Modification de Terrorism or terrorisms? Some epistemological considerations

{{Infobox Lecture
 | image = 
 | image_caption = 
 | faculté = [[Faculté des sciences de la société]]
 | département = [[Département de science politique et relations internationales]]
 | professeurs = [[Rémi Baudoui]]<ref>[https://unige.ch/sciences-societe/speri/membres/remi-baudoui/ Page personnelle de Rémi Baudoui sur le site de l'Université de Genève]</ref> (2011 - )
 | assistants =  
 | enregistrement = [https://mediaserver.unige.ch/collection/AN3-1220-2014-2015.rss 2014], [https://mediaserver.unige.ch/collection/AN3-1220-2014-2015.rss 2015] 
 | cours = [[Terrorism and international relations]]
 | lectures =
* [[Terrorism or terrorisms? Some epistemological considerations]]
* [[National security and counter-terrorism: the example of Latin America]]
* [[Internationalisation of struggles and emergence of international terrorism]]
* [[International relations and the fight against international terrorism]]
* [[The United States and the New International Order]]
* [[Middle East Geopolitics]]
* [[September 11, 2001 ruptures]]
* [[Al-Qaida and the "geopolitics of radical terrorism"]]
* [[Combating terrorism and rebuilding transatlantic relations]]
* [[Arab Spring Against Terrorism: Issues and Perspectives]]
* [[Homegrown jihadism: How to prevent terrorist catastrophe?]]
}}
We will reflect on the place and evolution of terrorism in a long and rather historical perspective, the purpose of which is to try to explain the relationship between terrorism and international relations. This course explores the impacts, influences and relationships between terrorism and international relations on the assumption that any violent action from a historical point of view influences the evolution of international relations, there is an interrelationship.

The challenge is to question how terrorism will change international relations.

September 11,2001 opened a Pandora's box. George Bush, with the war on terrorism, made a conceptual leap forward by situating the role of states as actors in the fight against terrorism not only at their borders, but also at the global level as Al-Qaeda presented itself.

This course presents the evolution of terrorism and then looks at its impact on the field of international relations. The terrorism of the 1960s has nothing to do with today's terrorism, while today's terrorism has nothing to do with Al-Qaeda's terrorism on September 11,2001.

The major powers have made the fight against terrorism a political priority and increasingly will fight terrorism outside the borders of the nation-state itself in an attempt to eradicate it at its source.

The reflection that needs to be undertaken is on the question of the plural. If we talk about "terrorism", we are talking about another logic, a much more complex system, there are several forms of terrorism. In saying this plural, we mean that there are very different forms of actions of violence from one another, we must understand the nature of these forms in order to understand the nature of the actions. How are forms of terrorism evolving with the structure of the nation-state?

We are going to wonder about the definitions, because the qualification of "terrorism" is a highly negative one. The term "resistance fighter" gives credence to legitimacy; they are people who defend a cause, they resist. Terrorism is a word of devalorization, we recognize nothing more than producing and provoking violence. The use of qualification is a brake.

During the Second World War, resistance fighters who fought against the Germans called themselves "resistance fighters," defending an ideal of resistance against an illegitimate power. The discourse of terrorism is used on the part of the German power, because it works by violence to prevent the system from functioning.

There is a qualification issue. The stakes are the very power of words, they denigrate and value. 

{{Translations
| fr = Le terrorisme ou les terrorismes ? De quelques considérations épistémologiques
| es = ¿El Terrorismo o los terrorismo? Algunas consideraciones epistemológicas
| it = Terrorismo o terrorismi? Alcune considerazioni epistemologiche
| de = Einige erkenntnistheoretische Überlegungen zum Begriff des Terrorismus
}}

= A problem of definition =

The first authors give the impression of a complicated dimension:

{{citation bloc|Terrorism is a catch-all concept|Alain Joxe}}

{{citation bloc|Terrorism is a trashcan concept|Régis Debray}}

{{citation bloc|The word is imprecise|Ignacio Ramonet}}
 
We're in a very complicated use of that word. Basically, the question that needs to be asked is about a genealogy of the word. If we do scientific work, we always ask to explain the genealogy of a word. When describing a situation, the use of the word used should be described. It is indeed necessary to go back on the merits of the debate with the need to build a genealogy of the word.
 
