To Deter and Punish - by Silke Zoller (Paperback)

About the Book

To Deter and Punish examines why and how the United States and its Western European allies came to treat nonstate "terrorists" as a key threat. Silke Zoller traces Western state officials' responses to terrorism from the first Palestinian hijacking in 1968 to Ronald Reagan's militarization of counterterrorism in the early 1980s.

Book Synopsis

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, governments in North America and Western Europe faced a new transnational threat: militants who crossed borders with impunity to commit attacks. These violent actors cooperated in hijacking planes, taking hostages, and organizing assassinations, often in the name of national liberation movements from the decolonizing world. How did this form of political violence become what we know today as "international terrorism"--lacking in legitimacy and categorized first and foremost as a crime?

To Deter and Punish examines why and how the United States and its Western European allies came to treat nonstate "terrorists" as a key threat to their security and interests. Drawing on a multinational array of sources, Silke Zoller traces Western state officials' attempts to control the meaning of and responses to terrorism from the first Palestinian hijacking in 1968 to Ronald Reagan's militarization of counterterrorism in the early 1980s. She details how Western states sought to criminalize border-crossing nonstate violence--and thus delegitimized offenders' political aspirations. U.S. and European officials pressured states around the world to join agreements requiring them to create and enforce criminal laws against alleged individual terrorists. Zoller underscores how recently decolonized states countered that only a more equitable global system capable of addressing political grievances would end the violence.

To Deter and Punish offers a new account of the emergence of modern counterterrorism that pinpoints its international dimensions--a story about diplomats and bureaucrats as well as national liberation militancy and the processes of decolonization.

Review Quotes

Silke Zoller's book is an empirically rich and diverse analysis of early international efforts against terrorism. The breadth and depth of this study will make it key reading for anybody interested in terrorism during this period and how states worked together (or not) to counter it.--Bernhard Blumenau, author of The United Nations and Terrorism: Germany, Multilateralism, and Antiterrorism Efforts in the 1970s

Zoller provides a well-researched account of the national and multinational efforts to counter the surge of international terrorism in the 'long 1970s.' Detailed and well-researched, To Deter and Punish brings together several elements of a complex history into a coherent narrative that connects to several strands in recent historiographical developments.--Jussi Hanhimäki, author of The United Nations: A Very Short Introduction

Terrorism did not begin with 9/11. Just ask Archduke Ferdinand, Guy Fawkes, and the like. Our current conception, however, arose in the 1960s and 1970s, as Silke Zoller smartly and insightfully recounts in this new history of the international community's response to one of the defining international problems of their day, and of ours.--Jeffrey A. Engel, author of When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War

About the Author

Silke Zoller is an assistant professor of history at Kennesaw State University.