Countering Terrorism. US vs EU Strategies and their Implications for Human Rights

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INTRODUCTION 
 
 
The aim of my dissertation is to deeply investigate the phenomenon of terrorism and the 
response given by counterterrorism policies, in particular by focusing on what has 
happened in the United States of America and the European Union since September 11, 
2001, until today, in a sort of comparative analysis of the two types of strategies that have 
been adopted, and by considering their implications on human rights.  
The main goal is to start from analysis of the mistakes that have been made by 
governments in recent decades – especially with regard to the so-called “Global War on 
Terror” – a “war” that in my opinion is never really ended – and consider what should be 
done to tackle the phenomenon of terrorism with greater awareness. I know that this is an 
ambitious goal, as terrorism is an extremely complex phenomenon that needs to be 
analysed in all its nuances, and it is precisely for this reason that I believe it is necessary 
to carry out preliminarily a thorough analysis of terrorism, its causes and its dynamics in 
order to understand how it can be dealt with by politics. Furthermore, I considered it 
essential to include numerous examples of terrorist organizations and attacks that have 
been carried out in recent years to try to make the articulation clearer. 
This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is entitled “Terrorism and its 
causes”. First of all, in this chapter I will explain the uncertainty present at the 
international level in coming to a universally recognized and unambiguous definition of 
“terrorism”. In fact, the lack of general agreement on what is terrorism has created a lot 
of debates among experts, which do not fully agree about the purpose, the function, the 
perpetrators, the victims, the legitimacy, the methods and the target of terrorism. 
Nevertheless, some common elements can be found in all definitions. IR scholars Todd 
Sandler and Walter Enders underline two key elements to consider when defining 
terrorism as a phenomenon: a) the use of violence and brutality; b) the presence of a 
political objective that the terrorist organisation wants to pursue. As I will explain from 
the beginning, terrorism is a violent form of politics. After this introduction, the chapter
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will continue with the explanation of the difference between domestic and transnational 
terrorism. On one side, domestic terrorism is the most widespread and it is characterized 
by the fact that, in this form, the victims, the executors and the audience come all from 
the country in which the attack has taken place. On the other side, transnational terrorism 
is carried out in one country, but it involves victims, executors, institutions or citizens of 
other countries. Despite the fact that domestic terrorism is more common than 
transnational terrorism – how it is illustrated by the data collected by the ITERATE and 
the GTD – the thesis will show that the globalisation has introduced numerous 
opportunities for transnational terrorism too. Then, I will briefly analyse the Global 
Terrorism Overview of 2019 elaborated by the START to get a precise idea of the extent 
of the phenomenon – therefore, data dating back to before the Covid-19 pandemic, which 
has changed the dynamics of all international phenomena. These data are important 
because they illustrate, for example, the number of victims, but also which are the five 
perpetrator groups with the most attacks worldwide. After that, the chapter will continue 
by trying to investigate the causes of terrorism. Indeed, I think this is a fundamental phase 
to understand how to intervene with counterterrorism policies to end the phenomenon. 
Before investigating what several scholars believe to be the real causes of terrorism, I 
found it necessary to disprove what I believe is a false belief, namely the fact that there 
is a direct link between terrorism, poor education and poverty. Indeed, even if the former 
President of the US George W. Bush announced the importance of fighting poverty and 
improve education to fight terrorism, contrariwise some experts as Alan B. Krueger 
and Jitka Malečková have illustrated that this is improper. The results are surprising 
because they show that often are well-educated individuals coming from the middle class 
which have ties to terrorism. And this is witnessed also by the presence of the so-called 
foreign fighters. However, as regards the causes that lead to the emergence of the terrorist 
phenomenon, the chapter will demonstrate that terrorism is originated by different factors, 
and this is why it arises in poor states as well as in rich states, in authoritarian regimes as 
well as in democracies. During the years, scholars have made different distinctions among 
causes, and the most important one is that which divides root causes from trigger causes. 