Regarding the word Revolution, Raymon Aron said: {{citation|The quarrels of words reduced to themselves, have only a mediocre meaning, but very often, the discussion on the word reveals the substance of the debate.}}. To understand complexity, the history of the word must be retraced.
 
The hypothesis is that the word "terrorism" has a great weakness of conceptualization.
 
It's a catch-all word, imprecise is that has not been conceptualized. If it is said that "the weather is fine today" on and in appreciating a feeling, each one feels something and expresses his feelings that is emotional. The concept means that we are working on an object is that we conceptualize it from a scientific point of view and no longer an emotional one like, for example, the concept of the nation-state.
 
Conceptualization is a very important work done at different points in history to qualify a specific situation. If the word terrorism has a great weakness of conceptualization, it is because it is not a concept, but an appreciation.
 
The emergence of a new word or a new vocabulary does not mean that the problem has not preceded it. There is a given moment in history when the word terrorism will come out, but violence of a terrorist characterization is a prerequisite to the definition of the word. That is, we are looking at certain facts defined by other words than terrorism.
 
The word "terrorism" can now be described as "terrorism", which in their day was not called "terrorism".

== Terrorism is as old as mankind ==

Berchorius, who is a Benedictine monk, defines the term "terrere" in his book ''Tite-Live's Roman History'', which means trembling. We're in the order of emotion and sensation.

[[Fichier:Labille-Guiard Robespierre.jpg|thumb|200px|Portrait de Maximilien de Robespierre, peint par Adélaïde Labille-Guiard en 1791.]]
 
In any terrorist act, there is a will to produce a concussion, to produce a concussion phenomenon. Shaking means moving the bases and destabilizing, creating fright. September 11,2001 is a moment of "terrere" by the inability of individuals to understand what they are going through.

The tremor is on the question of intensity. At some point in time, there will be a crystallization of incidents and problems that will explode the frame of reference. The question of the earthquake finds itself in revolutionary terror. 

{{citation bloc|Terror is nothing but swift, stern and inflexible justice. It is an emanation of virtue.|Maximilien Robespierre, Speech to the Convention of 5 February 1794.}}
 
From 1794 onwards, Robespierre, who felt that the republic was in danger of being threatened by the royalists, engaged in terror. We must produce violence, almost terrorist violence on the basis that we must save the nation by setting up courts of public salvation. It is the same thing as Pol Pot in Cambodia, where one enters into furious madness to preserve a purity of the revolutionary act.

== From now on, the word terror is declined ==

[[Fichier:Kant foto.jpg|100px|vignette|droite|Portrait de Emmanuel Kant.]]

The word terrorism must be inferred from the question of terror. In essence, terrorism is going to be the act of making terror or "terrere" reign, it is the voluntary act that will make a device or edifice tremble. One finds this reflection particularly through Kant who has a hedonistic vision of humanity. However, another conception of history exists which is the terrorist dimension which is the dimension of shaking.
 
{{citation bloc|To oppose the eudemonic conception of human history (happiness) with the terrorist conception of human history.|Emmanuel Kant, 1798.}}

[[File:Karl Marx 001.jpg|100px|thumb|Karl Marx.]]

Within the framework of a perpetual peace project, Kant will try to build his perpetual peace project, but for this he must question himself about the terror that must be dissolved.
 
The adjective "terrorist" begins to appear in use in the great powers such as England, Germany in the Hispanic world, but also in France with the French Academy which in 1798 uses the term "system of terror".
 
It's an ambivalent dimension. We find this dimension in Marx, for whom the act of terror is composed of two dimensions:
*revolutionary action.
*counterrevolutionary state repression.
 
These are two phases that still make it possible not to reach consensus. Thus, the word "terrorism" refers to a kind of Janis composed of two opposite faces.

== Special case of Islam ==
Islam was built around a vocabulary of war and conflict in which the word "terrorism" does not originally have its place, it does not exist in classical Arabic.
 
