In crisis
All Mistakes Are Not Equal: Intelligence Errors and National Security
Scott Sigmund Gartner
Intelligence and National Security, forthcoming
Abstract:
Strategic situations create motivational biases that help to predict the type of errors intelligence communities are more likely to commit (Type I errors predict behavior never observed, while Type II errors fail to predict behavior later observed). When the dangers of inaction are low and the cost of action high, the intelligence community is more likely to fail to predict threats (Type II error). If the dangers of inaction are high and the costs of military action low, it is more likely to predict mistakenly threats never observed (Type I error). Studies of US and Israeli decision-making and analyses of two new experimental studies support this theory. The key is to recognize the incentives for error and to develop systems that, at worst, lead to intelligence errors (mistakes consistent with a state's national security needs) and not intelligence failures (errors contrary to national security requirements).
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A Psychological Autopsy of 9/11 Ringleader Mohamed Atta
Adam Lankford
Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, October 2012, Pages 150-159
Abstract:
Simple logic dictates that some suicide terrorists are more significant than others. However, major questions still remain about the motives and psychology of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, arguably the most significant suicide terrorist in human history. This article constructs a psychological autopsy of Atta in order to provide a much more complete explanation of his behavior. First, it suggests that accounts which solely attribute Atta's actions to religious and political ideology appear severely incomplete. It then reviews evidence that Atta may have been clinically suicidal, and that his struggles with social isolation, depression, hopelessness, guilt, and shame were extraordinarily similar to the struggles of those who commit conventional suicide. Finally, it considers how Atta's ideology may have interacted with his suicidal tendencies to produce his final act of murder-suicide on September 11, 2011.
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Steven Hurst
International Politics, September 2012, Pages 545-567
Abstract:
President Barack Obama's choice of toughened sanctions as the means to prevent Iran achieving nuclear weapons status is discussed. It is argued that that choice is explained less by any belief in their likely effectiveness than by the unattractive and risky nature of the alternatives. The use of force would not eliminate Iran's nuclear programme and risks pitching the region into even deeper turmoil; the ‘Grand Bargain' with Iran advocated by others would alienate allies and domestic interests and undermine the administration's wider objectives in the Middle East. The attraction of sanctions, in contrast, is that though unlikely to work they pose little threat to US interests while allowing the Obama administration to stave off demands to adopt high risk alternatives and creating a breathing space for the administration to consider the future evolution of its Iran policy.
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Terrorism Risks and Cost-Benefit Analysis of Aviation Security
Mark Stewart & John Mueller
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We evaluate, for the U.S. case, the costs and benefits of three security measures designed to reduce the likelihood of a direct replication of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To do so, we assess risk reduction, losses, and security costs in the context of the full set of security layers. The three measures evaluated are installed physical secondary barriers (IPSB) to restrict access to the hardened cockpit door during door transitions, the Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS), and the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) Program. In the process, we examine an alternate policy measure: doubling the budget of the FFDO program to $44 million per year, installing IPSBs in all U.S. aircraft at a cost of $13.5 million per year, and reducing funding for FAMS by 75% to $300 million per year. A break-even cost-benefit analysis then finds the minimum probability of an otherwise successful attack required for the benefit of each security measures to equal its cost. We find that the IPSB is cost-effective if the annual attack probability of an otherwise successful attack exceeds 0.5% or one attack every 200 years. The FFDO program is cost-effective if the annual attack probability exceeds 2%. On the other hand, more than two otherwise successful attacks per year are required for FAMS to be cost-effective. A policy that includes IPSBs, an increased budget for FFDOs, and a reduced budget for FAMS may be a viable policy alternative, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars per year with consequences for security that are, at most, negligible.
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Two Concepts of Liberty: U.S. Cold War Grand Strategies and the Liberal Tradition
Brendan Rittenhouse Green
International Security, Fall 2012, Pages 9-43
Abstract:
Contrary to conventional accounts, the United States did not immediately adopt a set of sweeping commitments to Europe after World War II. Instead, it pursued a buck-passing strategy until the early 1960s that sought to craft Western Europe into an independent pole of power capable of balancing the Soviet Union largely without the assistance of the United States, thereby facilitating the withdrawal of U.S troops from the continent. Only under President John F. Kennedy did the United States adopt a balancing strategy, making permanent forward commitments to the defense of Europe. A new theory of liberal ideas and foreign policy explains this shift. "Negative liberals," who see freedom in terms of opportunity and minimal state intervention, adopted a buck-passing strategy to pass the costs of foreign policy to other actors and minimize state intrusion at home. "Positive liberals," who see freedom as the exercise of capabilities and often welcome state intervention, had no such compunctions. Starting with Kennedy, positive liberals welcomed firmer balancing commitments in part as a measure to protect the liberal regimes that had emerged in Western Europe after World War II.
