This chapter explores terrorism, terrorist groups, and potential solutions to terrorism. It discusses conceptual and legal definitions of terrorism. It then provides historical context, describing terrorist waves driven by ideologies such as anarchism, anti-colonialism, New Left perspectives, and various religions. The chapter looks at who becomes a terrorist, taking account of theories of grievance, radicalization, recruitment by terrorist groups, lone wolf terrorism, and foreign fighter recruitment. It considers relationships between regime type and terrorism, examining why democracies, anocracies, and autocracies respectively might be more or less likely to attract terrorist violence, and exploring issues such as media coverage, grievance, and repression. Terrorist tactics and how these might diffuse across groups are discussed, as are terrorist group cooperation and state sponsorship of terrorism. The chapter also looks at the challenges of crafting effective counterterrorism policy, with a focus on deradicalization. It then applies many of these concepts to a quantitative study on whether targeting terrorist group leaders helps stop terrorism, and a case study of al-Qaeda.

When we turned to Aleppo, we discovered a cityscape that was more complicated than those of Raqqa, Saraqeb, and Darayya. Its battle lines crisscrossed the city, continually shifting during our period of study, making each neighborhood its own unique nucleus in an atomized space. Aleppo is the oldest and second largest Syrian city. Known for its mercantile past and modern industrial present, the city had approximately 3 million residents before the conflict began. The first wave of protests began in 2011, and the city council came into being in March 2013 and was staffed by over 550 personnel by 2016.1

Air power played a central, if uneven, role in the US military response to the September 11 attacks during Operation Enduring Freedom. For many, the successes of the air campaign in Afghanistan heralded a “New American Way of War” – a strategy characterized by the precise application of long-range air power, ISR support, and special forces coordinating with local allies against the enemy. However, air operations over Afghanistan generated mixed levels of effectiveness against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, with success often tempered by the degree and quality of teaming between air and ground components. This chapter explores the legacy of air power during Operation Enduring Freedom, carefully examining the origins and context of the air campaign, key characteristics and events of air operations throughout the conflict, whether air power in Afghanistan ultimately proved effective, and finally how applicable the experiences of the air campaign might be for future conflicts.

This chapter studies debates over sovereignty between the ‘ulama and the state. It does so by examining the killing of the Pakistani governor Salman Taseer and his alleged act of insulting Muhammad. I assert that in the case of Taseer’s killing, and in blasphemy cases more broadly, the issue of sovereignty boils down to the question of who can deem the insulter worthy of death and execute this punishment. The state, considering itself sovereign, reserves this right for itself. Consequently, it deemed Taseer’s extrajudicial killing a murder and awarded the death penalty to his assassin. The ‘ulama regard God as the ultimate sovereign. They assert that His sovereignty is vested in His law, the shari‘a, which they interpret and articulate. Many ‘ulama maintain that according to the shari‘a, insulting Muhammad is such a grievous crime that anyone can legitimately commit sovereign violence against a Prophet-insulter. Importantly, a minority among the ‘ulama support the state’s monopoly over legitimate violence. These ‘ulama also claim to formulate their arguments from within the shari‘a. In a broader sense, this chapter’s exploration of blasphemy intervenes in the debate of whether an Islamic state – i.e. a polity that demands its own sovereignty, but also emphasizes its reverence for God’s sovereignty – is possible.

Detailing the US intervention in Iraq, this chapter provides a list of policy requests from the USA to Iraqi partners and the rate of Iraqi compliance with US requests from 2004 to 2010. Providing a summary of the US-Iraqi counterinsurgency partnership (2003–11), this chapter discusses several distinctive components of the Iraqi-US alliance, namely the imperfect and awkward transition to Iraqi sovereignty and Washington negotiating with not one, but two local governments in Iraq, namely the Shi’a-dominated government in Baghdad, and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. Iraqi compliance was affected by the convergence or divergence of US and Iraqi interests, interacting with US dependency on Iraq to implement particular reforms. There are 106 US policy requests identified and detailed including working against sectarianism and corruption.

Examines September 11 attacks and the Cold War–style response of George W. Bush. Assesses competing interpretations of 9/11. Outlines Bush Doctrine and argues for its continuity with Cold War strategies. Considers case for and performance in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Details first phase of the War on Terror and the traditional alliances that it relied on.

This chapter argues that what appears to be a break in the US policy towards its GC III obligations is really a change in emphasis from positive reciprocity to negative reciprocity. The multi-actor setting of US policy decision making made such a change possible. The chapter begins by examining the period from the end of the Vietnam War through to the USA-led NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. It demonstrates how a split emerged, one that had not existed previously, between US policy makers and the military in attitudes towards reciprocity and IHL obligations. It then analyzes three key decisions: (i) to use military commissions to try detainees for IHL violations, (ii) to deny POW status to detainees, and (iii) to use “enhanced interrogations techniques” when questioning detainees. It argues that logic of appropriateness explanations cannot fully explain US policy decisions towards the treatment of detainees in the GWOT. In each of the three policy decisions examined, concerns with specific negative reciprocity are necessary to understand fully the US decision not to apply GC III.