The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism - The Diigo Meta page

• 27 Sep 06
  

  Harry Ness
  • Although this maximizes the

     

    coercive leverage that can be gained from terrorism, it

     

    does so at the greatest cost to the basis of support for

     

    the terrorist cause
  • In practice,

     

    however, suicide terrorists often seek simply to kill the

     

    largest number of people
  • Suicide terrorism i
  • Suicide terrorism
  • Destructive terrorism
  • In these cases,

     

    terroristsoftenavoiddoingseriousharmsoasnottoun-

     

    dermine sympathy for the political cause
  • Demonstrative terrorism
  • In general, terrorism has two purposes—to gain sup-

     

    porters and to coerce opponents
  • Finally, the most promising way to contain suicide

     

    terrorismistoreduceterrorists’confidenceintheirabil-

     

    ity to carry out such attacks on the target society
  • Fourth, although moderate suicide terrorism led to

     

    moderate concessions, these more ambitious suicide

     

    terroristcampaignsarenotlikelytoachievestillgreater

     

    gains and may well fail completely
  • Further, every sui-

     

    cide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been targeted

     

    against a state that had a democratic form of govern-

     

    ment.
  • Thevastmajorityofsuicideterroristattacks

     

    are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics

     

    but,rather,occurinclustersaspartofalargercampaign

     

    by an organized group to achieve a specific political

     

    goal.
  • In essence, suicide terrorism is an extreme form of

     

    what Thomas Schelling (1966) calls “the rationality of

     

    irrationality,” in which an act that is irrational for indi-

     

    vidual attackers is meant to demonstratecredibility to a

     

    democratic audience that still more and greater attacks

     

    are sure to come.
  • Viewed from the perspective of the terrorist

     

    organization, suicide attacks are designed to achieve

     

    specific political purposes: to coerce a target govern-

     

    ment to change policy, to mobilize additional recruits

     

    and financial support, or both.
  • Even if many suicide attackers are irrational or fanati-

     

    cal, the leadership groups that recruit and direct them

     

    are not
  • there may

     

    not be a single profile
  • First, al-

     

    though religious motives may matter, modern suicide

     

    terrorism is not limited to Islamic Fundamentalism

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