ABSTRACT
To date, this book has focused mostly on counter-terrorism measures advanced through the United Nations. My doing so reflects that, today, the UN is often at the center of the multilateral effort to suppress terrorism or, at least, that UN bodies are among those now active in many domains of counter-terrorism policy. However, treating the UN effort in this way should not be interpreted to mean that the UN is always the primary actor, or that UN action precedes that advanced elsewhere-far from it. Over time, political constraints upon acting through the UN have led states to seek alternative fora outside of it, including regional and subregional organizations, affinity-based, professional or other limited-membership groupings, military alliances, and ad hoc mechanisms. Especially in the post-9/11 period, the net result of this proliferation of cooperative arrangements is that multilateral counter-terrorism is characterized by multiple and overlapping rules, norms, programs and agencies. As noted in the introduction, contemporary scholars acknowledge that the fields of counter-terrorism embody the present trend towards increasingly diverse forms of multilateralism.1
