Combatir el terrorismo en un mundo Kantiano
| Autor | Philippe Hayez |
| Cargo | Associate profesor, Sciences Po Paris |
| Páginas | 109-116 |
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Nota: The author expresses his gratitude to the Wilton Park Conference Center (UK) for giving him the opportunity to submit this paper at the conference on «Terrorism, Security and Human Rights: Opportunities for Policy Change» held at Wilton Park between the 1st and 4th October 2009.
Addressing the issues of intelligence from a legal perspective has become a welcomed standard nowadays. One has however not to neglect the help of political philosophy to have a better understanding of the possibility to
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make the intelligence and security agencies more accountable in the current prevailing context of counter-terrorism.
In our democracies, governments are supposed to pursue the public interest. Contrary to the Machiavellian Prince, the modern elected leader has to implement parliamentary sanctioned programs, to respect and protect the legal framework and to act in a transparent manner. Every government has to care for its people’s security, the «New Protective State» (Hennessy, 2007) having replaced the «Secret State», as well as the proverbial «Welfare» one, thus responding to a true social demand of the citizens.
The world we live in is full of promises for humankind but also of threats. Terrorism, if possibly overemphasized, is since many years one of those threats. Present in everyone’s mind since the 09/11, it is still held as the cardinal threat by most of western heads of state and government. Terrorism has indeed killed scores of people in the last decades but only four last year in Europe, where there hasn’t been any major attack since four years. According to EUROPOL, the more than 500 terror attempts perpetrated last year have led to some 1.000 arrests in the EU. Were all these arrests justified? Could have it been worse without preventive intelligence? There is no easy answer for that, the effectiveness of terrorism prevention being so difficult to measure.
One can however argue, at least drawing from the French experience, that the present and possibly declining counter-terrorism cycle has brought some progress in the intelligence policies of democratic countries. As already explored by several experts (BORN, 2008), some tough challenges have been addressed by policymakers. Five of them are exposed below for the sake of discussion:
Preventive Intelligence is without doubt a useful tool to protect the elected government as well as the population against their common enemies. Since more than 30 years, governments have mobilized the intelligence and security services to fight terrorism because of the obvious limits of the other governmental tools: diplomacy, law enforcement and armed forces cannot cope alone when confronted to non-state actors that challenge the world order
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and rules and indulge themselves in violence and crime. From a moral perspective, intelligence is at least a mixed blessing: in its protecting endeavour, it alleviates some constraints on citizens (such as searches and arrests) but increases the uncomfortable feeling of being unduly watched. Moreover, intelligence might be seen as morally corrupting, using such practices as dis-simulation, cheating and pressure on individuals. It is hence a public good as well as a necessary evil.
Pondering the use of intelligence against terrorism, policymakers are trying to keep in mind the...
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