Thread by @AnnaMeierPS

So the Biden admin released its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, which de-prioritizes international counterterrorism in favor of great power balancing and statecraft.

Here is a Saturday night thread on why those are actually not separate things. 1/

What this thread is NOT: an argument for expanding the counterterrorism umbrella to include yet more policy areas. It is, however, a plea to observe how the 20+ yrs of "war on terror" discourse have exacerbated problems & expanded the idea of terror whether we like it or not. 2/

Let’s take an example: China. From a statecraft perspective, China is a major strategic concern for the US. If you believe human rights need to at least in part govern U.S.–China relations, however, then counterterrorism has to become part of the equation. 3/

Why? Because the “war on terror” narrative, spurred by the U.S., has enabled China to co-opt the discourse of terrorism to justify gross human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Why are Uyghurs a threat, according to the CCP? In no small part because they are “terrorists.” 4/

Another example: India. Want to focus on cooperation with India? Then you have to deal with the Modi regime, which has adopted the not-at-all-concerning habit of calling the world’s largest Muslim minority “terrorists.” This is not independent, again, of the GWOT discourse! 5/

Maybe you don’t care about this. I’d argue that you should, & certainly the U.S. has to also clean its own house. But healing the significant wounds from the GWOT era won’t happen if we consider great power competition as a space not continually shaped by ideas from the GWOT. 6/

I don’t want to over-attribute power to U.S.-driven terrorism discourses: as Maria Josua & others have shown, terrorism laws in many countries predate 9/11 & continue to be used in ways that challenge Western conceptualizations of “terrorism.” AND (not but)… 7/

…the GWOT has created an exceptionally permissive environment wherein countries can co-opt a “tough on terrorism” stance to at once cover for domestic fuckery (technical term) & gain currency w/ the U.S. & legitimacy as a team player in the international community. 8/

Any transition away from operations traditionally characterized as CT (i.e., kinetic ops, COIN, etc.) has to simultaneously consider how U.S. CT has embedded the “terrorism” label in the international psyche as an increasingly visible tool of state power off the battlefield. /fin