The word "terrorism" does not exist in all cultures. The fighting Islam of Muhammad, to build itself in the Arabian Peninsula then develop in the Mediterranean area developed a combat vocabulary. These are words to situate conflict situations, but there is no concept of terrorism:
*Feda : the fight for a sacred cause
*Qiçâs [قصاص‎] : the law of Talion
*Gitâl : murderous combat
*Harb : war
*Jihâd [جهاد] : triple acception :
**the individual notion of effort by surpassing one's being
**spiritual ascension
**the legitimate warrior enterprise
Radical Islam legitimizes the use of physical violence on the basis of the updating of jihâd.
*Ghuluw : Exaggeration, excess: describes extreme violence
*Irhab [terrorism] supplemented with the words tatarruf [extremism] and ightiyâl [slaughter].

== Modern Definitions of Terrorism ==

[[Image:Savinkov.jpg|thumb|200px|Boris Viktorovitch Savinkov.]]

Until the early 20th century, there was an ambivalence around the word "terrorism". Russia was marked by a strong anarchist movement, Boris Savinkov self-proclaimed "terrorist". In order to use the word "terrorist", it must be positive.
 
From the 1930s onwards, the positive dimension disappeared and became purely negative. The one who accuses someone of terrorism describes him as not having the legitimacy of his struggle. A terrorist makes terror without a political project, there is no legitimacy of the action of violence. It is a stigmatizing action of the inner enemy suspected of serving with more or less conscience the interests of the inner enemy: {{citation|they're terrorists.}}.
 
Anyone who at one time could qualify as a "terrorist" can no longer use it. During the German occupation, resistance fighters were terrorists. If they are terrorists, in the devaluing image, they escape all laws and rules. The terrorist will be qualified as an illegal fighter. Usually the treatment of an illegal fighter goes very fast...
 
The use of the word is offered as a means of denying the actors of violence any legitimacy. The use of violence is totally delegitimized, justifying very strong repression such as the use of torture. In order to ensure the security of the State, torture must be allowed. The word "terrorism" becomes an all-encompassing discourse.

== Need to build another vocabulary for the actors of violence ==

[[Fichier:Maquis guerre d'espagne.png|250px|vignette|droite|Los maquis de la sierra de Jaén.]]

We will have to create another discourse to legitimize the terrorists' actions. {{citation|we were called terrorists}}, it creates a kind of distance. In the battle narratives, the one who was potentially a terrorist will give a speech to say that he is not a terrorist.
 
The term "guerrillas" appeared in Latin American movements in the 1970s. In Italy, the Red Brigades in 1973 used the term resistance fighter.
 
Other words have the same semantic problem. The history of the word "terrorism" and undoubtedly related to other words:
*'''Fundamentalism''': Protestant heresy.
*'''Religious fundamentalism,''': in eighteenth-century Catholic Spain.
*'''Fanaticism''': the Roman place of the oracle.
 
These are overdetermined words in the content forgetting history, such as fundamentalism.

== How to see it more clearly ==

Terrorism as a concept would be a form of social science impenetration. An impenetrable is the opposite of thought, it is a scientific object that cannot be conceptualized. The field of the social sciences is both constructed by thought objects and there are objects that are impenetrable that prevent.
 
If we can't build, it's because there are several reasons. This was not built in a noble conception, social sciences, researchers could not grasp it as a scientific object. Structuralist history, sociology, polemology which is a science of war has worked on the wars of nation-states.
 
Terrorism has therefore not been studied. We can talk about "scientific ostracism":
*Questioning absent from Structuralist History in the 1930s and 1950s.
*This question is absent from sociology, which only deals with the question of violence.
*paradoxical case of polemology which seeks to produce a science of war and violence.

== Terrorism ==
The issue of terrorism is reinterpreted by the sciences according to the analytical perspective, but has never been looked at as such.
 
The historian is part of the history of human violence, the political scientist belongs exclusively to the field of politics, the philosopher engages in a reflection on the use of good and evil leading to a moral question against radical evil such as Hannah Arendt, the psychologist and psychoanalyst situate terrorism on the side of impulses referring to a psychological process and the impact of evil in human nature, for the human being.

