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About Us - IBRD Articles of Agreement: Article I

Wed Nov 08 20:49:03 +0000 2006

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What's this supposed to mean? posted by hness000

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To promote the long-range balanced growth of international trade and the maintenance of equilibrium in balances of payments by encouraging international investment for the development of the productive resources of members, thereby assisting in raising productivity, the standard of living and conditions of labor in their territories.

Tags: world_bank

The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

Wed Sep 27 18:12:41 +0000 2006

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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