Introduction

On entering office in January 2001, the George W. Bush administration adopted a form of exceptionalism which one commentator describes as ‘the traditional view that security was fundamentally determined by the military means of sovereign states, [it] sought to promote “a distinctly American internationalism”’. Nine months later, the attacks of 9/11 intensified this approach to national security under the rubric of what the United States later termed ‘the war on terror’. The attacks not only impacted the US security landscape but also generated a new global security agenda at the international and multilateral levels with the United Nations' Security Council adopting a series of measures mandating states to take a range of counterterrorism measures; and states joining a US-led global coalition against terrorism. While these initiatives emphasised the urgency and priority of global security, none explicitly addressed states' pre-existing human rights obligations or considered the human security implications of the strategies involved.

The US administration specifically couched its response to the attacks of 9/11 in moralistic tones, dividing the world into those ‘against’ and those ‘with’ the United States and characterising the ‘war on terror’ as one of ‘good’ against ‘evil’. The rhetoric employed focused on the objective of protecting democracy and the ‘free world’, without confirmation that the means used to combat terrorism would adhere to the values embedded in democracy.