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Fighting terrorism in the liberal state

How can decision-makers in liberal democracies take the necessary measures to fight terrorism without restricting civil liberties and human rights? This dilemma that liberal democracies face nowadays was the core of an Advanced Research Workshop co-directed in Konstanz (Germany) on 15-16 April 2005 by Prof Wilhelm Kempf of the University of Konstanz and Dr Samuel Peleg of Netanya College in Israel.

Anti-terrorism is a particularly complicated endeavour for liberal democracies. Terrorists exploit and abuse the advantages that a free and open society has to offer, and seek to expose governments’ inability to defend their citizens. The lack of a common terminology and understanding on terrorism, the lack of agreements on operating models, along with different legal codes have greatly hampered international efforts to thwart terrorism.

This workshop brought together leading experts from several countries and different backgrounds in order to achieve the following objectives:

1. Encouraging innovative ideas on global anti-terrorism;
2. Stimulating a debate on creative responses designed to thwart terrorism;
3. Facilitating information sharing and strategic co-ordination among countries;
4. Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of responses that pair international law, civil liberties and human rights with efforts to produce a more secure world.

Panels were organised along three dimensions of the global fight against terrorism: the analytical-theoretical dimension; the security, enforcement and intelligence dimension; and, the legal and ethical dimension. Several issues were discussed such as the need to create a glossary of common terminology, the national authorities’ dilemma between the occasional need to use force and the awareness that this might nourish the terrorist cause, and the relationship between anti-terrorism legislation and civil liberties.

As a result of the workshop, a book on ‘Fighting Terrorism in the Liberal State: An integrated model of research, intelligence and international law’ will be published in the NATO Science Series.

This workshop was approved by the recently established Human and Societal Dynamics Advisory Panel. This Panel considers applications in the social sciences and was created to respond to the need of creating synergies between the natural sciences and the social sciences, in order to deal more effectively with the complex issues of the current security agenda.

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