The West's Road to 9/11 Resisting, Appeasing and Encouraging Terrorism Since 1970

The West's Road to 9/11 offers a detailed explanation of the handling of the challenge of terrorism by the USA, the UK and the West over the last thirty years. David Carlton contends that anti-terrorist rhetoric by the Governments of the West frequently masked indifference to the activities of many practitioners of non-state violence; and that in the case of the United States it did not hesitate even to sponsor those terrorist movements if deemed supportive of its wider geopolitical objectives.

PART I Introduction PART II: THE 1970S: APPEASING TERRORISM 1970: The West's First Major Test The 1970s: The West's Collective response to Terrorism following Dawson's Field Rewarding the Palestinians Appeasing Two European Insurgencies Equivocal Responses to 1968-Inspired Terrorism in Europe Appeasing Iran as a Sponsor of Terrorism: The Tehran Embassy Siege PART III: THE 1980S: RESISTING, APPEASING AND SPONSORING TERRORISM The 1980s: The West's Collective Response to Terrorism The 1980s: Resisting Terrorism The 1980s: Appeasing Terrorism The 1980s: Encouraging and Sponsoring Terrorism PART IV: THE 1990S: A SCHIZOPHRENIC DECADE The 1990s: Business-as-Usual: Resisting, Appeasing and Sponsoring Terrorism The 1990s: Business-not-as-Usual: In Awe of Terrorism PART V: CONCLUSION 9/11 As a Catalyst for Consistency? Bibliography

DAVID CARLTON is a Senior Lecturer in International Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of MacDonald versus Henderson (1970); Anthony Eden: A Biography (1981); Britain and the Suez Crisis (1988); Churchill and the Soviet Union (2000) and numerous academic articles. He has also co-edited twenty-one further books.