Military Interventions and Transnational Terrorism: An Intense Relationship

Abstract:     
Given that international military interventions provide both the opportunity and willingness for the adoption of transnational terrorist tactics, these military encroachments provide an ideal environment in which terrorism can flourish. However, military interventions’ exacerbating effect on terrorism should depend on the intensity - perceived in terms of troop size - of the intervention in question. In particular, very low-scale and very high-scale military interventions should have little or no effect on transnational terrorism, while interventions of intermediate intensity should have a statistically significant positive effect. The reasoning for this hypothesis is drawn from resource-mobilization theory in which it is posited that the potential for political violence results from a group’s ability to mobilize resources in support of collective action. A cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 165 countries from 1968 to 2005 reveals that, when military interventions are categorized according to intensity, only those with moderate numbers of troops are consistent, positive predictors of terrorism. n policy terms, these findings suggest that transnational terrorist violence may be mitigated through a policy of military restraint or overwhelming military force.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 41

Keywords: transnational terrorism, military interventions, resource-mobilization

working papers series