Counter-terrorism has become, certainly, a profitable industry and has spawned an endless flow of learned but useless literature. But in reality, there is no evidence whatsoever that terrorism endangers Western states, their economic viability, their defense, their territorial integrity, or their social fabric.

The promotion of the terrorism myth has little to do with facts, but much to do with policy: The justification of wars and the justification of mass surveillance.

Thanks for your thoughts. There is certainly a divide between Left (advocating Article III court trials) and Right (advocating indefinite detention and/or military tribunals) in the US. That this divide is not represented by Congressional Democrats and Republicans speaks more to the political climate than the state of the ideological spectrum I think (though admittedly it is in part indicative of both). And it is clear that there is a lot of debate even within the Obama administration – between ‘idealists’ at the State Department and DOJ and security-orientated thinkers at the DOD and within the President’s staff itself.

Best,

CM

Thank you for the response and kind words. You are right that there are many reasons to be pessimistic about the US. It is clear from, for example, Daniel Klaidman’s new book, that counter-terrorism law is now an area where the divide between the Left and Right is very great and the hopes for a return to a pre-September 11 approach to counter-terrorism are gone (though I think it is also a more subtle approach than a pure ‘war’ paradigm).

However, at least this is happening in the open in the US – and so can be open to political contest. Insofar as I comment on politics in the book (I focus principally on the problems with the law) I argue that the EU legislation is more difficult to identify as such and that it operates in a public sphere (such as it is) that is also rather problematic (given the failure of national press to pay any real attention to these matters at EU level).

The EP is indeed banging its drums but to little effect so far. I disagree that PNR has improved much, if any, and may have become worse. Also – we are looking at an EU PNR system – for no reason other than to mirror external policy. So I am not sure that the EP is having much real effect, despite the efforts of the LIBE Committee, Sophie in ‘t Veld, etc. And there is evidence from other fields, such as migration, that it too is capable of rather illiberal action when it is granted ‘real’ power as co-legislator.

I’m not saying that I’d trade EU policies for US ones (and indeed the book is not a comparative study) but I think that counter-terrorism law is a field where the lack of an open public debate on EU law is seriously problematic – and is likely to remain so.

However, I’m not sure whether legal and political action may bring the state of exception in the US quicker to an end than in the EU.

While the ‘war on terror’ language isn’t used anymore, US officials in the Pentagon, the State Department, the President himself and Congress have clearly embraced the ‘war paradigm’ to counter (international) terrorism, and there’s nothing that suggests that this approach will be changed any time soon. The fairly recent adoption of the NDAA should be seen in this context as well.

In the EU on the other hand there’s much more legislative opposition against the EU’s counterterrorism proposals. Commissioner Reding can say that “Data Retention is here to say”, but there’s an important evaluation coming up which might change the scope and content of the Directive dramatically. The EP further increased substantially the privacy safeguards in the PNR-agreement, and called for a substantial evaluation of the EU’s CT policies.

The EP seems to be keen to change at least some of existing CT legislation. I don’t see that happening in the US, where there’s not too much (positive) legislative change to be expected from Congress.