ABSTRACT
This conclusion seeks to develop the various ideas about terrorism and the war on terror set out in the previous chapter by analysing how the security context that emerged in the 1990s has been altered again by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It will suggest that realist approaches at the end of the Cold War proved limited in their capacity to address the full range of security issues that arose at that time. This led to a greater appreciation of critical approaches that questioned why insecurity existed, who was most insecure, how those insecurities might be ameliorated and how best to understand and explain security and insecurity. We look at this period to demonstrate that, since 9/11, there has been a marked tendency to fall back on the assumptions that were made during the Cold War: that there is an ‘us’ fighting against a ‘them’, that what threatens us must threaten everyone else, and that the application of military force is the primary tool for mitigating the threat. As this book has demonstrated, the flaw with current conceptions of security in the ‘war on terror’ is that it is not clear what victory would look like. How would we achieve victory over this elusive ‘enemy’? How do we know when victory is achieved? And, are the policies we produce improving or threatening our own security?