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Leader, Follower, or Spectator? The Role of President Obama in the Arab Spring Uprisings
Daniel Morey et al.
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: President Obama has faced a plethora of challenges both at home and abroad during his first term. While some challenges were inherited, the Arab Spring uprisings provided a new opportunity for him to strengthen America's role as a global leader. Much debate has raged over the way in which Obama dealt with the uprisings. Supporters view Obama's foreign policy as a selling point as he moves toward the 2012 elections, while opponents have condemned him as a follower "leading from behind." Absent in this debate is an objective attempt to both articulate Obama's foreign policy agenda in both a historical and cross-national context, and an effort to analyze Obama's reaction to the Arab Spring uprisings vis-a-vis other state leaders. This article attempts to rectify these problems to better understand whether Obama was a leader or a follower during the Arab Spring.
Methods: We begin with a thorough discussion of Obama's foreign policy approach and then present empirical analysis of original data of all state signals during the Arab Spring uprisings.
Results: Though we find some evidence pointing toward leadership, the bulk of our evidence indicates that Obama was largely either an active spectator or a follower during the uprisings.
Conclusion: We conclude that, at best, Obama showed weak evidence of leadership during the Arab Spring uprisings.
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Graeme Davies & Robert Johns
Intelligence and National Security, September/October 2012, Pages 669-688
Abstract:
There are considerable concerns about public perceptions of intelligence stemming directly from the highly politicized nature of intelligence estimates in the run-up to the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this article we use a new public attitudes dataset to provide the first ever analysis of British public confidence in MI6 and Government use of intelligence. The article demonstrates that the public have relatively high confidence in the intelligence produced by MI6 but are extremely sceptical about how the Government will present that intelligence. Using an ordered logit model this article then examines the factors that influence public perceptions of both intelligence and Government, finding that women are a lot less confident in both the intelligence services and government presentation of intelligence than men, suggesting that this might help explain gender differences in support for military action. The study also demonstrates that party identifiers and Catholics have very low confidence in the intelligence produced by MI6. The study shows that public confidence in both government and intelligence has a strong effect on support for preventive military action against terror camps, suggesting that the intelligence agencies need to avoid being contaminated by political agendas as much as possible if the intelligence case for future military actions is to be supported by the public.
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Staffing Models for Covert Counterterrorism Agencies
Edward Kaplan
Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article presents staffing models for covert counterterrorism agencies such as the New York City Police Department, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Britain's Security Service or the Israeli Shin Bet. The models ask how many good guys are needed to catch the bad guys, and how should agents be deployed? Building upon the terror queue model of the detection and interdiction of terror plots by undercover agents, the staffing models developed respond to objectives such as: prevent a specified fraction of terror attacks, maximize the benefits-minus-costs of preventing attacks, staff in expectation that smart terrorists will attack with a rate that optimizes their outcomes, and allocate a fixed number of agents across groups to equalize detection rates, or prevent as many attacks as possible, or prevent as many attack casualties as possible. Numerical examples based on published data describing counterterrorism operations in the United States and Israel are provided throughout.
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The Geography of Conflicts and Regional Trade Agreements
Philippe Martin, Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, October 2012, Pages 1-35
Abstract:
In addition to standard trade gains, regional trade agreements (RTAs) can promote peaceful relations by increasing the opportunity cost of conflicts. Country pairs with large trade gains from RTAs and a high probability of conflict should be more likely to sign an RTA. Using data from 1950 to 2000, we show that this complementarity between economic and politics determines the geography of RTAs. We disentangle trade gains from political factors by a theory-driven empirical estimation and find that country pairs with higher frequency of past wars are more likely to sign RTAs, the more so the larger the trade gains.
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Paramilitarization of the Economy: The Case of Iran's Basij Militia
Saeid Golkar
Armed Forces & Society, October 2012, Pages 625-648
Abstract:
The Basij, a massive Iranian paramilitary organization, has played a crucial role in the country's politics, economy, and society at large for the past two decades. While the Basij's increased formal involvement in the Iranian economy was initially meant to guarantee the welfare of its personnel, the Basij has since extended its influence to every sector of the economy, from construction and real estate to the stock market. The expansion of its economic activity has enhanced the Basij's control over society and its influence on domestic politics. This article investigates the history, justifications, and consequences of Basij engagement in business and the economy in postrevolutionary Iran.
