Big Boom: Robert Pape Remakes Terrorism Studies

Big Boom: Robert Pape Remakes Terrorism Studies
Jordan M. Smith  WORLD AFFAIRS
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/articles/2011-JanFeb/full-JordanSmith-JF-2011.html

Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Robert A. Pape (New York: Random House, 2005)

Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It
Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman (University of Chicago Press, 2010)

After 9/11, the University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape compiled a database of all the suicide terrorist attacks committed worldwide from 1980 to 2000—187 in total. Pape then analyzed his material, the most comprehensive collection of suicide terrorism ever assembled. His findings are illuminating. Rather than poverty, or a hatred of freedom or other Western values, or even Islamist fundamentalism—as the popular theories claimed—Pape found that the primary motive of suicide terrorists is the desire to compel democratic countries to abandon their occupations of foreign lands.

Pape published his findings in the American Political Science Review in 2003, and the accompanying article became one of the most widely discussed pieces of political science of the decade. He expanded the piece into a book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, which was nominated for the Council on Foreign Relations’ prestigious Arthur Ross Book Award and covered by CNN, the Washington Post, the American Conservative, Fox News, Huffington Post, and NPR. It was impressive attention for a wonky book.

Pape established the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism in 2003 and now has a new book, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It, coauthored with defense analyst James Feldman. In the book, Pape has updated his database of suicide terrorist attacks to 2009, examining a staggering 2,200 in total. Cutting the Fuse comes with glowing blurbs from Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, and 9/11 Commission chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean and has resulted in presentations at several Washington think tanks.