A preliminary definition of international terrorism was agreed by the world community in 1937. Since then, a World War and the Cold War have made any such modern consensus impossible. In particular, the UN principles of equal rights and self-determination of Peoples' have caused political and juridical confusion, in that liberation fighters who utilize terror methods as one tactic in an overall political strategy to achieve self-determination are frequently termed terrorists', and are prosecuted as such.
In order to regulate wars of self-determination under international law, and to...

This book discusses the increasing tendency in certain government quarters to incorporate struggles by peoples for their self-determination into the wider anti-terrorist agenda of the post-9/11 era. This tendency distorts the laws of armed conflict and of peace alike. As inter-state anti-terrorist co-operation becomes more extensive, the transaction costs of international peace and security between states increase. Modes of domestic state governance are left increasingly to the vagaries of inter-state non-interference in the domestic affairs of each other. The 'war on terror' and an...