The War on Terror with Andrew Thomson and Rubrick Biegon (Agenda Publishing, 2025)

The War on Terror remained an enduring feature of American foreign policy for over two decades. The War on Terror(Agenda Publishing, 2025), by Professors Andrew Thomson and Rubrick Biegon, positions the War on Terror within the broader context of Cold War interventionism and the rise of various transnational threats to American (and global) security during the late twentieth century. It introduces readers to the main concepts, debates and theories which have been used to understand and make sense of the War on Terror. These include approaches that frame it as a disparate set of policies aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist attacks against American citizens at both home and aboard; as part of a project aimed at helping maintain the United States' dominant position within international politics; and as an idea intimately bound up with perceptions of American national identity and America's place in the world. In this way, the book aims to show how the War on Terror has changed global politics, as well as why it has been fought and proven so difficult to end despite multiple failed attempts at course correction. The book, published in 2025 and now available from University of Edinburgh Press, is ideally suited for courses on international security, American foreign policy and contemporary world politics.

Rubrick Biegon is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent. Co-author Andrew Thomson, reader in peace and conflict studies at Queens University Belfast, joined historian and U.S. army veteran Jacob Hagstrom in a discussion about the book's major themes, sources, and theoretical underpinnings.  

Jacob Hagstrom is a military historian and author of America's Favorite Warlord (Pen and Sword, 2026)

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