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Nasty not nice: British counter-insurgency doctrine and practice, 1945-1967
David French
Small Wars & Insurgencies, Fall 2012, Pages 744-761
Abstract:
At the beginning of the twenty-first century the British Ministry of Defence prided itself that it was the Western world's leader in the conduct of counter-insurgency operations. Drawing on the lessons it had learnt during Britain's wars of decolonisation, it believed that it had discovered ways of waging wars among the people that enabled it to use force effectively but with discrimination, distinguishing between the ‘guilty' few and the ‘innocent' many. This article will survey these assertions in the light of historical evidence drawn from 10 of those campaigns: Palestine, Malaya, the Suez Canal Zone, Kenya, British Guiana, Cyprus, Oman, Nyasaland, Borneo, and Aden. It will suggest that the real foundation of British counter-insurgency doctrine and practice was not the quest to win ‘hearts and minds'. It was the application of wholesale coercion.
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Demetrios Kyriacou et al.
Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, September 2012, Pages 264-279
Abstract:
Rapid public health response to a large-scale anthrax attack would reduce overall morbidity and mortality. However, there is uncertainty about the optimal cost-effective response strategy based on timing of intervention, public health resources, and critical care facilities. We conducted a decision analytic study to compare response strategies to a theoretical large-scale anthrax attack on the Chicago metropolitan area beginning either Day 2 or Day 5 after the attack. These strategies correspond to the policy options set forth by the Anthrax Modeling Working Group for population-wide responses to a large-scale anthrax attack: (1) postattack antibiotic prophylaxis, (2) postattack antibiotic prophylaxis and vaccination, (3) preattack vaccination with postattack antibiotic prophylaxis, and (4) preattack vaccination with postattack antibiotic prophylaxis and vaccination. Outcomes were measured in costs, lives saved, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). We estimated that postattack antibiotic prophylaxis of all 1,390,000 anthrax-exposed people beginning on Day 2 after attack would result in 205,835 infected victims, 35,049 fulminant victims, and 28,612 deaths. Only 6,437 (18.5%) of the fulminant victims could be saved with the existing critical care facilities in the Chicago metropolitan area. Mortality would increase to 69,136 if the response strategy began on Day 5. Including postattack vaccination with antibiotic prophylaxis of all exposed people reduces mortality and is cost-effective for both Day 2 (ICER=$182/QALY) and Day 5 (ICER=$1,088/QALY) response strategies. Increasing ICU bed availability significantly reduces mortality for all response strategies. We conclude that postattack antibiotic prophylaxis and vaccination of all exposed people is the optimal cost-effective response strategy for a large-scale anthrax attack. Our findings support the US government's plan to provide antibiotic prophylaxis and vaccination for all exposed people within 48 hours of the recognition of a large-scale anthrax attack. Future policies should consider expanding critical care capacity to allow for the rescue of more victims.
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Linda Merola
Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, forthcoming
Abstract:
Few researchers have analyzed post-9/11 alterations in the opinions or discourse of the legal community, despite this community's influence on public opinion and legal policy. In fact, to date, no source of data exists capturing the opinions of this community across the post-9/11 period. However, their writings in law review articles provide one source of longitudinal data regarding the issues and concerns that were salient to this influential community during the years of the post-9/11 era. A content analysis of law review articles is performed to examine meaningful shifts in the expert discourse related to civil liberties issues pre- and post-9/11 and across the post-9/11 period. The analysis - the first of its kind - demonstrates significant alterations over the post-9/11 period, including greatly intensified efforts at providing policy leadership. The analysis also reveals the year 2006 as a key turning point in legal scholarship, after which these articles adopted a highly aggressive, confrontational, and non-deferential tone. These findings are important because they inform scholarly debates regarding the role of elites in maintaining expansive civil liberties protections following terrorist attacks.