The first type of causes are preconditions that act over the longer term, while the second 
type are precipitants factors which immediately precede the occurrence of terrorism. Both 
will be illustrated in detail, together with other interesting distinction between causes
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proposed by scholars. Finally, in this first chapter I will evaluate the role of individual 
motivations that lead some subjects to take part in terrorist activities. Is it possible to 
create an identikit of terrorist, as someone tried to do? I will show that in my opinion this 
is very dangerous, because it would take to the diffusion of useless stereotypes based on 
ethnicity, religion and other insufficient and secondary factors.  
The second chapter is titled “Goals, targets and strategies of terrorism”. Terrorism is a 
logical mean to advance political interests, so the goal of terrorist organizations are 
political goals. First of all, in this chapter I will illustrate which are the five goals of 
terrorism – therefore, its final objectives – individuated by Andrew Kydd and Barbara 
Walter. These five possible goals of terrorism are: 1) regime change; 2) territorial change; 
3) policy change; 4) social control; 5) status quo maintenance. In the thesis, they will be 
explained in detail and many examples will be given to understand which terrorist groups 
have perpetrated atrocities to reach them. Then, I will focus on the strategies of terrorism, 
therefore on the strategic plans of action elaborated to achieve the goal. These strategies 
can be obtaining by crossing two key-factors: targets and uncertainty. On one hand, as 
regards the targets, terrorist can interact with two types of targets that they hope to 
influence: a) enemy government; b) terrorists’ own domestic population. On the other 
hand, as regards the uncertainty, there are three types of uncertainty by the targets that 
can lead to violence: a) uncertainty about the actual power of the terrorist group; b) 
uncertainty about the resolve of the terrorist group; c) uncertainty about the 
trustworthiness of the terrorist group. The five strategies of terrorism that it is possible to 
obtain by combining these key-factors are: 1) attrition; 2) intimidation; 3) provocation; 
4) spoiling; 5) outbidding. Which is the difference among them? In the chapter, each of 
these strategies will be deeply investigated. I will try to understand its mechanisms, some 
historical examples and the answers that governments gave in those cases. This part of 
the essay is fundamental for the understanding of my work. One cannot expect to talk 
about counterterrorism policies without having fully understood the strategies underlying 
terrorism itself and without being able to comprehend what terrorists want to achieve, 
how, what they are willing to do to obtain it and which reactions they want provoke. 
The third chapter of this thesis is entitled “How to stop terrorism? Counterterrorism 
strategies”; this is the focal point of what I have argued in my work. This chapter 
investigates counterterrorism policies and provides some food for thought to try to
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understand how to tackle the problem of terrorism at its roots. The term 
“counterterrorism” refers to a set of strategies and actions adopted to prevent or combat 
terrorism; these actions can be processed by a multitude of public and private subjects, 
but in my dissertation I decided to concentrate on the actions taken by the governments 
of the states as a response to terrorism. According to Todd Sandler, we can distinguish 
between two different kinds of counterterrorism measures: a) defensive countermeasures; 
b) proactive countermeasures. On one side, defensive or protective countermeasures work 
by protecting potential targets and by reducing the probability of success of the attacks; 
among these, technological defensive measures and improvement of emergency first-
responder abilities can be counted. On the other side, proactive countermeasures are 
offensive actions taken by a government to have a direct confrontation with a terrorist 
group; for instance, I refer to the case in which terrorists’ resources as bunkers are 
destroyed or leaders are captured or killed. This is what happened when the former US 
President Donald Trump ordered the release of the Super Bomb MOAB in 2017. Which 
of the two strategies is more effective? What I would like to demonstrate is why war and 
the use of force against terrorism are costly and ineffective, and why they only feed a 
vicious circle of violence without solving the root problems. In my opinion, indeed, states 
should invest more money in defensive strategies, as they allow to obtain better results in 
the long run; investments in intelligence, strengthening of the targeted infrastructures, 
controls and so on have some disadvantages that I will thoroughly clarify. Then, in the 
chapter, I will continue by analysing the ineffectiveness of military interventions against 
