Governing Ungoverned Spaces

Bernard Finel makes a number of good pointsover at the New Atlanticist about the Bush administration’s successfulcounterterrorism policies that nonetheless do not reduce terrorism. Inparticular, he argues that the emphasis on state sponsorship of terrorgroups tends to equate the agendas of the various actors, ignoring howstates that do fund or train terror groups usually do so for pragmaticrather than ideological reasons, often to find the groups they’vesponsored ultimately escaping their control. Finel argues thatwe should instead concentrate on the spaces beyond states’ control thatare exploited by terrorist groups as operational bases: Seven years after 9/11 we still do not have […]