Description
From its inception, preventive counterterrorism has been designed to govern risks, uncertainties, populations and spaces. While much research has examined the use of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) to govern domestic populations, less attention has been paid to prevention being increasingly being used to govern transnational spaces. P/CVE as a global paradigm has been (re)produced and pursued by hegemonic governance actors such as the UN, the EU, or the US. With this shift, P/CVE has also been deployed as a transnational policy. This paper examines preventive counter-terrorism as an instrument of transnational governance in three interrelated ways: First, P/CVE is (re)produced as a framework for state building, particularly in spaces read as belonging to the Global South or Global East. Second, P/CVE (re)produces the politics of geopolitical order. For example, it links issues of violent extremism to a discourse of "failed states" and thus represents a continuity with more overtly geopolitical varieties of counter-terrorism, such as military counter-terrorism. Third, P/CVE (re)produces global and transnational power relations by reflecting and entrenching hierarchies and hegemonies. To illustrate the argument, I draw on the use of P/CVE in EU foreign policy, United Nations programmes, and the turn to CVE in US foreign policy.
