Newswise — Israel's response to terror attacks on its northern border risks doing as much harm as good, says a University of Maryland researcher who has analyzed the historical record of government military interventions against terrorism.
"An aggressive military response early on can sometimes save lives, but in the case of terrorism, the evidence of success is mixed at best," says Gary LaFree, the University of Maryland researcher who directs the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) " a research center housed at Maryland and funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Governments need to be smart when it comes to get-tough responses to terror attacks, or risk an unwanted backlash."
LaFree recently led a team of START researchers who worked with the world's largest open-source database of terrorist incidents. They focused on the record in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1992, finding that three out of five interventions were associated with a significant increase in the likelihood of subsequent attacks. Their study concludes that there is an optimal point, at which the deterrence benefits of an aggressive response by authorities are outweighed by terrorist defiance.
"We can't say for sure that Israel is a case in point, but several Israeli researchers have been asking me the question recently," LaFree says. "The fact is no one can really say for sure whether attacks of the kind Israel is launching in southern Lebanon are likely to achieve their goals because hardly anyone has systematically studied the question. Since 9/11 there have been about 20,000 studies of terrorism, and only seven have used statistical methods to test the effectiveness of government strategies."
The study was presented as a conference paper at a research meeting last month. Media may request a copy of the study. See contact information.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START) is a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, tasked by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate with using state-of-the-art theories, methods, and data from the social and behavioral sciences to improve understanding of the origins, dynamics, and social and psychological impacts of terrorism.
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