Successful for whom?: an examination of the general deterrent impact of the targeted killing of terrorist leaders on global terrorist fatalities

ABSTRACT

Targeted killings are a prominent strategy for combatting terrorism and are regularly claimed to deter political violence. Employed against terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and others who are argued to be prominent terrorist threats, a growing body of evidence suggests that targeted killings do not achieve their desired general deterrent impacts. Yet, this strategy still enjoys great political support and targeted killings continue to be touted as examples of previous counterterrorism success even before their impacts could be observed. Aiming to disentangle whether there is an empirical basis for these divergent claims regarding the impacts of targeted killings, this study examines the impact of the killing of bin Laden on global patterns of terrorist fatalities. Employing group-based and dual trajectory models, our findings indicate that regardless of whether an explicit cut-point is included in the analysis, the killing of bin Laden coincided with a global increase in terrorist fatalities in many but not all countries, some of which had previously declining trajectories of fatalities from terrorism. The potential impacts of future targeted killings and general deterrence are discussed along with the need to consider terrorism consequences beyond national borders.

KEYWORDS:

• Targeted killing
• general deterrence
• Osama bin Laden
• trajectory analysis
• terrorism
• Soleimani

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For the purposes of this study, terrorism is defined ‘as the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a nonstate actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation’ (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, 2017). A more complete definition and its operationalization can also be found in the data and methods section.

2 It should be noted that the theory of deterrence also exists in other social science disciplines including political science, economics, and sociology. There are key differences in these theories regarding the nature of deterrence, however they are centered around the idea that if governments are able to demonstrate punishment or other threats that people will be less likely to engage in a sanctioned action (see Huth, 1999). This study highlights the importance of examining these disciplinary differences across deterrence theories, as well as the consequences this has had for counterterrorism itself, as this would help to extend and clarify the existing deterrence literatures in each discipline.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daren Fisher

Daren Fisher, PhD is a Research Public Health Analyst in the Center for Courts and Corrections Research at RTI International. His research interests include the relationship between government actions and subsequent terrorism, criminological theory, policing, and crime prevention. Dr. Fisher has published articles in Annual Review of Criminology, Justice Quarterly, the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, the European Journal of Criminology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Women & Criminal Justice, and the American Journal of Criminal Justice. He has also authored book chapters on Sociological and Criminological Explanations of Terrorism (Oxford University Press, eds. Erica Chenoweth, Andreas Gofas, Richard English, and Stathis Kalyvas) and the Emergence of Classical Criminological Theory (Wiley, ed. Ruth A. Triplett).

Michael H. Becker

Michael H. Becker, MA is a doctoral student at American University in the Justice, Law, and Criminology department. His research examines individual and group factors associated with support for, and participation in violent extremism, process and outcome measures in P/CVE programming, and novel strategies of data collection. His work has been featured in the European Journal of Criminology, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Criminology & Criminal Justice.