The September 11th attacks put terrorism in the forefront of American consciousness. Since then, the U.S. has waged a nearly ubiquitous global war on terror, that now reaches 76 countries and seems far from over. Although American thought on terrorism persistently goes back to 9/11 and 2001, U.S. interest and rhetoric on terrorism dates back well into the Cold War. How did terrorism become a focal point of U.S. foreign policy? How did earlier precedents shape how the U.S. fights terrorism and its response to 9/11? And what does this deeper history tell us about what terrorism is, how our common assumptions about it might be wrong, and how we should rethink it? On this episode of History Talk, hosts Brenna Miller and Jessica Viñas-Nelson speak with Drs. Philip Travis and Adrian Hänni to discuss the historical context for today’s war on terror and the Cold War precedents that help explain where we're at today.

Posted: July 2018

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A transcript of this podcast is available at https://origins.osu.edu/historytalk/cold-war-war-terror