The Strategies of Terrorism - MIT Press Journals

The Strategies of Terrorism 61United States withdrew from Lebanon following the bombing of the marinebarracks because it had only a marginal interest in maintaining stability andpreventing Syrian domination of that country. In that case, the costs of the attackclearly outweighed the U.S. interests at stake. Similarly, Israel withdrewfrom southern Lebanon in 2000 because the costs of the occupation outstrippedIsrael’s desire to maintain a buffer zone in that region. In contrast, theUnited States responded to the September 11 attacks by launching offensivewars in Afghanistan and Iraq rather than withdrawing U.S. troops from the region,as al-Qaida demanded (though U.S. troops did ultimately leave SaudiArabia for Iraq). Similarly, Israel is unlikely to withdraw from East Jerusalem,much less allow itself to become an Islamic state as Hamas has demanded.The second variable, constraints on retaliation, affects the costs paid by theterrorists for pursuing a war of attrition. Terrorist organizations almost alwaysare weaker than the governments they target and, as a result, are vulnerable togovernment retaliation. The more constrained the government is in its use offorce, the less costly an attrition strategy is, and the longer the terrorists canhold out in the hopes of achieving their goal. For instance, the Israelis have themilitary means to commit genocide against the Palestinian people or to expelthem to surrounding Arab countries. Israel, however, depends for its longtermsurvival on close ties with Europe and the United States. Western supportfor Israel would plummet in response to an Israeli strategy designed to inºictmass casualties, making such a strategy prohibitively costly. This constraintmakes a war of attrition strategy less costly (and more attractive) for thePalestinians.Democracies may be more constrained in their ability to retaliate than authoritarianregimes. Pape ªnds that suicide bombers target democracies exclusivelyand argues that this is in part because of constraints on their ability tostrike back. 36 Capable authoritarian regimes are able to gather more informationon their populations than democracies and can more easily round upsuspected terrorists and target those sympathetic to them. They are also lessconstrained by human rights considerations in their interrogation andretaliation practices. 37The ease with which a terrorist organization can be targeted also inºuences36. Pape, Dying to Win, p. 44. Krueger and Laitin also ªnd that targets of terrorism tend to be democratic.See Krueger and Laitin, “Kto Kogo?”37. The U.S. program of extraordinary rendition, for example, is an effort to evade the restrictionsusually faced by democracies by outsourcing the dirty work.