Roots of Counterterrorism: Contemporary Wisdom from Dutch Intelligence (Causes and Consequences of Terrorism)

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, much of the counterterrorism literature has focused on costly and ineffective approaches, losing sight of productive strategies from eras past. Roots of Counterterrorism revives the narratives from the Dutch domestic security service Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD) from 1968-78, a period of turbulence that lasted until the Dutch regained political stability. Using newly declassified primary sources, Constant Willem Hijzen shows that a goal of large-scale prevention was not as effective as focusing on suspected perpetrators of attacks. The book introduces a new way of analyzing the dynamics of counterterrorism, shedding light on contemporary wisdom from Dutch intelligence history.

Constant Willem Hijzen is an affiliated researcher in Intelligence Studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs Leiden University (the Netherlands). From 2016 to 2021, he was Assistant Professor and Head of the research group of Intelligence and Security of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University, whilst also teaching at the Institute for History at the same university. In his dissertation, he focused on the interaction between the Dutch security service and their political, bureaucratic, and societal context. In 2017, he received a research grant from the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security for a research project on intelligence and counterterrorism.