While the US has called their battle “the Global War on Terrorism” or GWOT, the Europeans term the same battle “fight against terror.” Whatever it is called, Europeans have held two conferences?in Germany and Belgium ?to discuss combating transnational terrorism.
While the US views terrorism as a relatively new phenomenon. Europeans have dealt with terrorism?both domestic and external?for decades, in the form of the IRA , ETA , N-17 , Baader Meinhof , PKK , GIA , among various others. Add to this list, the al-Qaeda network and affiliates. Without being patronizing, conference participants noted that “?the US [views terrorism] as a new threat.” To that, there are numerous elemental divergences between the US and her European allies.
First, Europeans contend that a country at war, as the US sees itself, is more apt to make rash and “extreme measures to protect its population.” This has and can result in a blurring of civil rights, to include freedom of press, freedom of speech, and due process in an effort to guard against attack. This logic has led traditionally pro-US European leaders, among them new Chancellor Angela Merkel and Premier Silvio Berlusconi, to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay over allegations of improprieties, including torture, and for a closer look at rendition flights over European airspace.
Second, also divergent to the US mindset, Europeans do not seem to give “al-Qaeda terrorism” the gravitas that the US does. While not questioning the lethality of the network, which has struck on European soil repeatedly, Europeans seem more focused on the network and entrepreneurialism of al-Qaeda rather than the core nucleus of the group. According to Rik Coolsaet from the Belgian Institute for International Relations, “I do not believe that we are confronted with a formidable global external foe?We must stop behaving as if we were in a permanent state of war with a monolithic authoritarian threat, a successor enemy to Nazism or communism.” Futher, Coolsaet called Osama bin Laden “nothing more than a ‘leader of a sect'” and noted that by bestowing him an omnipresent aura, security forces “boost his appeal” to compatriots who might not otherwise be compelled to act against the West.
Third, while the US sees terrorism as an external result of failed states, as in the Taliban’s emergence from Afghanistan or al-Qaeda perhaps from Sudan and its jihadist network from Iraq , the Europeans see al-Qaeda terrorism in particular as an internal problem, quashed only be reining in radical elements in Europe. The European sentiment is underscored in that most of the perpetrators of the July 7, 2005 attacks , the March 11, 2004 attack , and even the November 15 and 20, 2003 attacks (Terrorist Incident and Terrorist Incident), were nationals from the targeted country. Efforts to integrate second and third generation children from immigrant families, consequently, must be at the fore to fighting against this form of terror . This effort, however, has been sorely lacking throughout Europe. One must only look to recent history?the Mohammed-Cartoon crisis, the French riots , and the Theo Van Gogh’s murder ?to see examples of so-called integration gone terribly afoul. Additionally, the face of terrorism is wildly changing, increasingly a Western-looking, well-educated convert?male or female?who has “experienced a personal psychological trauma.”
Fourth, the US adamantly and unilaterally disavows any negotiation with any terrorists anywhere in the world. Conversely, the Europeans have witnessed some successes in bringing the IRA and possibly ETA to the political arena through negotiation. While no one at the conferences outwardly offered a truce and negotiated peace with Osama bin Laden, the implication was there. However, the terms of a negotiation were left unaddressed, as Europeans increasingly understand that the GWOT has less to do with the Israeli conflict or poverty than with contortions of religion.
While the names of this battle are very close, semantics play a key differentiating role. The US may be migrating toward the European model, in that GWOT is increasingly referring to as the Long War. A powerpoint presentation on the Long War by Rear Admiral Bill Sullivan is available by request. Regardless of what this battle is called, the US and Europe must come together in realizing the threat from radical Islamist entities and in crafting a wide-reaching program to ameliorate that threat on both sides of the Atlantic.