Academic Research: Current research projects
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Current research project

Terrorism and World Order: The U.S. security thinking after the Cold War and its roots in the establishing of U.S. Foreign Policy thinking in the time of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams.

The end of the Cold War meant a dramatic shift in the paradigms of American security thinking which will be analyzed around to key concepts: Order (New World Order) and Terrorism. The idea is that the breakdown of the bipolar order opened a space for a new thinking of the role of USA in the World. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton shaped the security policy invoking the philosophy of Woodrow Wilson summarized in his famous statement: "Make the World Safe for Democracy". That was the basis for George H.W. Bush' program for a New World Order and it is seen as the founding idea in Clinton's "Engagement and Enlargement policy". Due to historical developments that in a U.S. perspective put terrorism in forefront as a new (global) threat (the escalation of violence in Egypt and Algeria; the Palestinian and Israeli violence after the initiating of the Oslo process; the al-Qaida attacks on U.S. interest in 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2000) terrorism became the concept for naming the new threats in the New World Order. Thus in the U.S. context the overall concept of terrorism can broadly be seen as metaphor for disorder (proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Rogue States, Global Terrorism). While in the first half year of George W. Bush' first term the security paradigm was shaped in Cold War concepts with China as the future replacement of the Soviet Union in a new bipolar order the events of 9/11 forced the new Bush administration to think the new order much more in line with postmodern new-wilsonism of Clinton. The Bush-revolution is thus analyzed as a revamping of the U.S. security thinking from Monroe to Wilson but in a new global setting: Continental security is replaced by Global security. In order to comprehend and interpret this new paradigm the philosophical, theoretical, and historical development of the two key concepts Order and Terrorism will be traced back to their introduction into the vocabulary of modern political theory: Order (Nomos) as a political concept in the U.S. security thinking is traced back to the "Sattelzeit" (Koselleck) of American Foreign Policy thinking after the American revolution while Terrorism is traced back to the French revolution. Thus the aim of this project is to write the conceptual history of Order and Terrorism in order to analyze what is here interpreted as a revamping of the traditional U.S. security thinking from the first part of the 19th century (Monroe, Quincy Adams) in a new global setting.