The G/WOT that followed 9/11 has often been presented as a “new” era in US foreign policy. Many described this war as “unprecedented”. It is also now commonplace to segment the history of US foreign policy into distinct periods: Cold War, the post- Cold War 1990s and post- 9/11. However, many of the principles and practices of contemporary US counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have an extended history that cuts across these historical divisions. During the Cold War, US military leaders and policy- makers honed many of the practices later employed in the G/ WOT. Similarly, a militarized “war” against “terrorism” has a historical context.

In addition, the events of 9/11 prompted many Americans to ask: why do they hate us? There was a lot of confusion among the American public and the US government as to who al- Qaeda were, what drove them to commit these terrible acts and what their objectives were. People struggled to understand why anyone would be compelled to inflict so much damage on innocent Americans. Subsequently, many commentators depicted al- Qaeda as a religiously inspired and fanatical terrorist group that was intent on causing mass casualties, including using weapons of mass destruction if they could just get their hands on them (Gunaratna 2002 ). This was part and parcel of policy and academic debates over an allegedly “new” form of “religious terrorism” (Laqueur 1999 ; Duyvesteyn 2004 ). Yet transnational groups such as al- Qaeda did not simply appear on 11 September 2001. The jihadi Islamist ideologies that inspired them have a long history.

This chapter contextualizes the GWOT. First, it provides a brief overview of the development and evolution of counterterrorism within American domestic politics and foreign policy. We begin our analysis from US efforts against anarchist violence at home. We then pay particular attention to the development of counterterrorism during the Cold War. We outline how some policies and practices in the GWOT evolved out of the development of the Reagan administration's “war on terrorism” during the 1980s, much of which was oriented towards thwarting leftist insurgencies in Latin America.