The War on Terror and the Law of War: Shaping International Order in the Context of Irregular Violence

After 11 September 2001 it was routinely declared that 9/11 ‘changed everything’ and that what had changed was immutable. Following the synthesis on democracies’ war justifications over the last three decades presented by Anna Geis and Wolfgang Wagner, Michael Stohl focuses on US-American justifications of the ‘war on terror’: He explores how 9/11 altered the constructions of the threat of terrorism and how these constructions in turn affected arguments and justification for the use of force in the context of counter-terrorism. The creation of the ‘war on terror’ was a core component of the construction of new national security threats. This was accompanied by the securitization of counter-terrorism. Increased fear of further attacks reinforced the persistence of a Westphalian interstate system and the central role of sovereignty claims within the global governance regime. This altered the balance within most democratic national states between law enforcement approaches for domestic threats and alliance-based or unilateral armed responses for international threats. The chapter explores how this has further altered arguments for and justifications of the use of force at home and abroad.