Knowing-fighting: the generative powers of the Global War on Terror

The study of war and terrorism embraces uncertainty, but how knowledge of terrorist threats gains policy traction in specific contexts remains undertheorized. This article advances a knowing–fighting framework to illuminate war's generative powers – the capacity not only to destroy, but to create, transform, and sustain strategic, social, and cognitive orders. I trace the cognitive-strategic connection in the early formation of the Global War on Terror in Somalia (2000s–2008) via two mechanisms: diagnostic labelling, which constitutes the enemy via discursive ambiguity and associative logic rather than verifiable evidence; and glocal preemption, which neutralizes threats before they manifest. The article reveals how labelling expands terrorist designation through association, providing epistemic authority for threat construction, while preemption exploits imminence to coercively eradicate the constructed threat. The article contributes to critical security studies and decentring IR by elaborating on the constitutive knowledge-security relationship across globally intertwined small wars.