'War'? Legal Semantics and the Move to Violence

The use of the word 'war' to describe the anti-terrorist efforts in the wake of the 11 September attacks has gone virtually unchallenged. The term, however, is not innocent and carries far-reaching implications for international law. The article examines how its use can be said to fit into a broader strategy of legitimization of armed violence. 'War', it is argued, prepares the ground for what is basically an ideal-typical state of exception, that which portrays the sovereign as the ultimate saviour of liberalism at home. But the domestic implications of the 'war rhetoric' are probably less important than the international ones, where 'war' can be manipulated to provide an escape route from the constraints of international law. This it does by reframing both the temporal and spatial coordinates of self-defence in a way that fundamentally loosens the framework of collective security. By the time the term's use has been ratified by law, it will have served to exclude or distort alternative ways of understanding and dealing with the problem of terrorism, namely, as a criminal and political issue. Whatever else military action against terrorist targets may achieve, it is far from clear that placing such action under the banner of 'war' will serve the cause of suppressing terrorism.