terrorist threat. Several historians have affirmed to be against the use of military force as 
a response to terrorism. Paul Schroeder reassumes three lessons that history has left to us: 
1) war is what terrorist want; 2) it is necessary to take into account the consequences on 
long term in the IR of a war against terrorism; 3) victory is risky as well as defeat. In my 
work, I have applied these precious teachings to concrete reality to see the result. What I 
have found is that attack is not the best form of defence, for a long list of reasons that I 
have indicated. This list includes costs, both in economic term and in term of human lives, 
but also in term of impact on public opinion. Subsequently, I have highlighted once again 
the importance of history. Before 9/11 attacks, the study of terrorism and counterterrorism 
was very limited and the budget to conduct this type of resources was low; after that 
terrible day, counterterrorism studies became a priority and the money invested in this
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type of research increased, because states started to recognize the incisiveness of this 
phenomenon for the international community. Unfortunately, one of the mistakes of the 
counterterrorism strategies adopted after the Twin Towers attack – especially by the US 
– is that history was not considered. But examining the historical events of the past is a 
fundamental step to interpret our present and so to adopt efficient counterterrorism 
measures. Adam Roberts, in a very thought-provoking study, criticizes this tendency to 
neglect history and provides us with some very stimulating observations; for instance, he 
says that in a counterterrorism strategy it is obligatory to respect the international legal 
framework, even in the treatment of individuals suspected to have link with terrorism, 
and that it is unproductive to oversimplify the conflict against terrorism in the dichotomy 
of “evil versus good”. In my opinion, these considerations are really interesting, and I 
have found it necessary to deepen them. In the last part of this chapter, I will focus on 
how terrorism usually ends; starting from a work of Gaga Gvineria, I will examine a set 
of eight “cases of terrorism decline”: 1) substantial success; 2) partial success; 3) direct 
state action, including repression; 4) disintegration through burnout; 5) loss of terrorist 
leaders; 6) unsuccessful generational transition; 7) emergence of new alternatives; 8) loss 
of popular support. For each of these cases, I have decided to describe their functioning, 
the factors that contribute to the end of terrorism and some historical precedent. In 
particular, the case that interests me most is the one about the loss of popular support. 
Indeed, I will explain that some cases as the loss of terrorist leaders could be sometimes 
ineffective, for instance when the terrorist group has a distributed organizational network, 
because this allows to always find new leaders, as it happens with ISIS. But about the 
current terrorism, in my opinion, inducing the loss of popular support is the most 
important point that governments should take into consideration. Indeed, the loss of 
popular support negatively affects the capabilities of terrorism, therefore the number of 
resources available to it in terms of materials, funding, recruitment, sanctuaries and 
expertise; the work explains this in detail. Then, I will argue why, according to me, the 
loss of popular support is the best strategy for putting terrorism to an end, and I will 
indicate which events can provoke a reduction in the support. In fact, there are three types 
of popular support: 1) support for a specific group; 2) support for terrorism as a method; 
3) support for the terrorism cause. Each one of these types is different from the others and 
therefore it requires different approaches to try to eradicate it. If governments of states
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adopt correct measures to reduce popular support for terrorist organizations, this latter is 
hit at the “heart” – it would not represent a constituency anymore – and at the “mind” – 
its organizational skills. This will be clearer in the chapter. 
In the two last chapters of my thesis, I have decided to deeply analyse two political 
entities, the United States of America and the European Union. I chose to concentrate on 
these two subjects because I think that their counterterrorism strategies – adopted 
especially after the 9/11 attacks – are very different, even if in some cases the results have 
been the same. Furthermore, I considered it essential, in this part, to also focus on the 
implications of the counterterrorism policies adopted on human rights. 
The fourth chapter is entitled “Counterterrorism in the US and its consequences on human 
rights”. This chapter will start from illustrating what I have called the “failure” of the 
Global War on Terror – started by President Bush Jr. – in de-radicalizing terrorism. 
