The strategies of terrorism

International Security

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 49-80

  Kydd, Andrew H ^a   Walter, Barbara F ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33747174552     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2006.31.1.49     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. Thomas L. Friedman, "Marines Complete Beirut Pullback: Moslems Move In," New York Times, February 27, 2004.
2. Don Van Natta Jr., "The Struggle for Iraq: Last American Combat Troops Quit Saudi Arabia," New York Times, September 22, 2003.
3. James Glanz, "Hostage Is Freed after Philippine Troops Are Withdrawn from Iraq," New York Times, July 21, 2004.
4. Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 65.
5. Alan B. Krueger and David D. Laitin, "Kto Kogo? A Cross-Country Study of the Origins and Targets of Terrorism," Princeton University and Stanford University, 2003;
6. Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, "Education, Poverty, and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 17, No. 4 (November 2003), pp. 119-144;
7. and Alberto Abadie, "Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism," Faculty Research Working Papers Series, RWP04-043 (Cambridge, Mass.: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2004).
8. Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: EccoHarperCollins, 2003).
9. Of course, terrorists will also be seeking best responses to government responses. A pair of strategies that are best responses to each other constitutes a Nash equilibrium, the fundamental prediction tool of game theory.
10. Office of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, "Foreign Terrorist Organizations," fact sheet, October 11, 2005, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/3719.htm.
11. Quoted in Nasra Hassan, "An Arsenal of Believers: Talking to the 'Human Bombs," New Yorker, November 19, 2001, p. 37.
12. For discussion of differing definitions of terrorism, see Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman, Political Terrorism: A New Guide to Actors, Authors, Concepts, Data Bases, Theories, and Literature (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1988), pp. 1-38. We do not focus on state terrorism because states face very different opportunities and constraints in their use of violence, and we do not believe the two cases are similar enough to be profitably analyzed together.
13. For the distinction between goals and strategies, see David A. Lake and Robert Powell, eds., Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), especially chap. 1.
14. On revolutionary terrorism, see Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 16, No. 3 (September 1972), pp. 383-396;
15. Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962 (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1978);
16. and H. Edward Price Jr., "The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary Terrorism," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January 1977), pp. 52-66.
17. This group has recently surrendered its weapons.
18. Some analysts argue that many terrorist organizations have degenerated into little more than self-perpetuating businesses that primarily seek to enhance their own power and wealth, and only articulate political goals for rhetorical purposes. See, for example, Stern, Terror in the Name of God, pp. 235-236. This suggests that power and wealth should be considered goals in their own right. All organizations, however, seek power and wealth to further their political objectives, and these are better viewed as instrumental in nature.
19. A difficult coding issue arises in determining when a group is a nonstate actor engaged in status quo maintenance and when it is simply a covert agent of the state. Some death squads were linked to elements in the armed forces, yet were not necessarily responsive to the chief executive of the country. Others were tied to right-wing parties and are more clearly nonstate, unless that party is the party in power. See Bruce D. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner, eds., Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
20. The Taliban, which is not listed, does pursue social control; and the Israeli group Kach, which seeks to maintain the subordinate status of Palestinians in Israel and eventually to expel them, may also be considered to seek it. The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism maintains a database of terrorist organizations that includes more than forty groups based in the United States. Some of these can be considered to seek social control, such as the Army of God, which targels doctors who provide abortions. See http://www.tkb.org.
21. Thomas Perry Thornton, "Terror as a Weapon of Political Agitation," in Harry Eckstein, ed., Internal War: Problems and Approaches (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), p. 87.
22. Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics, Vol. 13, No. 4 (July 1981), pp. 379-399.
23. David Fromkin, "The Strategy of Terrorism," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 4 (July 1975), pp. 683-698.
24. Price, "The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary Terrorism," pp. 54-58.
25. Other related discussions include Paul Wilkinson, "The Strategic Implications of Terrorism," in M.L. Sondhi, ed., Terrorism and Political Violence: A Sourcebook (New Delhi: Har-anand Publications, 2000);
26. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State (New York: New York University Press, 1986), pp. 110-118;
27. and Schmid and Jongman, Political Terrorism, pp. 50-59.
28. Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3d ed. (New York: Free Press, 1988), p. 122.
