Several scholars have accused theUnited States of involvement instate terrorism. They have written about the US and otherliberal democracies' use of state terrorism, particularly in relation to theCold War. According to them, state terrorism is used to protect the interest ofcapitalist elites, and the U.S. organized aneo-colonial system ofclient states, co-operating with regional elites to rule through terror.

Such works includeNoam Chomsky andEdward S. Herman'sThe Political Economy of Human Rights (1979), Herman'sThe Real Terror Network (1985),Alexander L. George'sWestern State Terrorism (1991), Frederick Gareau'sState Terrorism and the United States (2004), andDoug Stokes'America's Other War (2005). Of these, Ruth J. Blakeley considers Chomsky and Herman as being the foremost writers on the United States and state terrorism.^[1]

This work has proved controversial with mainstream scholars ofterrorism, who concentrate on non-state terrorism and the state terrorism of dictatorships.^[1]

Beginning in the late 1970s,Noam Chomsky andEdward S. Herman wrote a series of books on the United States' involvement withstate terrorism. Their writings coincided with reports byAmnesty International and otherhuman rights organizations of a 'new global epidemic ofstate torture and murder'. Chomsky and Herman argued that terror was concentrated in the U.S.sphere of influence indeveloping countries, and documentedhuman rights abuses carried out by U.S.client states inLatin America. They argued that of ten Latin American countries that haddeath squads, all were US client states. Worldwide they claimed that 74% of regimes that used torture on an administrative basis were U.S. client states, receiving military and other support from the U.S. to retain power. They concluded that the global rise in state terror was a result ofU.S. foreign policy.^[2]

Chomsky concluded that all powers backed state terrorism in client states. At the top were the U.S. and other powers, notably the United Kingdom and France, that provided financial, military, and diplomatic support toThird World regimes kept in power through violence. These governments acted together withmultinational corporations, particularly in the arms and security industries. In addition, other developing countries outside the Western sphere of influence carried out state terror supported by rival powers.^[3]

The alleged involvement of major powers in state terrorism in developing countries has led scholars to study it as a global phenomenon rather than study individual countries in isolation.^[3]

In 1991, a book edited byAlexander L. George also argued that otherWestern powers sponsored terror in developing countries. It concluded that the U.S. and its allies were the main supporters ofterrorism throughout the world.^[4] Gareau states that the number of deaths caused by non-state terrorism (3,668 deaths between 1968 and 1980, as estimated by theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA)) is "dwarfed" by those resulting from state terrorism in US-backed regimes such as Guatemala (150,000 killed, 50,000 missing during theGuatemalan Civil War – 93% of whom Gareau classifies as "victims of state terrorism").^[5]

Among other scholars, Ruth J. Blakeley says that the United States and its allies sponsored and deployed state terrorism on an "enormous scale" during theCold War. The justification given for this was to containCommunism, but Blakeley contends it was also a means by which to buttress the interests of U.S. business elites and to promote the expansion ofneoliberalism throughout theGlobal South.^[1] Mark Aarons posits that right-wing authoritarian regimes and dictatorships backed by Western powers committed atrocities and mass killings that rival the Communist world, citing examples such as theIndonesian occupation of East Timor, theIndonesian mass killings of 1965–66, the "disappearances" in Guatemala during the civil war, and the assassinations and state terrorism associated withOperation Condor throughout South America.^[6] InWorse Than War,Daniel Goldhagen argues that during the last two decades of the Cold War, the number of American client states practicing mass murder outnumbered those of theSoviet Union.^[7] According to Latin AmericanistJohn Henry Coatsworth, the number of repression victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the U.S.S.R. and its East European satellites between 1960 and 1990.^[8]J. Patrice McSherry asserts that "hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans were tortured, abducted or killed by right-wing military regimes as part of the US-led anti-communist crusade."^[9]

During thesecond presidency ofDonald Trump, media sources, politicians, and others have describedUS Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, particularly duringOperation Metro Surge, asterror.^{[10][11][12][13]}

TheUnited States legaldefinition of terrorism excludes acts done by recognizedstates.^[14][15] According to U.S. law (22 U.S.C. 2656f(d)(2))^[16] terrorism is defined as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience".^[17][18][19] There is no international consensus on a legal or academic definition of terrorism.^[20] United Nations conventions have failed to reach consensus on definitions of non-state or state terrorism.^[21]

