This past week’s events in Paris, with 129 killed and 350 wounded as a result of a series of attacks attributed to Islamic State affiliates, have certainly shown us the carnage that can be done in order to terrorize a nation. As more information continues to roll in, and leaders calling this event France’s single worst terrorist attack, we must uniformly look at how we define terrorism, and see if we are being consistent in how we treat violence across the globe.

There are many definitions of terrorism, but according to the National Institute of Justice, the common thread between them all is “the use of force intended to influence or instigate a course of action that furthers a political or social goal.”

But if we are to use this theme to define terrorism, why shouldn’t nation-states be included in this as well?

On October, 17, 1961, under Maurice Papon, the head of the Parisian police at the time, an order was made to attack peaceful Algerian demonstrators who were members of the National Liberation Front, a nationalist movement and the main belligerent against the French in Algeria’s war for independence. Though the French government has still yet to fully admit to their crimes on this day, historians estimate that 200 people were massacred.

Though many look back at this event and see it as horrible and unforgivable, judgment is reserved in calling those French officials involved on that day “terrorists.” With the legitimacy states are seen to have, state terrorism can just be put off as “war” or “self-defense” in order for their individual acts to be seen as legitimate. If the state were to be seen as a terrorist that day, then the deaths of those Algerians would make that event the largest terrorist attack in France’s history.

Looking at the globe more broadly, we see that if we count the state and its violent acts as terrorism, then it is not Al-Qaeda or ISIS that becomes the greatest threat to the world, but those states themselves that claim to be bringing peace.

France, in its involvement with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the bombing of Libya in 2011, is by no means innocent in its foreign policy and the violence it causes across the globe. With the removal of Muammar Gaddafi as the leader of Libya, a stabilizing force within the region at the time, chaos ensued within North Africa, with multiple provincial governments claiming rule over the territory, and neighboring countries having the violence spill over to their borders. Though these attacks were made under the auspices of stimulating and supporting the Arab Spring, France was fantasizing more about Libya’s oil rather than fair and free elections.

According to an investigative journalist at Russia Today (RT), “France feels like a winner as the first power to recognize Libya’s rebels, the first to bomb the country and now the first in talks with rebel leaders;” all of this was in the hopes of French companies being able to gain 100% control of Libyan oil. It is because of this sort of neo-imperialism that we have the Mediterranean migration crisis, with North Africans running to Europe for some sort of peace and stability.

France, the U.S., and all the other NATO countries have been engaged in state terrorism since the end of  World War II, and all for this reason: to capture the natural resources of the Middle East, as well as spreading their cultural, spiritual, political and economic hegemony on every other country in the world, whether that be by talking, or through bombing. If your religion, job, household, country and everything about your way of life were to be threatened, and threatened for multiple generations, wouldn’t you be radicalized in retaliation as well?

We had 2.5 million Korean civilians injured or killed in the Korean War, around 2 million Vietnamese dead because of the Vietnam War, 26,000 civilians dead because of the War in Afghanistan, 500,000 Iraqi civilians dead as a result of the Iraq War, and many more to come from this new excuse to control the Middle East. After looking at all this, I ask you: Who’s the real terrorist?