PSIR Current affairs daily editorial analysis 16th Dec
PSIR daily current affairs 16th December 2025
Topic: How must open societies respond to terror?
PYQs linkage:
- Do you agree that the U.N. has failed to contain the transnational terrorism? Elaborate your answer with examples. 10(2014)
- Discuss the efficacy of global convention to combat international terrorism. 15(2022)
Context of the editorial:
- Bondi Beach Terrorist Attack
Objectives of article or editorial:
- How do societies respond to terror and violence without surrendering the values that make them open?
Theory used in editorial: Liberal theory
Key statements which reflect this interpretation:
- “….a stark reminder that ideological and religious hatred still seeks expression through indiscriminate violence.”
- “Violence directed at a religious community, in one of the country’s most cherished public spaces, strikes at the core of plural life.”
- “Terrorism and extremism are not distorted forms of politics or belief; they are assaults on the very possibility of shared civic life and deserve unequivocal moral repudiation.”
Theory application:
Realism:
How do they see it?
- Strong emphasis on the state/non-state dichotomy
- Terrorism being a attempt to subvert civil order and overthrow the political system.
- Terrorism seen as a violent challenge to the established order by a non state group as part of a bid for power
- Motivations behind terrorism are largely strategic in nature
- Use of clandestine violence and focus on civilian targets mainly because they are too weak to challenge the state openly through conventional armed conflict.
What should be the response?
- State’s response to terrorism should be uncompromising
- Realists tend to be relatively unconcerned about whether counter-terrorist strategies infringe civil liberties; the important matter is whether counter-terrorism works.
Liberalism:
How do they see it?
- Activity primarily engaged by non-state actors
- Liberals view terrorism as an attack on the very principles of a liberal democratic society – openness, choice, debate, and toleration.
- They have different views about motivation behind it: more inclined to emphasize the role of ideology rather than simple power seeking.
- A key factor in explaining terrorism is the influence of a political or religious ideology that creates an exaggerated sense of injustice and hostility, and so blinds the perpetrators of violence to the moral and human costs of their actions.
What should be the response?
- Liberal thinking tended to be dominated by the ethical dilemmas that are posed by the task of counterterrorism.
- Anxious to ensure that attempts to counter terrorism are consistent with values of open society and that they should not infringe human rights and civil liberties.
Critical theories:
(Radical theorists such as Noam Chomsky) How do they see it?
- Amounts to killing of unarmed civilians,
- It is engaged in by both states and non-state actors
- State actors (Wholesale terrorism): states have far greater capacity than any non-state actors
- It is largely a mechanism through which states use violence against civilians either to maintain in power or to extend political or economic influence over other states.
- Particular attention has focused on its role in promoting US hegemony, the USA being viewed as the world’s ‘leading terrorist state’
- Non-state actors (retail terrorism)
What should be the response?
- advocates for a multifaceted approach focused on addressing the root causes of grievances, adhering to international law, and changing the foreign policies that fuel anti-Western sentiment.
- change must come from within the powerful nations themselves, by citizens holding their governments accountable for their actions abroad and demanding policies based on justice, international law, and human rights rather than power and dominance.
Constructivists and post-structuralists:
- possibly all accepted knowledge about terrorism amounts to stereotypes and misconceptions
- Terrorism is a social or political construct
- it is used to define certain groups and political causes as non-legitimate, by associating them with the image of immorality and wanton violence
- tends to imply that the institutions and political structures against which terrorism is used are rightful and legitimate.
- This thinking applied in particular to the discourses that have emerged in connection with the ‘war on terror’, in which the term ‘terrorism’ is allegedly used to de-legitimize the enemies of the dominant actors in the modern global system.
Concepts and keywords:
- Antisemitic intent, ideological and religious hatred, plural life, open society, Pluralism, unspoken social contract of mutual regard, institutional resilience, social trust, erosion of civic trust,
Brief analysis and key points from the news or editorial:
Significance of open society:
- Celebrates the values of pluralism
- In public spaces, open society rehearse everyday coexistence
- Where strangers encounter difference without anxiety, where diversity becomes ordinary through repetition and habit.
Impacts of terror and violence: (Threats to open society)
- Violence directed at a religious community strikes at the core of core of plural life.
- It unsettles the assumption that shared spaces are sustained by trust rather than fear.
- It makes people see one another differently, to replace ease with suspicion, familiarity with vigilance, and openness with withdrawal.
- Once violence enters in public spaces, everyday life itself becomes politicized.
- Overreaction to violence can hollow out public life; underreaction can embolden it.
- Search of easy explanations rooted in identity, faith or origin can fracture societies far more deeply than the original act.
Liberals key concern:
- deeper normative question: How do societies respond to terror and violence without surrendering the values that make them open?
- Confronting a difficult paradox: openness is both a strength and a vulnerability. Public spaces are powerful symbols of democratic life as they are open and shared but the same openness makes them targets for those who seek to disrupt coexistence.
What are key challenges to Australia’s response to this attack?
- How it delivers justice or strengthens security
- How it speaks about belonging, responsibility and restraint
- To ensure that openness, ease and shared life is not quietly surrendered in the name of safety.
- It must actively renew its institutional resilience, social trust and post-Aruthur gun control regime.
Way forward:
- The defence of open societies lies not in retreat, but in the steady, everyday work of living together without fear.
- Plural societies endure not because they eliminate difference, but because they domesticate it through restraint, mutual recognition and everyday decency. These achievements should be sustained by repeated acts of civic courage.