According to professor Mark Selden, "American politicians and most social scientists definitionally exclude actions and policies of the United States and its allies" as terrorism.^[22] HistorianHenry Commager wrote that "Even when definitions of terrorism allow forstate terrorism, state actions in this area tend to be seen through the prism of war or national self-defense, not terror."^[23] According to Dr Myra Williamson, the meaning of "terrorism" has undergone a transformation. During the reign of terror a regime or system of terrorism was used as an instrument of governance, wielded by a recently established revolutionary state against the enemies of the people. Now the term "terrorism" is commonly used to describe terrorist acts committed bynon-state or subnational entities against a state.^[24]

InState terrorism and the United States Frederick F. Gareau writes that the intent of terrorism is to intimidate or coerce both targeted groups and larger sectors of society that share or could be led to share the values of targeted groups by causing them "intense fear, anxiety, apprehension, panic, dread and/or horror".^[25] The objective of terrorism against the state is to force governments to change their policies, to overthrow governments or even to destroy the state. The objective of state terrorism is to eliminate people who are considered to be actual or potential enemies, and to discourage those actual or potential enemies who are not eliminated.^[26]

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ProfessorWilliam Odom, formerly thedirector of the National Security Agency under President Reagan's administration, wrote:

As many critics have pointed out, terrorism is not an enemy. It is a tactic. Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today's war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.^[27]

ProfessorRichard Falk holds that the US and other rich states, as well as mainstreammass media institutions, have obfuscated the true character and scope of terrorism, promulgating a one-sided view from the standpoint ofFirst World privilege. He has said that:

If 'terrorism' as a term of moral and legal opprobrium is to be used at all, then it should apply to violence deliberately targeting civilians, whether committed by state actors or their non-state enemies.^[28][29]

Falk has argued that the repudiation of authentic non-state terrorism is insufficient as a strategy for mitigating it.^[30]Falk also argued that people who committed "terrorist" acts against the United States could use theNuremberg Defense.

Daniel Schorr, reviewing Falk'sRevolutionaries and Functionaries, stated that Falk's definition of terrorism hinges on some unstated definition of "permissible"; this, says Schorr, makes the judgment of what is terrorism inherently "subjective", and furthermore, he claims, leads Falk to label some acts he considers impermissible as "terrorism", but others he considers permissible as merely "terroristic".^[31]

In a review of Chomsky and Herman'sThe Political Economy of Human Rights, Yale political science professorJames S. Fishkin holds that the authors' case for accusing the United States of state terrorism is "shockingly overstated". Fishkin writes of Chomsky and Herman:

They infer an extent of American control and coordination comparable tothe Soviet role in Eastern Europe. ... Yet even if all [the authors'] evidence were accepted ... it would add up to no more than systematic support, not control. Hence the comparison to Eastern Europe appears grossly overstated. And from the fact that we give assistance to countries that practice terror it is too much to conclude that "Washington has become the torture and political murder capital of the world." Chomsky's and Herman's indictment of US foreign policy is thus the mirror image of thePax Americana rhetoric they criticize: it rests on the illusion of American omnipotence throughout the world. And because they refuse to attribute any substantial independence to countries that are, in some sense, within America's sphere of influence, the entire burden for all the political crimes of the non-communist world can be brought home to Washington.^[32]

Fishkin praises Chomsky and Herman for documenting human rights violations, but argues that this is evidence "for a far lesser moral charge", namely, that the United States could have used its influence to prevent certain governments from committing acts of torture or murder but chose not to do so.^[32]

Commenting on Chomsky's9-11, former US Secretary of EducationWilliam Bennett said: "Chomsky says in the book that the United States is a leading terrorist state. That's a preposterous and ridiculous claim. ... What we have done isliberated Kuwait, helped inBosnia and theBalkans. We have provided sanctuary for people of all faiths, including Islam, in the United States. We tried to help inSomalia. ... Do we have faults and imperfections? Of course. The notion that we're a leading terrorist state is preposterous."^[33]

Stephen Morris also criticized Chomsky's thesis:

There is only one regime which has received arms and aid from the United States, and which has a record of brutality that is even a noticeable fraction of the brutality ofPol Pot,Idi Amin,Mao, or theHanoi Politburo. That is theSuharto government inIndonesia. But ... the United States was not the principal foreign supplier of Indonesia when the generals seized power (nor is there any credible evidence of American involvement in the coup). Within the period of American assistance to Indonesia, and in particular during the period of theCarter administration, the number of political prisoners hasdeclined. Finally, the current brutality of the Suharto regime is being directed against the people ofEast Timor, a former colony of Portugal that Indonesia is attempting to take over by force ... not as part of its normal process of domestic rule.^[34]