Indeed, the 9/11 attacks carried out by al-Qaeda in which 2996 people died represent the 
turning point in Western counterterrorism strategies. The consequences were disastrous, 
not only for the victims, their families and the whole Western that had been hit, but also 
for people belonging to Muslim community because Islamophobic acts spread rapidly. A 
few days later, the former President George W. Bush affirmed that the war on terror has 
begun. In this chapter, I will highlight all the criticalities and ambiguities connected to 
the decision of Bush Jr. to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. I will refer to the studies of Adam 
Roberts, who critics the use of the title itself of “the war on terror”, which is misleading, 
and that critics also the fact that this war could translate in new forms of imperialism and 
neo-colonialism. Then, he criticizes the marginal role relegated to the intelligence, the 
lack of respect of the framework of law by the US government and the failure to take into 
account the importance of eliminating grievances and complaints that led the population 
to support terrorism. Finally, Robert argues that it would have been better to implement 
defensive countermeasures rather than offensive countermeasures. Therefore, I will 
explain why the war on terror, in my opinion, failed to reach its objective: eliminate 
terrorism. The reasons, as will be illustrated, have to do with popular support, costs, 
violations of human rights and resentment toward the US government which uses military 
means. I decided to dedicate the following paragraphs of the fourth chapter to the analysis 
of the implications of the US war on terror on the human rights. In carrying out my 
evaluation, I have decided to use a very interesting work published by David Luban. In
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this article, Professor Luban explains that President Bush Jr., in his war on terrorism, 
adopted a so-called “hybrid war-law approach”, so a mix between the model of war and 
the model of law. Why did he make this decision? As I will show, from the use of this 
model, the former President has benefited from numerous advantages, which will be listed 
precisely in the chapter. However, the result was the breach of fundamental rights not 
only of terrorists and military adversaries, but also those of several innocent individuals. 
In fact, there have been many collateral damages as people killed or imprisoned following 
mistaken identities and people suspected to have link with terrorism activities who have 
been subject to torture. To concretely demonstrate the consequences of the war on terror 
on human rights, I will dedicate two subparagraphs to the examination of three 
emblematic cases: the cases of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the case of Maher 
Arar. Furthermore, I will address the issue of the consequences of the war on terror on 
fundamental rights from the perspective of surveillance and digital privacy, especially 
after the introduction of some programs as the TIA, the TIPS and the Patriot Act, which 
took to the intensification of mass surveillance. Finally, in the last part of this chapter, I 
will focus on what happened in the US after the end of the Bush Jr. administration, with 
the aim to understand if the war on terror is really ended or not. What is sure is that 
terrorist attacks are not ended, and terrorism still be one of the most problematic issues. I 
will briefly consider the counterterrorism strategies of President Obama, President Trump 
and President Biden. In my opinion, it is possible to affirm that the war on terrorism has 
never really ended, for a number of reasons that I have enlisted. The reaffirmation of 
Taliban regime in Afghanistan is the proof that the US counterterrorism strategy is 
ineffective.  
The fifth chapter of my thesis is entitled “Counterterrorism in the EU and its 
consequences on human rights”. At the beginning of this chapter, I will briefly explain 
what the EU is and how the European integration process was implemented thanks to a 
series of treaties. After that, I will move on to analysing the counterterrorism policies 
adopted within the European Union’s framework. Taking into account the genealogy of 
the EU approach to counterterrorism, I will start from the Treaty of Maastricht signed in 
1992, which first conferred competence to the Union in the field of Justice and Home 
Affairs, until to the gradual establishment of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. 
