolute approach.Instead of seeking to limit and reduce the risk, the alleged objective of the‘war on terror’ is simply to wipe terrorism out. The obliteration of terrorismcan only be achieved by the adoption of an aggressive set of policies thatactively seek out terrorist cells and punish states that fail to quash or chal-lenge terrorist activities. Such power-plays are put into motion throughaggressive activities that ‘take the fight to the terrorists’, such as the invasionsof Afghanistan and Iraq. The Foucauldian echoes of such attempts to disci-pline and/or punish nations that give voice to or promote subaltern dis-courses about terrorism are axiomatic. Yet, it remains questionable as towhether these geopolitical excursions are legitimate, practical or just:


7 There were 273 recorded incidents in London the month of July 2005, as compared with just 41 incidents thepreceding month.



It is extraordinarily dangerous to declare, as the Bush administration has done, that thewhole world is a battlefield in the war on terror, and that the laws of war apply to everyelement of the struggle against terrorism. If the whole world is a battlefield and everysuspected terrorist is a combatant, then it would be entirely permissible for the UnitedStates to do on the streets of Paris or Hamburg or Cairo what it did . . . in Yemen – inother words, if its intelligence picked up the presence of a suspected terrorist in a housein a European or Middle Eastern city it could fire a Predator missile at that house so longas it took appropriate care to minimise civilian casualties (Malinowski, 2003: 85).

After the 2005 attacks in London by British-born Muslims, one might addthat – adhering to the presiding logic of the ‘war on terror’ – this makes theUK both the subject and the object of its own aggression. The current forma-tion of security policy in the USA and the UK appears to be driven by a desireto reproduce order in an uncertain world. Yet, this drive toward the certain-ties of bygone ages generates a clutch of thorny issues. First, if ‘new terror-ism’ is treated as a protean enemy, conflicts with vastly different roots andcauses – for example, in Chechnya, Spain and Palestine – are diagnosed as acommon disease to be treated with a universal dose of medicine (Sontag,2004: 3). Second, activist UK and US foreign policy has caused rifts within theUnited Nations, being criticized and resisted by many other member coun-tries (Goh, 2004). This ‘neo-isolationist reflex’ has led to the formation of acounter-modern security strategy that tramples over existing complexitiesand ambiguities in an attempt to provide order and certainty (O’Tuathail,1999: 9; Steinert, 2004).8 This is akin to managing the flux and uncertainty ofglobalization through blanket ‘either/or’ strategies, rather than acknowledg-ing the ‘and’ of the risk society (Beck, 1996). Such an absolutist approachdefines terrorism as a uniform object and frames the current situation as a ‘forus or against us’ battle between ‘good and evil’. Democratically elected governments have a duty to maintain basic civil liberties and uphold funda-mental freedoms. The tendency of the governments of the UK and the USA toignore international law, ride roughshod over human rights and restrict public liberties does not seem to be a particularly effective or ethically soundway of regulating international terrorism. True security cannot and shouldnot depend on inflicting insecurity on another. As Rehn (2003: 58) warns, ifparticular states flout consensually agreed security regulations, rules onhuman rights and fundamental freedoms, poco a poco the basis underpinningthem disappears and the rules lose meaning. The issue that needs to be fore-grounded in the present debate about the management of the terrorist risk iswhat degree of liberty is worth paying for what degree of security. If the pursuit of security comes at the expense of human rights, then not only is thequality of that security compromised, but the very principles of democracyare threatened. As Hudson (2003: 225) warns:


8 The Pentagon is said to have constructed contingency plans to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively againstat least seven countries (Barnaby, 2002: 3).



The fearfulness of risk society is leading western societies to respond to dangers in waysthat undermine the basic values of liberal societies, values honed to guard against thedangers of repression and inhumanity as well as to express commitment to democraticgovernance.

It is evident that the language of neoliberal politics has become saturatedwith risk and stunted in its discussions of the enduring burdens of poverty,disease and famine (Culpitt, 1999: 148).9 Against such a backdrop, Sachs(2007: 2) links together issues of safety and poverty, arguing that the formercannot be achieved without the eradication of the latter:

How can it be that we think we are safe? We think we can be safe when we leave a billion people to struggle literally for their daily survival; the poorest billion for whomevery day is a fight to secure enough nutrients . . . how can this be safe?