==Des définitions infinies==
There is no structured social field on these issues. If we are in an infinite field of definition, there are two types of approaches:
*'''Intentionality''' [the upstream]: we are going to characterize the terrorist act by the intention of the act itself. It is one of the first currents that appear, what is intentionally thought of as terrorism.
*'''The impact of acts''' [the downstream]: we question not the nature of the intention, but the nature of the facts produced. It is a definition of effectiveness, we will technicise the definition within the framework of a politicization of the act.
 
The infinite palette of intentions and forms of action inevitably leads to plural definitions.

== Du côté de l’amont [l’intentionatlité] ==
[[Fichier:Baudrillard + vaneigem + aron + krigel.png|100px|vignette|droite|Jean Baudrillard, Raoul Vaneigem, Raymond Aron et Annie Kriegel]]

{{citation bloc|Terror is the ultimate stage of the system that eliminates accidental death and replaces it with systematic and organized death.|Jean Baudrillard}}

{{citation bloc|The rules of terrorism are imposed by the cops, judges, bosses, chiefs, defenders of merchandise and its system of death and multiply their presentation.|Raoul Vaneigem, Vaneigem idéologise la définition du terrorisme, c’est ce que l’État organise en termes de violence.}}
 
{{citation bloc|A terrorist act is defined as a violent act of violence, usually carried out by an individual or a non-state group, for almost always political purposes, against nondiscriminatory targets, with limited means and whose particularity is to produce a climate of terror or whose psychological effects are out of proportion to the physical results that result from such an act.|Raymond Aron}}.

Aron's definition eliminates the definition of terrorism as a state phenomenon. In the case of the Terrorist regime, it is a state terrorism that, in the name of defending certain forms of freedom, will terrorize a small portion of its population and Russia in order to maintain power. Aron eliminates this approach. In the case of 9/11 on one side Aron rightly, it is a terrorist attack "made with cutters", but in reality, if we calculate the cost of preparing for 9/11, the cost becomes higher, if we look at the effects of 9/11, it becomes a global crisis.
 
{{citation bloc|Even though they often complement each other and are also reprehensible, political assassinations and terrorism are two different things: terrorism is by nature indiscriminate and strikes innocent people taken hostage. Political assassination kills opponents.|Annie Kriegel}}
 
The filter of a definition identifies and seeks to qualify the act according to this definition.

== On the downstream side [the impact of the acts] ==

It is impossible to avoid the trap of depoliticization, which is part of the very common usage of the word. For Jean-Luc Marret,"Terrorism" can be thought of "as a practice, or even as a profession". By taking a downstream position, it will depoliticize terrorism. Terrorism can be a profession, just as Carlos sold his competence.
 
Numbers of definitions appear that are equally questionable:
{{citation|Political terrorism}}
<div>Can there be terrorism that is not political? Where do we draw the line between the two? A mobster doesn't think the world, he has a criminal ideology.
 
{{citation|Weak Terrorism}}
<div>Can there be a strong terrorism?
 
{{citation|Ideological terrorism}}
<div>Can there be non-ideological terrorism?
 
{{citation|Blind Terrorism}}
<div>How to characterize non-blind terrorism?

[[File:Chomsky.jpg|thumb|150px|Noam Chomsky]]

All these typological analyses carried out in particular by Isabelle Sommier and shows the emergence of typologies in terms of origins, aims and means.
 
Une conclusion s’impose. Le mot « terrorisme » résiste à tout effort de simplification conceptuelle. Le terrorisme n’est pas une réalité extérieure à toute société humaine.
 
Après le 11 septembre 2001, Noam Chomsky dit {{citation|le terrorisme est ce que les dirigeants appellent ainsi}}. Pour Chomsky, ne regardons pas le terrorisme, mais ce qu’il emploie. C’est une critique très forte de l’administration Bush.

= Aperçu historique de l’histoire du terrorisme =

The history of terrorism can only be rooted in an all-encompassing and minimalist vision of terrorism that defines terrorism on the basis of the lowest common denominator - the act of violence as such.

