The Obama administration has junked the term “global war on terror” because it does not describe properly the nature of the terrorist threat to the US, according to Janet Napolitano, secretary for homeland security.

“One of the reasons the nomenclature is not used is that ‘war’ carries with it a relationship to nation states in conflict with each other and of course terrorism is not necessarily derived from the nation state relationship,” she told the Financial Times. “In some respects ‘war’ is too limiting.”