Same War, Different Views: Germany, Japan, and the War on Terrorism

Abstract

The tendency of the Bush administration to frame terrorism as a threat posed equally by evil states and nonstate groups is … distinctive. It is easy to lose sight of how atypical, even among liberal democracies, are the American view of international life in Manichaean terms and the American emphasis on the military dimension of society. Germany's and Japan's very different approaches to counterterrorism are useful reminders of American exceptionalism.