[[Fichier:Karl Theodor von Piloty Murder of Caesar 1865.jpg|thumb|300px|''La Mort de César'' par Karl von Piloty<br />« Métellus lui découvrit le haut de l’épaule ; c’était le signal. Casca le frappa le premier de son épée » (Plutarque)]]
 
A possible but not exhaustive list:
*Initial form: the ancient tyrannicide stated by Plato and Aristotle for whom tyrannicide is a duty and considered normal.
*Julius Caesar's death.
*The Jewish Zealots: Sicarius, who kills with a dagger.
*The Hashishin sect[Assassins] between 1090-1272: Al-Qaeda is considered to be on the same model.
*The Spanish Inquisition from the 13th to 16th century.
*Religious wars.
*Thirty Years' War, 1618 - 1648.
*The French Revolution and the birth of Revolutionary Terror instituted by Robespierre.
*We must rule by iron those who cannot be governed by justice: we must oppress the tyrants "Saint-Just.
*Attempted assassination of Napoleon in December 1800, which was the first terrorist act described a posteriori.
*The "White Terror" of royalists in France, 1815-1916.
*The revolutionary struggle advocated by Michel Bakounine (1814-1876).
*Spanish anarchism, 1878-1893.
*Anarchism in Europe (Italy, France,...).
*Assassination of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria on the Geneva quays by Luigi Lucheni on 10 September 1898.
*Theories of anarchist communism and the theory of "propaganda by the facts."
*Ravachol in France.
*Pierre Kropotkin's pre-revolutionary Russia.
*Revolutionary catechism.
*The Assassination of the Tsars.
*The 1917 Russian Revolution and the "new terrorism".
 
Factual propaganda is the very act of killing or violence that acts as propaganda. Terrorist violence exists only because of the fact that there is publicity. There is in the terrorist dimension only because what is at stake is the publicity of the act, which explains very well why terrorism is in the city because it is the place where there is the production of value and wealth. There is no terrorist act where there is no publicity for the act.
 
From the 19th century onwards, individual or collective acts of terrorism emerged. In tsarist Russia, the struggle blends anarchists who consider that there is a legitimacy of the revolutionary struggle through violence. They will happily try to kill and all the anarchism in Europe will be built on it, where political assassination becomes a normal part of the political resistance.
 
The most important wave of terrorism is pre-revolutionary Russia. Often violence being something extreme, this justifies the construction of a discourse and rhetoric, there is no terrorist movement without producing an ideological discourse with the production of many papers that justify action. The fight against terrorism is based on the analysis of a discourse. In Russia, there was a revolutionary catechism.
 
== Around the First World War: 1914 - 1918 ==

Appear a little more contemporary forms detached from all religious and/or purely spiritual references. All that is revolutionary is linked to the creation of a national feeling with the creation of nation-states and oppressed nations that engage in revolutionary struggle against the oppressor.
 
The Irish Republic Brotherhood[IRB] was created in 1858, and in 1918 the Irish Citizen Army[ICA] and the Irish Republican Army[IRA] were established. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation[FRA] was also created in 1890. The Revolutionary Organisation for the Independence of Macedonia was founded[ORI] in 1893. In 1919 it was the Italian Fasci di combattimento, in 1922 the Freikorps which was a system of intimidation and violence that brought Hitler to power, in 1927 the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood was founded to fight against English oppression, and in 1934 the Long March of Mao took place, which can be considered a revolutionary movement.
 
On 21 May 1941 Alfons Moser, a randomly chosen German soldier killed by two bullets in the head at the Barbés metro station in Paris, was murdered on 21 May 1941. Positions must be radicalized to create a movement of resistance to oppression. On 24 December, Admiral Darlan was assassinated in Algiers by the Resistance, which multiplied the number of commandos and attacks on German strategic infrastructure in occupied France.
 
Terrorism continued after 1945 in the struggles of decolonization such as in Ho Chi Minh with the revolutionary struggle in Indochina or on 1 November 1954 with the bombings in Algiers and the creation of the Front de Libération Nationale[FLN]. The "Battle of Algiers" is the moment when the Secret Army Organization[ASO] was created.

== The 1960s and 1970s ==

A distinction must be made between "international terrorism" and "global terrorism". International terrorism is the terrorism of the 1960s and 1979s that will begin to internationalize. However, even if the demands are beginning to internationalize, they remain confined to the nation-states. It is an international dimension of terrorism where the demands are internationalist, but can also remain in the nation-state, whereas for Al-Qaeda we are talking about globalized terrorism.
 