29. James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Summer 1995), pp. 379-414;
30. and Robert Powell, "Bargaining Theory and International Conflict," Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 5 (June 2002), pp. 1-30.
31. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Penguin, [1651] 1968), pp. 184.
32. John H. Herz, "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma," World Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2 (January 1950), pp. 157-180;
33. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976);
34. Robert Jervis, "Cooperation under the Security Dilemma," World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (January 1978), pp. 167-214;
35. and Charles L. Glaser, "The Security Dilemma Revisited," World Politics, Vol. 50, No. 1 (October 1997), pp. 171-202.
36. Andrew H. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
37. John G. Riley, "Silver Signals: Twenty-five Years of Screening and Signaling," Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 39, No. 2 (June 2001), pp. 432-478.
38. James D. Fearon, "Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands vs. Sunk Costs," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 41, No. 1 (February 1977), pp. 68-90.
39. Dan Reiter, "Exploring the Bargaining Model of War," Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (March 2003), pp. 27-43;
40. and Robert Powell, "Bargaining and Learning While Fighting," American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 344-361.
41. Rival terrorist or moderate groups are also important, but terrorism is not often used to signal such groups. Sometimes rival groups are targeted in an effort to eliminate them, but this violence is usually thought of as internecine warfare rather than terrorism. The targeted government may also be divided into multiple actors, but these divisions are not crucial for a broad understanding of terrorist strategies.
42. This list is not exhaustive. In particular, it omits two strategies that have received attention in the literature: advertising and retaliation. Advertising may play a role in the beginning of some conflicts, but it does not sustain long-term campaigns of terrorist violence. Retaliation is a motivation for some terrorists, but terrorism would continue even if the state did not strike at terrorists, because terrorism is designed to achieve some goal, not just avenge counterterrorist attacks.
43. Per Baltzer Overgaard, "The Scale of Terrorist Attacks as a Signal of Resources," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 38, No. 3 (September 1994), pp. 452-478;
44. and Harvey E. Lapan and Todd Sandier, "Terrorism and Signaling," European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 9, No. 3 (August 1993), pp. 383-398.
45. J. Maynard Smith, "The Theory of Games and Evolution in Animal Conflicts," Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 47 (1974), pp. 209-211;
46. John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 33-35;
47. and James D. Fearon, "Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation," International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Spring 1998), pp. 269-305.
48. Bernard Lewis, "The Revolt of Islam," New Yorker, November 19, 2001, p. 61.
49. Quoted in Hassan, "An Arsenal of Believers," p. 38.
50. Robert A. Pape, "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 3 (August 2003), pp. 343-361;
51. and Pape, Dying to Win.
52. Pape, Dying to Win, p. 44. Krueger and Laitin also find that targets of terrorism tend to be democratic.
53. See Krueger and. Laitin, "Kto Kogo?"
54. The U.S. program of extraordinary rendition, for example, is an effort to evade the restrictions usually faced by democracies by outsourcing the dirty work.
55. Debate Goes On Over Lebanon Withdrawal, Haaretz, May 23, 2001;
56. and Daoud Kuttab, "The Lebanon Lesson," Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2000.
57. Interview with Mahmoud Khalid al-Zahar, Al Jazeera, October 22, 2005.
58. Osama bin Laden, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, trans. James Howarth, ed. Bruce Lawrence (London: Verso, 2005), pp. 241-242.
59. Osama bin Laden, "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," Al-Quds Al-Arabi, August 1996, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html.
60. Peter C. Sederberg, "Conciliation as Counter-terrorist Strategy," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 32, No. 3 (August 1995), pp. 295-312.
61. Stephen Flynn, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terror ism (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
62. Graham T. Allison, Owen R. Coté Jr., Richard A. Falkenrath, and Steven E. Miller, Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996);
63. and Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate. Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004).
64. John Mueller, "Six Rather Unusual Propositions about Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Winter 2005), pp. 487-505.
65. The literature on deterrence is vast. See, for example, Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966);
66. and Christopher H. Achen and Duncan Snidal, "Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Studies," World Politics, Vol. 41, No. 2 (January 1989), pp. 143-169.
67. Noor Khan, "Militants Behead Afghan Principal for Educating Girls," Boston Globe, January 5, 2006.
68. Crenshaw Hutchinson, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," p. 390.
69. Stathis N. Kalyvas, "Wanton and Senseless? The Logic of Massacres in Algeria," Rationality and Society, Vol. 11, No. 3 (August 1999), pp. 243-285.
70. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 75-90.
71. United. States National Security Council, National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (Washington, D.C.: White I louse, November 2005), p. 7.
72. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, "Iraq and U.S. Policy," testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, October 19, 2005, 109th Cong., 1st sess., http://www.foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2005/ RiceTestimony051019.pdf.
73. See Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and the Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt, 1999).
74. This thesis is not without controversy. See Matt Steinglass, "Vietnam and Victory," Boston Globe, December 18, 2005.
75. Fromkin, "The Strategy of Terrorism."
76. Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," p. 387
77. ; and Price, "The Strategy and Tactics of Revolutionary Terrorism," p. 58.
78. Paddy Woodworth, "Why Do They Kill? The Basque Conflict in Spain," World Policy Journal, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring 2001), p. 7.
79. David A. Lake, "Rational Extremism: Understanding Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century," Dialog-IO, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 15-29.
80. Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Eric S. Dickson, "The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization," Washington University and New York University, 2005. Bueno de Mesquita and Dickson also argue that government violence lowers economic prosperity, which favors extremists in their competition with moderates.
81. Ethan Bueno de Mesquila, "Politics and the Suboptimal Provision of Counterterror," International Organization (forthcoming).
82. On the other hand, more dovish regimes might feel political pressure to take strong visible actions, whereas a regime with hawkish credentials could credibly claim that it was pursuing effective but nonvisible tactics. For a similar logic, see Kenneth A. Schultz, "The Politics of Risking Peace: Do Hawks or Doves Deliver the Olive Branch?" International Organization, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 1-38.
83. Bin Laden, Messages to the World, pp. 241-242.
84. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Pew Global Attitudes Project: Nine-Nation Survey, "A Year after the Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists," March 16, 2004.
85. See International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey, 2003/4: An Evaluation and Forecast of World Affairs (London: Routledge, 2005).
86. Quoted in Dafna Linzer, "Poll Shows Growing Arab Rancor at U.S.," Washington Post, July 23, 2004.
87. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 21-23;
88. and bin Laden, Messages to the World, pp. 241-242.
89. A program of economic and. social assistance to these more moderate elements would provide counterevidence that the target is not malicious or evil as the terrorist organizations had claimed.
90. Farah Stockman, "Tomorrow's Homework: Reading, Writing, and Arabic," Boston Globe, January 6, 2006.
91. For an analysis of obstacles to innovation in U.S. intelligence agencies, see Amy B. Zegart, "September 11 and the Adaptation Failure of U.S. Intelligence Agencies," International Security, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Spring 2005), pp. 78-111.
92. Stephen John Stedman, "Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes," International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Fall 1997), pp. 5-53.
93. Lewis, "The Revolt of Islam," p. 54.
94. Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence," International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 263-296.
95. Claude Berrebi and Esteban F. Klor, "On Terrorism and Electoral Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," Princeton University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2004.
96. Kydd and Walter, "Sabotaging the Peace," pp. 279-289.
97. Barbara F. Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002);
98. and Holger Schmidt, "When (and Why) Do Brokers Have To Be Honest? Impartiality and Third-Party Support for Peace Implementation after Civil Wars, 1945-1999," Georgetown University, 2004.
99. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War";
100. James D. Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict," in David A. Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998);
101. and Robert Powell, "The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information," American Political Science Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (May 2004), pp. 231-241.
102. As part of the terms of surrender, Confederate officers were allowed to keep their sidearms and personal property (including their horses) and return home.
103. For the most extensive treatment of terrorism and outbidding, see Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
104. See also Stuart J. Kaufman, "Spiraling to Ethnic War: Elites, Masses, and Moscow in Moldova's Civil War," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 108-138.
105. Abhinay Muthoo, Bargaining Theory with Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 230.
106. Rui J.P. de Figueiredo Jr. and Barry R. Weingast, "The Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict," in Barbara F. Walter and Jack Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 261-302.
107. James Ron, "Ideology in Context: Explaining Sendero Luminoso's Tactical Escalation," Journal, of Peace Research, Vol. 38, No. 5 (September 2001), p. 582.
108. Dexter Filkins, "Iraqis, Including Sunnis, Vote in Large Numbers on Calm Day," New York Times, December 16, 2005.