ABSTRACT
Suppose conflict prevention and deterrence fail? How should the liberal state respond to terrorism once the bombs start going off? It will not escape the reader’s notice that Chapters 4, 5 and 6 examine three different dimensions or aspects of responses to terrorism: the use of politics and diplomacy, the use of the law enforcement and the criminal justice systems, and the role of the military. Some academic commentators appear to view these as alternative models for the response of a liberal democracy. In Terrorism and the Liberal State (1977 and 1986), I elaborated on an approach that I have termed the ‘hard-line approach’ of the liberal state to deal with terrorism. In developing the main elements of this approach I took the view that the three models should not be regarded as mutually exclusive, and I proceeded to combine elements of all three models into a set of policy guidelines capable of being applied to a whole variety of terrorist conflicts in widely differing political contexts. It offers a multi-pronged approach aimed at enabling a liberal democratic state to combat terrorism effectively without undermining or seriously damaging the democratic process and the rule of law, while providing sufficient flexibility to cope with the whole range of threats, from low-level spasmodic attacks to intensive, mass-casualty bombing campaigns amounting to a state of war.
