Terrorism, Counterterrorism Approaches

International Law and Politics

Historically, counterterrorism strategies have at least two important precursors. First, in the middle of the 19th century, autocratic political regimes in Europe responded to political dissent of a more or less violent nature by organizing national and international police and surveillance practices. Among these efforts were police activities involving covert surveillance practices as well as cooperation activities, on a bilateral and multilateral scale, to exchange information on wanted political opponents of established autocratic regimes. Police institutions conducted these activities and, in the course of their activities, gradually gained professional expertise and autonomy to focus attention on more distinctly criminal rather than political enforcement objectives. Second, developments in the area of international law occurred to outlaw and institute appropriate practices against politically motivated violent activities. Most distinctly, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, governments signed treaties that led to organized international efforts against anarchist [Page 930]movements. Similarly, the first international treaty specifically dealing with terrorism was in 1937, when the League of Nations drafted a convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism. However, only one country, India, ratified the agreement, testifying to the ideological difficulties within and across nations to enact measures and foster collaboration on a matter as politically volatile as terrorism.

During the remaining decades of the 20th century, government policies and legislative actions against terrorism evolved slowly and in piecemeal fashion, typically focusing only on specific violent and criminal activities often associated with terrorism, such as hijackings and bombings, rather than on terrorism as such. For instance, the United Nations adopted a convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons in 1973 and on the Taking of Hostages in 1979. Similar international treaties against terrorism were adopted by other international governing bodies, such as the Council of Europe and the Organization of American States, as well as at the bilateral level between nation-states. International treaties, however, could not lessen terrorism as an often contentious issue in the global field of international relations.

In the United States, legal and policy efforts against terrorism developed even more slowly than in the international arena, primarily because of a prevailing view that terrorism was a foreign problem. During the Reagan administration emerged the Act to Combat International Terrorism of 1984 and an Omnibus Anti-Terrorism Act in 1986. Yet, it was not until certain high-profile terrorist incidents, such as the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, that the Clinton administration stepped up legislative efforts against terrorism, leading to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.

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