Does Terrorism Win Conflicts? - The Atlantic - 0 views
-
Yet some of the most basic information about terrorism remains surprisingly elusive. For example: Does it work?
-
There have been some attempts at answering the question, but many of them are either largely anecdotal or geographically constrained. Other studies have focused on international terror. But as political scientist Page Fortna of Columbia University notes, the vast majority of terrorism isn’t transnational—it’s localized, utilized in the context of civil wars and fights for territorial control.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
Fortna finds that terror “is a cheap way to inflict pain on the other side, and terrorist groups are hard to eliminate completely, but it is useless for taking or holding territory.”
-
Non-terrorist movements are far more likely to win a settlement or an outright victory, while terrorist movements tend to lose, fizzle out, or drag on
-
What terrorism does do well is prolong wars—as the heavy clustering around the “low activity” and “ongoing” categories in the chart illustrates. This appears to demonstrate why groups might turn to terror and why the strategy falters. Since deploying terrorism makes wars longer, it also lengthens the lifespans of the groups that are engaging in it. One reason for this is that it’s hard for authorities to stamp out a terror campaign. But it’s also very hard for terrorist groups to capture and hold territory, an essential goal in a civil war.