In 2017, declassified documents from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta have confirmed that the United States government, from the very beginning, wasdeeply involved in the campaign of mass killings which followed Suharto's seizure of power.^[35][36][37] Without the support of the U.S. and its Western allies, the massacres would not have happened.^[38] In 2016, an international tribunal inThe Hague ruled that the killings constitutecrimes against humanity and it also ruled that the United States and other Western governments were complicit in the crimes.^[39][40] Indian historianVijay Prashad says that the complicity of the United States and its Western allies in the massacres "is beyond doubt," as they "provided the Indonesian armed forces with lists of Communists who were to be assassinated" and "egged on the Army to conduct these massacres." He adds they covered up this "absolute atrocity" and that the US in particular refuses to fully declassify its records for this period.^[41] According toVincent Bevins, the Indonesian mass killings were not an aberration, but the apex of a loose network of US-backedanti-communist mass killing campaigns in theGlobal South during the Cold War.^[42] According to historian Brad Simpson:

Washington did everything in its power to encourage and facilitate the army-led massacre of alleged PKI members, and U.S. officials worried only that the killing of the party's unarmed supporters might not go far enough, permitting Sukarno to return to power and frustrate the [Johnson] Administration's emerging plans for a post-Sukarno Indonesia. This was efficacious terror, an essential building block of theneoliberal policies that the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia after Sukarno's ouster.^[43]

• Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Perceptions of the United States sanctions
• Targeted killings by the United States government
• United States and state-sponsored terrorism
• United States atrocity crimes
• Imperial boomerang
• Political violence in the United States
• Human rights in the United States

• Bevins, Vincent (2020).The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World.PublicAffairs.ISBN 978-1541742406.
• Blakeley, Ruth (2009).State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South.Routledge.ISBN 0415686172
• Donahue, Laura K. "Terrorism and counter-terrorist discourse". In Hor, Michael Yew Meng, Ramraj, Victor Vridar and Roach, Kent (Eds.),Global anti-terrorism law and policy. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2005ISBN 0-521-85125-4
• Esparza, Marcia; Henry R. Huttenbach; Daniel Feierstein, eds. (2011).State Violence and Genocide in Latin America: The Cold War Years (Critical Terrorism Studies).Routledge.ISBN 978-0415664578.
• Prashad, Vijay (2020).Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations.Monthly Review Press.ISBN 978-1583679067.
• Sluka, Jeffrey A., ed. (1999).Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. University of Pennsylvania Press.ISBN 978-0-8122-1711-7.
• Taylor, Antony James William.Justice as a basic human need. Nova Science Publishers, 2006.ISBN 1-59454-915-X
• Wright, Thomas C. (2007).State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.ISBN 978-0-7425-3721-7.

• Alexander, George (1991).Western State Terrorism. Polity Press. p. 276.ISBN 978-0-7456-0931-7.
• Blum, William (1995).Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press. p. 457.ISBN 978-1-56751-052-2.
• Campbell, Bruce B., and Brenner, Arthur D., eds. 2000.Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability. New York: St. Martin's Press^{[ISBN missing]}
• Chomsky, Noam (1988).The Culture of Terrorism. South End Press. p. 269.ISBN 978-0-89608-334-9.
• Churchill, Ward (2003).On The Justice of Roosting Chickens. AK Press. p. 309.ISBN 978-1-902593-79-1.
• Jackson, Richard; Smyth, Marie; Gunning, Jeroen, eds. (2009).Critical terrorism studies: a new research agenda. Taylor & Francis.ISBN 978-0-415-45507-7.
• Menjívar, Cecilia and Rodríguez, Néstor, editors,When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror, University of Texas Press 2005,ISBN 978-0-292-70647-7
• Perdue, William D. (1989).Terrorism and the State: A Critique of Domination Through Fear. New York: Praeger Press. p. 240.ISBN 978-0-275-93140-7.
• Selden, Mark, ed. (2003).War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.ISBN 978-0-7425-2391-3.

• Foreign relations of the United States
• Terrorism committed by the United States
• Terrorism in the United States

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