Not only do basic survival problems require solutions, they should not bereadily distanced from the issue of terrorism. In many respects, terrorism isacting as the ideational glue that sticks the politics of risk together. We wouldargue that the resultant projective risk-based security paradigm is as prob-lematic as it is perilous. In addition to being expediently mobilized to validate pre-emptive military attacks on international targets, the ‘What if?’proposition can also serve as a rationale for domestic law and order policies.In identifying the ‘presence of the future’ in current ‘war on terror’ dis-courses, we can begin to grasp the ways in which governments deploy tech-nologies of risk to both frighten and motivate citizens. Alongside the drive tosecuritize individuals, it is imperative that elected politicians orchestrate apublic debate about terrorism that directs attention away from fear andinstead seeks to discuss policy alternatives to regulating terrorism. In theaffluent West, the penumbra of the politics of risk is shading out pressingglobal issues. While Western nation-states strive to shore up their territoriesagainst terrorist attacks, 50% of the global population still do not have accessto clean drinking water and over 18 million refugees remain displaced. By2010, 10 million children in Africa will be orphaned as a result of AIDS(Cohen, 2001). Amid the fraught habitat of the risk society, we need to bebold enough to ask what the real dangers actually are and to insist that thepolitical ordering of risk is inspected rather than passively accepted.

Conclusion

In this article, we have considered the usefulness of theories of risk inunpacking different elements of the problem of terrorism. Our analysis hasbrought to the surface but some of the possible applications of risk theory to


9 The annual US military budget is $623 billion, while its aid to Africa totals $4.5 billion (see Sachs, 2007: 2).



the governance of security in a dynamic, threat-conscious world. We havealso discussed the wider implications of changing modes of risk analysis forpolitical strategies, forms of governance and security management. Thisremains an area ripe for cross-cultural empirical investigation and moreexhaustive theoretical exploration. At present, it would appear that the balance between liberty and security has become skewed, with the ‘war onterror’ overriding the political drive to meet the most basic of human needs(Shearing & Wood, 2007: 90). As Sassen (2002: 233) points out, ‘in the globalsouth, the growth of poverty and inequality and the overwhelming indebted-ness of governments that reduces resources for development, all are part ofthe broader landscape within which rage and hopelessness thrive’. In thelight of this view, greater attention needs to be directed toward the originsand the causes of terrorism (Behnke, 2004). Disregarding whether one agreeswith them, there are a cluster of broadly political reasons why extremistgroups such as Al-Qaeda encourage attacks on Western countries, includingtacit support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, economic assist-ance to authoritarian Arab regimes, and an expanded military presence in theMiddle East (McLaren & Martin, 2004).

History suggests that reliance on brute force is not an effectual way of eradicating terrorism. A political logic that reasons ‘my security depends onthe insecurity that I can inflict on you’ is both warped and counterproductive(Ould Mohamedou, 2007: 20). All of this indicates that powerful nations that demand to be heard but refuse to listen must become democraticallyreoriented. As the governance of security continues to be reconfigured, abroad-based dialogue is required between human rights groups, securitybodies and global governmental bodies (Kellner, 2002). With debates on cosmopolitanism increasingly infusing political analysis, it is worthwhilepursuing the possibilities of establishing these kinds of exchanges and dialogues. Beck has compellingly argued that cosmopolitanization is multidi-mensional, demands multiple loyalties and requires non-judgemental recog-nition of difference. It is a view of the contemporary social world that regardsthe either/or-ism of sameness/difference debates as constituting false alter-natives. Rather, Beck (2006: 57) promotes the ‘both/and principle’, whichrejects essentialist principles of universalism and the accenting of ethnic dif-ference. Somewhat in contrast, Benhabib’s (2002) work on cosmopolitanismfocuses on the ‘we’ question: who are ‘we’ and how do ‘we’ exist in a reflec-tive relationship with ‘the other’? In other words, how do we learn from eachother through deliberative processes and through that learning accommodatedifference? Understanding both the politics of risk and the risks of politics isa prerequisite for practically resolving these critical questions.

* Gabe Mythen is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. He is authorof Ulrich Beck: A Critical Introduction to the Risk Society (Pluto, 2004) and, with Sandra




Walklate, co-editor of Beyond the Risk Society: Critical Reflections on Risk and Human Security(Open University Press, 2006). He is presently writing a third book, to be published byPalgrave Macmillan, entitled Understanding the Risk Society: Crime, Security and Welfare.Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool.She is widely recognized for her work on criminal victimization, most recently Imaginingthe Victim of Crime (Open University Press, 2007) and (as editor) The Handbook of Victimsand Victimology (Willan, 2007). She is presently writing her third book on gender andcrime: Gendering Crime and Criminal Justice, to be published by Willan. The authors wouldlike to thank the two anonymous reviewers who commented on an earlier draft of thisarticle for their constructive feedback. The faults that remain are our own.

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Terrorism, Risk and International Security