Then, I will examine the EU’s counterterrorism strategies adopted after the 9/11 attack,
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which was perceived by the European countries as an attack to Western values. In this 
context, the most important acts adopted are the Framework Decision on Combating 
Terrorism, the European Arrest Warrant and the European Security Strategy, which will 
be illustrated in the thesis. Since the beginning, it will be clear that the problem of the EU 
counterterrorism policy is the lack of cooperation among the member states. Continuing, 
the chapter will deal with the topic of the implications of the counterterrorism policies on 
human rights in Europe. Here, using the work of Sabine Von Schorlemer, I will 
demonstrate that not only there is a direct link between the terrorist attacks of September 
11 and the enjoyment of human rights and freedoms, but there is also an indirect link 
between them. Indeed, in some cases, states’ reactions to terrorism threats lead to the 
adoption of decisions and measures that result in violations of human rights too. The 
counterterrorism policy adopted by the EU after the 9/11 attacks was completely different 
from the one adopted by the US. On one side, the United States adopted a military reaction 
and a repression strategy; contrariwise, on the other side, the European Union choose a 
civil reaction and a prevention strategy. But not only the US breached human rights in 
their counterterrorism policy, because some terrible mistakes have been made also within 
the member state of the EU. In my paper, I will show the Abu Omar case as an example 
of the need to find out a balance between human rights and security even in the European 
Union. Then, I have decided to focus on the new EU counterterrorism strategy which was 
introduced in 2005 by the EU Council after the terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in 
London in 2005. This new strategy is based on four pillars – each of which will be dealt 
with deeply – that are called: 1) prevent; 2) protect; 3) pursue; 4) response. Finally, to 
conclude, I will take care of showing the EU’s counterterrorism strategies adopted in the 
recent years, in particular after 2017; that year was a terrible one for the Europe, because 
a series of terrorist attacks hit the main countries of the European Union, causing a high 
number of deaths. London, Stockholm, Paris, Manchester, Barcelona and Marseille 
witnessed atrocious acts committed against their own populations. About the matrix of 
these attacks, it can be noticed that all of them have been organized by terrorist groups of 
Islamic extremists such as ISIS or groups affiliated to it. Furthermore, the aim of these 
attacks was that of creating as many victims as possible, to be able to spread a climate of 
terror. Which was the European Union’s response? The Directive 2017/541 was 
introduced to replace the Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism of 2002. But very
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important to face the threat of terrorism was also the joint declaration formulated a couple 
of years before, in 2015, with the aim of guiding the work of the member states of the EU 
in the field of counterterrorism. Then, after a new wave of terrorism that hit Europe in 
2020, EU home affairs ministers agreed to sign a statement, the so-called “Joint Statement 
by the EU Home Affairs Ministers on the recent terrorist attacks in Europe”. To conclude, 
I will explain that in my opinion the counterterrorism policies adopted by the EU are less 
controversial than those adopted by the US. However, the crucial problem of the strategies 
of the Union is the lack of cooperation among member states in this area because they are 
sometimes sceptics about sharing information.
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CHAPTER 1  
Terrorism and its causes 
 
 
 
1.1 Defining terrorism 
For decades, the research community, and more specifically political scientists, have tried 
to provide a full, complete definition of “terrorism”. However, any attempt to give a 
complete description of this phenomenon has created a lot of debates among experts. In 
fact, it is still not possible to find a universal, unique definition of terrorism in the 
international community: there is a lack of general agreement on how terrorism actually 
is and its main features. The disagreement on the definition of terrorism comes from the 
different point of views of the experts about the purpose, the function, the perpetrators, 
the victims, the legitimacy, the methods and the target of terrorism
1
. Obviously, when 
analysing data sets, it is fundamental to consider also which interpretation of terrorism 
they have been built because the result of the analysis would be different. Not only: it is 
also important to have a clear idea about what terrorism is also because labelling a certain 
group as a terrorist group negatively influences the perception of the public opinion about 
the legitimacy of that group. 
Sometimes, the term “terrorism” has been wrongly used in political debates to put in a 
bad light the adversaries; for example, in the 1960s several US politicians and newspapers 
used the term “terrorist” to describe the members of the Vietcong, i.e. the communist 
militias operating in South Vietnam. The adoption of the term “terrorism” is not 
appropriate in this case, but this helps to understand that the use of some expressions 
should consider the influence towards the public opinion. 
 
1
 Brown K. E., Transnational Terrorism, in McGlinchey Stephen, International Relations, E-IR 
Foundations, E-International Relations, 2017, p. 152.