The PLO is in the context of an international terrorism seeking the creation of a Palestinian State. In order to gain power, the PLO decided to export the fight at the international level, in particular with aircraft hijackings. ETA has always fought to liberate the Basque Country from Spanish control.

== The Middle East Powder Magazine ==

[[Fichier:National Park Service 9-11 Statue of Liberty and WTC fire.jpg|thumb|left|LLes tours du World Trade Center en feu après les impacts des vols AA11 et UA175.]]

From 1972 onwards is the powder keg of the Middle East. The motivations and logic of these attacks are very different from one another. The attacks at the Munich Olympic Games are different from Al-Qaeda's September 11 motivation.
 
There is therefore no reason to imagine that terrorism can be eradicated and disappear from the planet.
The inhabitants of this new century will have to live with him in the insecurity that his new threats leave hanging over all of us.
 
We are in a form of insecurity, but which today may be hovering directly over us, whereas it was not hovering directly over us 30 or 40 years ago, when we were in a targeted form of terrorism. Civilians were not touched because it was considered to be putting the population at odds because they were needed in the struggle.
 
September 11 is a paradigm shift. With bin Laden's fatwa, innocent people don't exist. There is no innocent status in Al-Qaeda's speech. On the contrary, there are only those responsible. When they consider putting more bombs in the United States, they are asking Muslims to leave the United States.

= Institutional Definitions =

There is no consensual definition but there is also no institutional definition of terrorism. There is an immediate impossibility to achieve a universal definition of terrorism. The only definition of the word is negative.
 
The terrorism of some and resistance to others. There is a semantic problem because it seeks to disqualify the struggle of the one who leads it since we are in very strong conflict. That is, there is an ambivalence of possible feelings with rejection, antipathy, empathy, sympathy or even indulgence.
 
The right to seek a universal, all-encompassing definition under positive law seeks to qualify according to a principle of legal rationality. Law is also only the production of a balance of power in a given time. The law is obliged to adapt to the evolution of society, sometimes it is ill-adapted, but it regulates. The law always seeks to construct a general and universal rationality to solve all situations.
 
Beginning in the 1930s and the Third Confederation for the Unification of Criminal Law, an attempt was made to define terrorism, which would be defined as {{citation|the intentional use of all means capable of causing common danger}}.
 
The extension of the right will even extend to the League of Nations, which is seeking a common definition following the assassination of Alexander I of Serbia in Marseilles in 1934. Subsequently, two definitions from two international conventions were ratified by 25 states except the United States and Italy in 1937:
*{{citation|Criminal acts directed against a State, the purpose or nature of which is to provoke terror in particular personalities, groups of persons or the public}}. Only the nation-state is responsible for the fight against terrorism.
*{{citation|Facts directed against the lives of Heads of State and the destruction of public property or property intended for public use}}.
 
There is no precise definition, terrorism poses a clear problem which is that we cannot be satisfied with a definition of terrorism because it is not precise enough, the nation-states do not want to relinquish their sovereignty. It is the responsibility of the nation-state on the security issue.
 
Any precise definition could make some countries uncomfortable in their domestic and foreign policy. Any information exchange system runs up against the logic of a nation-state, the state's own security system is guarded by the nation-state.
 
Already under the League of Nations there is no universal definition. The League of Nations will abandon any search for a definition, the United Nations will not engage in such reflection.

== How is terrorism defined in international conventions between the 1960s and 1980s? ==

International conventions of a universal nature can only take into account terrorism in the act and not in the claim. We see the word "terrorism" re-emerging, which describes situations, particularly to prevent acts against aircraft that took place in the 1970s. Between 1963 and 1979,12 conventions were ratified.
 
In 1987, the United Nations unsuccessfully plans to organize a conference on the definition of international terrorism. Refusal of many countries. Nevertheless, the word terrorism emerged in treaty law in the early 1990s. The word "terrorism" appears in the 1997 Convention for the Suppression of Bombings.
 
The United Nations is beginning to organize itself on the nature of the terms, but it was not until 1999 that an international convention on the financing of terrorism was produced.
 
