In his article “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t” Emanuel Adler posits a dilemma that all states face in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. According to Adler, if a state responds aggressively and kills those responsible for the attack or their followers, this leads to a reverse effect by which the terrorist group in question is strengthened rather than weakened . In fact, violent retaliatory acts are exactly what the terrorists want. However, if the state chooses to not take the bait it still loses in the sense that it will be viewed as weak. This dilemma provides the eponymous title of the article – states are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. In the following paper I will examine the intricacies of this dilemma and analyse a puzzle that is not sufficiently addressed in Adler’s article.
Primarily, I will attempt to explain the differences in state reactions to terrorist attacks. Why is it that some states respond with aggression whereas others appear to do little, or even seem to act in a conciliatory manner? The design of this paper will feature a close examination of two cases. In particular, I will investigate the Spanish Government’s response to the two thousand and four Madrid train bombings, and the French Government’s aggressive stance following the Paris attacks of two-thousand and fifteen. The European …show more content…
To start, I will provide a brief literature review that will examine terrorism from within a constructivist framework. Since Adler himself is an influential constructivist, and his article forms the basis of my own hypotheses (emotion, opinion, value), I will briefly establish the merits of using a constructivist lens to study terrorism. After this overview I will shift to the principle focus of this paper. As mentioned, this will be an analysis of the attacks in Madrid and Paris and how the respective countries responded to said