International Studies Compendium Project

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Comment on this article   Threats to the international order of the twentieth century – strong, sovereign states – became overshadowed as this century began with a reorientation in foreign policy toward weak and failing states and the terrorist groups that use them as safe havens. Despite Paul Pillar's claim that “terrorism is primarily a foreign policy issue,” literature to that effect has been underdeveloped in both international relations and studies in terrorism ( Pillar 2001 :9). While studies of terrorism and counterterrorism have generally not separated the domestic from international realms of policy response, the academic work on foreign policy has considered terrorism superficially and intermittently (Crenshaw 2004). This disjuncture affects both policy formulation and scholarly discourse; the result has been counterterrorism policies that rarely seek to integrate with the broader foreign policy agenda ( Pillar 2001 ; Cronin and Ludes 2004 ). Within academia, foreign policy is a subfield of International Relations (IR), while terrorism studies are often more loosely categorized and interdisciplinary. Studies of foreign policy further branch out into theory, policy analysis, and policy prescription yet terrorism studies have tended to blend these areas of analysis together, lacking a clear framework for research. International Relations and Terrorism studies differ dramatically ... log in or subscribe to read full text