The conventions are on the distinction between "terrorism" and "military conflict". Terrorism is not a military act, a military act is between nation-states. All international conventions prior to 11 September distinguish war from terrorism.
  
{{citation bloc|Any act intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to any civilian or other person who does not participate directly in hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when by its nature or context, the act is intended to intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to perform or refrain from performing any act.}}
 
Emphasis is therefore placed on the difference between terrorism and military armed conflict as a legal conflict. By its resolution 1368 of 12 September 2001, the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemns the attacks of 11 September 2001 without seeking to qualify and define the concept of "global terrorism". Resolution 1373 of 28 September will follow.

== The same difficulties of definition appear in approaches by national legislation ==

With September 11,2001, there is a fundamental rupture with George W. Bush, for whom terrorism is war against terrorism. Everything that had been thought of explodes.
 
Any definition of terrorism depends on how the threat is perceived. In France, according to the law of 9 November 1986, terrorism is a crime against humanity. {{citation|individual or collective undertakings whose purpose is to seriously disturb public order through intimidation or terror}}. In the United States it is the {{citation|activities aiming at organising, encouraging or participating in any act of gratuitous or indiscriminate violence? with an extreme difference to the risk resulting from causing death or serious bodily harm to persons not taking part in hostilities.}} [USA, Public Law, 22 décembre 1987]. In Germany it is  {{citation|associations for the purpose of committing various offences that are targeted and labelled as terrorists}}. The German convention does not say what terrorism is, but what can be described as terrorism.

== To arrive at an international legal definition ==

To arrive at an international definition, we can only find ourselves on a lower common denominator. Any minimum definition will be able to give rise to divergences that can only be made on the depoliticization of the terrorist act itself. From this point of view, 11 September does not seem to have changed this thinking.
 
After 11 September, a comprehensive convention on terrorism is being studied without the partners being able to agree on the need to qualify it.

== Is it necessary to define and qualify terrorism to act? ==

The implications are important, taking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole, are the Palestinians terrorists or resistance fighters? According to the camp, different positions will be defended. The Arab League cannot accept that acts of violence in the Gaza Strip are terrorist acts.
 
The paradox in which we find ourselves is that it is because terrorism is not qualified that States will be able to deal with it. If we call it that, we risk being prevented from acting. By not defining it, it is easier to be reactive and not dependent on other States to deal with the problem.

== What are the disadvantages of not being able to define it internationally? ==

It is first and foremost up to each State, in the name of its own security, to deal with the problem. Nevertheless, there is cooperation, but no one wants to answer on the ways of operating and acting on the limits of the nation-state.
 
Terrorism as a simple label allows states what are called the principles of state reason application, which is the authorization to adopt exceptional laws that are anti-democratic to solve the problem of terrorism. Guantanamo Bay is the most incredible situation from an international legal point of view.
 
Terrorism is an eternal phenomenon, a phenomenon that evolved according to phases, the nature of political debates. This is something that evolves in the nature of the means, but it is an object that the nation-states retain the prerogative of management. It should be noted that there is a form of flexibility that allows the nation states to manage according to their own design without being accountable to anyone.

= Annexes =
* Bauer Alain, Bruguière Jean-Louis, « Terrorisme, terrorismes ? », dans Les 100 mots du terrorisme. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, « Que sais-je ? », 2010, p. 3-4. URL : https://www.cairn.info/les-100-mots-du-terrorisme--9782130579502-page-3.htm 

== Bibliographie ==
{{colonnes|taille= 18|
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*Charles Townshend, Terrorism, a very short Introduction, New York, Oxford University Press, 2002 ; 
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*Karl Marx, La lutte des partisans, Paris, 10/18, 1973 ; André Salmon, La terreur noire, Paris, 10/18 ; 
*Léon Trostsky, Terrorisme et communisme, Paris, 1963.
}}

= References =
<references />

[[Category:political science]]
[[Category:international relations]]  
[[Category:Rémi Baudoui]]
[[Category:security]]
[[Category:terrorism]]
[[Category:2011]] 
[[Category:2013]] 
[[Category:2014]]
[[Category:2015]]
[[Category:2016]]
[[Category:2017]]
[[Category:2018]]