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Does Watching the News Affect Fear of Terrorism? The Importance of Media Exposure on Terrorism Fear
Ashley Marie Nellis & Joanne Savage
Crime & Delinquency, September 2012, Pages 748-768
Abstract:
Several authors have proposed that media hype elevates perceptions of risk and fear of crime. Research suggests that fear of crime is related to the overall amount of media consumption, resonance of news reports, how much attention the individual pays to the news, and how credible he or she believes it to be. The present study examines whether the same applies for terrorism. We use telephone survey data (N = 532) of New Yorkers and Washingtonians to test whether perceived risk and fear of terrorism are associated with several media-related variables. We find that exposure to terrorism-related news is positively associated with perceived risk of terrorism to self and others and with fear for others, but not for self.
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Wiring Decolonization: Turning Technology against the Colonizer during the Indochina War, 1945-1954
Christopher Goscha
Comparative Studies in Society and History, October 2012, Pages 798-831
Abstract:
Twentieth-century wars of decolonization were more than simple diplomatic and military affairs. This article examines how the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) relied upon technology to drive state-making and to make war during the struggle against the French (1945-1954). Wireless radios, in particular, provided embattled nationalists a means by which they could communicate orders and information across wide expanses of contested space in real time. Printing presses, newspapers, stationary, and stamps not only circulated information, but they also served as the bureaucratic markers of national sovereignty. Radios and telephones were essential to the DRV's ability to develop, field, and run a professional army engaged in modern - not guerilla - battles. The Vietnamese were victorious at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 in part because they successfully executed a highly complex battle via the airwaves. Neither the Front de libération nationale (FLN) fighting the French for Algeria nor the Republicans battling the Dutch for Indonesia ever used communications so intensely to drive state-making or take the fight to the colonizer on the battlefield. Scholars of Western states and warfare have long recognized the importance of information gathering for understanding such matters. This article argues that it is time to consider how postcolonial states gathered and used information, even in times of war.
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Bruce Catton, Middlebrow Culture, and the Liberal Search for Purpose in Cold War America
Robert Cook
Journal of American Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This essay provides a case study of one man's transition from the reform-oriented liberalism of the New Deal period to the burgeoning rights-focused liberalism of the 1960s. It contends that Bruce Catton, the most popular Civil War historian of his generation, played an influential role in forging the culture of Cold War America. He did so in his capacity as a prominent "middlebrow" intellectual who sought to instill his legions of adoring fans with a sense of moral purpose at a time when political elites were fretting about ordinary Americans' ability to fight the Cold War effectively. While his finely crafted narratives of the Civil War demonstrated the courage and conviction of nineteenth-century Americans, his many public appearances in the 1950s enabled him to disseminate further his conviction that the timeless values of American democracy remained as relevant in the disturbing present as they had been in the country's divided past. Catton's characteristically middlebrow commitment to antiracism as a contribution to the Cold War struggle was by no means unfaltering but an assessment of his writings and actions during the Civil War centennial reveals his continuing determination to render American democracy sufficiently vigorous to counter the ongoing communist threat.
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Globalization and a Conservative Dilemma: Economic Openness and Retributive Policies
James Breckenridge & Fathali Moghaddam
Journal of Social Issues, September 2012, Pages 559-570
Abstract:
Globalization is associated with economic openness and, in this sense, is in line with conservative free market ideology that embraces less government intervention. Globalization is also associated with greater contact with dissimilar outgroups and potential threats from terrorists and seems to run against conservative attitudes toward outgroup threat and civil liberties. We report research employing two nationally representative samples of 1,000 adults (collected in 2006 and 2008) that explored conservative individuals' attitudes as American views of terrorism evolved following 9/11. Despite diminishing estimates of the likelihood of terrorist attacks, conservatism remained strongly associated with support for seeking revenge for foreign terrorist attacks and for restricting the civil liberties of foreign visitors and noncitizens in order to prevent terrorism. These trends were not accounted for by differences in levels of perceived threat or by demographic characteristics distinguishing conservatives from others. Results are discussed in the context of globalization and the role of political ideology.
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Kidnapping by Terrorist Groups, 1970-2010: Is Ideological Orientation Relevant?
James Forest
Crime & Delinquency, September 2012, Pages 769-797
Abstract:
This article examines whether a terrorist group's ideology has a meaningful impact on its involvement in kidnapping. On a global level, incident data (1970-2010) indicate that in the past decade the number of kidnappings by terrorist groups has increased, while Muslim extremists have replaced left-wing/Marxist revolutionaries as the world's leading kidnappers. However, when we incorporate data about the attributes of terrorist organizations and their operating environments, this analysis indicates that ideology does not play an important role in determining the likelihood of a group's involvement in kidnapping. The article concludes with implications and suggested topics for further study.