Is the Game Worth the Candle? Human Rights and the Dilemma of Failed Counterterrorism Strategies after Coup d’État

Many of today’s conflicts of both domestic and global politics in the Global South resulted as consequences and legacy of the constitutive processes of the modern nation-states and state system in the nineteenth century and afterward. Moreover, since many of these problems have never been resolved and persist today, the analysis of the power structure formation and configurations need to acknowledge and recognize the presence of the past, and the hybrid nature of political and legal structures (i.e., modern and pre-modern) in today’s international system. From a K̲h̲aldūnian perspective, the constitutive sociopolitical and socioeconomic configurations of authority reflect the nature of ʿasabiyya (i.e., ruling elites), the way in which power structures have been formed within modern societies, and how they were consolidated through violence and oppression (i.e., al–ghālbāh wa al–shāwkāh wa al–qāhr in Ibn K̲h̲aldūn’s words) to preserve the power and dominance of these ʿasabiyat, and enhance its control over the means of production and monopoly over violence. Accordingly, I argue that these K̲h̲aldūnian concepts explicate motives and aims that lead states to export the surplus of domestic violence, externally and internally, either to gain or to maintain the political power of the ruling elites. Revisiting Ibn K̲h̲aldūn’s theses broadens our understanding of the crises of governance and legitimacy in today’s global politics, from liberal democracy to military tyranny, authoritarianism, and monarchical regimes. To examine the validity of this analytical framework, this paper applies these concepts to evaluate Egypt’s counterterrorism strategy after the 2013 coup.