The ‘War on Terror’ as Primitive Accumulation in Tunisia: US-Led Imperialism and the Post-2010-2011 Revolt/Security Conjuncture

Abstract: This article examines the rearticulation and reconfiguration of US-led imperialism vis-à-vis Tunisia in the aftermath of the 2010–2011 popular revolt. Challenging the prevalent economic-military binary in analyses of US-led imperialism in the region, it treats instead economic intervention in Tunisia as linked to and shaped by ‘security’ intervention, with the violence of the War on Terror laying the groundwork for a new wave of primitive accumulation. Employing conjunctural analysis, it considers how the 2015 attacks, largely targeting European tourists at a Sousse beach resort and the Bardo national museum, were mobilized to further Tunisia’s imbrications within imperialist security architecture through legal interventions, border violence, peripheral militarization, increased ‘security’ spending and neocolonial ‘expertise’, debt and racialized financialization. In doing so, the 2015 security conjuncture reinforced Tunisia’s peripheral status in the international system and enabled further surplus value drain, though not without resistance. The article concludes by reflecting on popular struggles and the current conjuncture, which is characterized not only by public health and economic crises, but also by the rise of a multipolar world order that, when combined with working class organization and mobilization, may provide an opening for Tunisia to delink from the imperialist core. Such a transformation would domore than any platitudes about human rights and ‘security sector reform’ to radically transform the nature of the Tunisian security state and the social relations it is designed to uphold.