In his first inaugural address, in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt reassured a country consumed by the Great Depression that Americans would “face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of unity.”[1] Yet at times of great political challenge, agreement on a clear, resounding objective does not guarantee unity of effort inside political movements. National movements provide an extreme example of this problem. They can ill afford what Nelson Mandela, one of the leading figures of the African National Congress, in 1976 called “the luxury of division and disunity.” [2] Yet many are riven by those same internecine forces even as they fight for freedom and rights through national independence.
Tag: Palestine
Article Review 23 on “Israel’s War in Gaza: A Paradigm of Effective Military Learning and Adaptation.” International Security 37:2 (Fall 2012), and on “Just War Moral Philosophy and the 2008-09 Israeli Campaign in Gaza.”
Benjamin Lambeth and Jerome Slater share a common interest in the military meaning of Arab-Israeli confrontations of the last decade, but they come at the battles very differently. Whereas Lambeth is interested in analyzing the Israel Defense Forces’ effectiveness and learning curve, Slater is focused upon the morality of Israel’s actions, calling Operation Cast Lead (2008-09) a “moral catastrophe.” (44) Even though the authors cover some of the same events, one would be hard-pressed to develop a common narrative because they hold very different perspectives on Arab-Israeli events and history.
Review Essay 10 on Cutting a Fuse, not the Fuse!
Robert Pape and James Feldman in Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It build on Pape’s earlier work, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.[1] This volume is designed to further develop the earlier argument in Dying to Win that the occurrence of suicide terrorism is overwhelmingly explained by a foreign occupation in a particular region, and that ultimately the removal of foreign troops, when possible, will limit the number of suicide terrorist attacks. The book consists of two analytic chapters laying out the basic theories and arguments, eight chapters with valuable case studies (Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Al Qaeda, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Chechnya), and a concluding chapter. In the analytical chapters the authors reaffirm what we already know—that suicide terrorism is not uniquely related to religious groups. Those who continue to believe this popular misconception need to be disabused. They also note that suicide attacks are directed against democracies rather than non-democratic states. The eight country studies provide important information for scholars and students and are quite valuable. These chapters are also used to promote the basic idea that suicide terrorism is linked to foreign occupations broadly defined.
Roundtable 2-8 on How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns
A little more than a decade ago, the world’s leading academic experts on terrorism could be gathered in a not very large conference room to discuss the state of the field. As a relatively junior researcher at the United States Institute of Peace at the time, I was in such a room several times. The gathered experts rued the lack of attention most academics paid to the phenomenon of terrorism. Mainstream political science of the time was wedded to understanding the actions of states. With the exception of a few pioneers such as Martha Crenshaw[1] and David Rapoport[2], the view of many was that terrorism was properly seen as the province of diplomats, intelligence operatives and abnormal psychologists.