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On a more official level, an important definition of “terrorism” was given by the United 
Nations Security Council in the Resolution number 1566 of October 8, 2004
2
. Here, 
terrorism is represented as “criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the 
intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking hostages, with the purpose to 
provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular 
persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international 
organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act, which constitute offences within the 
scope of and as defined in the international conventions and protocols relating to 
terrorism”
3
.  
This definition was provided a few years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, 
which were carried out by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda against the United States of 
America. As my research will show, the 9/11 attacks represent a turning point in the 
history of terrorism and counterterrorism, as they play a central role in the study on this 
topic. In fact, from this moment on, any attempt to define the phenomenon would focus 
on a specific feature of contemporary terrorism: the fact that it is targeted against civilians. 
Similarly, also the definition provided by the United Nations High-Level Panel on 
Threats, Challenges and Change in a report of December 2, 2004
4
 underlines the threats 
to civilians. Here, the terrorism is depicted as “any action […] that is intended to cause 
death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such 
an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government 
or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act”
5
.  
Both definitions of the UN bodies emphasize the threats to civilians and non-combatants, 
but this could be a strong limit. According to some scholars, in fact, there are also some 
attacks against armed peacekeeping forces, the police or relevant institutions (such as 
heads of state or government) that should be considered as terrorist attacks. This last point 
is better explained by the US Department of State’s definition, which has described 
terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-
 
2
 UN Security Council, Resolution on international cooperation in the fight against terrorism, UN doc 
S/RES/1566, 8 October 2004. 
3
 Ibidem.  
4 
UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared 
Responsibility, UN doc A/59/565, 2 December 2004. 
5
 Ibidem.
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combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to 
influence an audience”
6
. Then, the US Department of State decided to add that “the term 
non-combatant is interpreted to include, in addition to civilians, military personnel who 
at the time of the incident are unarmed and/or not on duty or when a state of military 
hostilities does not exist”
7
. 
An important definition of terrorism was provided by an expert of International Relations, 
Adam Roberts, in 2005
8
. He defined “terrorism” as “the systemic use of violence and 
threats of violence by non-state groups, designed to cause dislocation, consternation and 
submission on the part of a target population or government”
9
. In this definition, Roberts 
underlines the fact that terrorist acts are perpetrated by non-state actors, but it is important 
to highlight that there are cases in which also governments sponsor non-state terrorist 
organizations in their activities. About this last point, it is interesting to note that there is 
a US financial law which, in 1979, provided for the annual drafting by the US government 
of a so-called “Terrorism List”. This list shows all states held responsible for sponsoring 
terrorism and arranges sanctions against them. The forms of support for which states are 
considered responsible are various and include, for example, political-diplomatic support, 
economic-financial support, and training. Among the states on the Terrorism list of 
2019
10
, it is possible to find Syria, Iran, and Sudan, charged of supporting Islamic terrorist 
organizations, but also North Korea, held responsible for supporting Japanese left-wing 
terrorist groups and for being involved in international terrorism. 
In 2004, Todd Sandler and Walter Enders, two important IR scholars, defined terrorism 
as “the premeditated use, or threat to use, of extranormal violence to obtain a political 
objective through intimidation or fear directed at a large audience”
11
. Some years later, 
in another important work carried out by the two scholars in 2012, they defined terrorism 
as “the premeditated use or threat to use violence by individuals or subnational groups 
 
6
 U.S. Code, Title 22: Foreign relations and intercourse, Section 2656f(d). 
7
 Ibidem. 
8
 Roberts A., The “War on Terror” in Historical Perspective, in “Survival”, Vol. 47 no. 2, Summer 2005, 
pp. 101-130.  
9
 Ibidem. 
10
 Department of State of U.S., Country Reports on Terrorism, 2019.  
11 
Sandler T., Enders W., An economic perspective on transnational terrorism, in “European Journal of 
Political Economy”, Vol. 20, Issue 2, 2004, pp. 301-316.