Pape-acy III: Robert Pape for Hawks
Continuing a series of thoughts provoked by Robert Pape’s Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terror.
In comments downblog, FMGuru wonders
In my historical understanding, suicide attacks are weapons of the weak and desperate. Kamikazes were an end-war desperation measure, Palestinians resort to suicide bus-bombings because more conventional methods of attacking Israel are made difficult because of Israel’s tight security, and so on. They’re difficult and they’re wasteful.
The Resistance (in its myriad forms) in Iraq really has few limitations on itself. It has enough munitions to fight for a hundred years. It has lots of members. The Americans only effectively control a small portion of the country. They have plenty of space, time, personnel, equipment, and knowledge to engage in non-suicide bombings – mortar attacks, conventional car bombs, ambushes, multi-stage attacks (set off a big bomb, wait 30 minutes, set off an even bigger bomb to kill the emergency response people, etc.).
If I was a war apologist, I’d say that it was proof that the resistance is desperate and failing, and that we’re turning corners and winning this war despite what the treasonous MSM wants you to believe. But I’m not, I’m just puzzled.
Japan was indeed losing WWII when the kamikaze program began; and could no longer turn out trained pilots who would on average survive more than one mission. Palestinian groups during the 2000 intifada did indeed shift to predominantly suicide attacks on civilian targets after more conventional guerrilla assaults on military checkpoints tended to fizzle. Pape doesn’t explicitly theorize suicide terror as a fallback strategy once conventional terror attacks fail.
That said, one of Pape’s key points is that suicide attack is more effective in terms of lethality than conventional terror or guerrilla attacks. (Figures are in the book.) If it’s a body count you’re after, suicide attack beats conventional terror by a large margin. Nor is it necessarily “wasteful.” Returning to the ur-example, the kamikaze program, by the time of the Divine Wind program, the average Japanese pilot was dying on his first mission, without damaging any allied ships. (See Gerhard Weinberg’s superb A World at Arms.) The kamikaze program didn’t save any Japanese pilots, but it made their inevitable deaths more effective.
From a (ruthless) command perspective, when you plan an offensive you may calculate that you will suffer, say, 10% losses. Perhaps given the size of your force, that is 10 men. The real shift from planning conventional guerrilla or terror attacks to planning suicide operations is simply that everyone knows which ten men in advance. The commander knows, and the fighters know. That’s a change in terms of social psychology – from Russian Roulette to simply blowing your brains out. Pape spends a good chunk of the book on the social and individual logic underpinning suicide terror. But the fact that in return for naming your casualties in advance you get to cause casualties at vastly increased efficiency decouples suicide terror from “weakness and desperation” in theory if not everywhere in practice. I’m not sure we could call Hezbollah’s campaigns in southern Lebanon campaigns of “desperation,” though of course Hezbollah was relatively weak compared to the Israeli military.
My suspicion in the case of Iraq has long been that most of the suicide bombers themselves are the foreign, al-Qaedist infiltrators, while the native resistances have tended toward more conventional methods. I think the native, Baath-flavored leadership has mostly regarded the foreign jihadis as cannon-fodder – if Abdul from Saudi Arabia wants to blow himself up killing our enemies, by all means let him.
Lately, there’s evidence of growing friction between insurgent factions, so-called “red on red” violence. The pattern of the reported incidents is consistent with the idea that the native insurgents look upon some of the Iraqi targets of the Zarqawiites as “kindred” in ways that the Zarqawiites do not regard them, and in ways that the native insurgents don’t regard the Zarqawiites.
Now I should deal with the other prong of “weakness and desperation,” which is when we get to how hawks could come to terms with Pape. I have conceived a marvelous proof of this principle which is unfortunately too long to fit in this margin. Actually, I have to go run now. But when I get back, I’ll handle it in another item.
Comment by Glaivester —
August 20, 2005 @ 9:58 am
What about the fact that the suicide attacks are mainly against Iraqis ( specifically Shiites, I think). Most coalition soldiers who are killed are not killed via suicide bombings.
Comment by Anodyne —
August 20, 2005 @ 10:15 am
I’m on the edge of my seat. But “judging by the tenacity with which the problem resisted attack for so long [your] alleged proof seems likely to be illusionary. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that [you] have searched for proofs for the cases [hawk=neocon, neolibertarian, democrat, republican, pundit, and country singer], which would have been superfluous had [you] actually been in possession of a general proof.”
Neverthess, “… the fact that no counterexamples were found for this many cases is highly suggestive.”
Comment by nadezhda —
August 20, 2005 @ 3:54 pm
Not a comment on the Pape-acy series as such — I eagerly await further installments from our host. But a couple of observations on Pape generally (caveat having read articles but not the book).
Pape offers a useful corrective to the “they’re mad as hatters” view of suicide bombers or to those who would point to the phenomenon as evidence of some sort of uniquely Islamic pathology. Suicide attacks is an operational tactic adopted where those tactics are considered by the leaders of a campaign (whether organized military, insurgent or terrorist) as contributing toward the campaign’s goals, and where it’s possible to find a supply of recruits. Pape finds that foreign occupations provide those circumstances more frequently than others.
The simplistic causal argument that “occupation=suicide bombers,” which has been embraced by some to buttress calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, is neither very helpful as policy nor interesting as inquiry. The more interesting questions about occupations concern (1) why they create fertile conditions for suicide attacks and (2) whether there is anything special about campaigns against occupations that make suicide attacks an especially attractive tactic. It is those questions which I take our host to be in the process of exploring in the Pape-acy series, in the hope of extending some of the “lessons” of that inquiry to the complex and fluid situation in Iraq.
In Iraq we have both opposition to foreign occupation forces and a low-intensity but highly destabilizing civil war in some key geographic areas. Suicide attacks are not used primarily as weapons against occupying forces, although that may be partly a function of opportunity rather than target preferences — US force protection strategy leaves fewer easy targets in comparison with Iraqi police stations and civilian gathering places. Only a small subset of groups fighting either the US or the Iraqi government have embraced suicide attacks as a tactic. There are forms of both collaborative and competitive behavior among those fighting the US and/or the Iraqi forces. And the use of suicide attacks as a tactic has to be viewed within the constant innovation at the tactical level both by the various insurgencies and by the US and Iraqi forces.
Abu Aardvark has a recent post on Pape in which he compares Pape’s thesis with Mia Bloom’s recent book, Dying to Kill. Bloom highlights competition among insurgent/terrorist groups as another factor in understanding the dynamics of what produces and sustains suicide bombing campaigns. At the least, some of Bloom’s ideas may be a helpful complement to Pape’s theorizing, which as the Aardvark notes, is not just overly monocausal, but also far too static an analysis.
Comment by Anodyne —
August 20, 2005 @ 5:20 pm
Nedezhda,
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It looks like we have some time to kill during the intermission. If you would care to engage in some between-act navel gazing, here’s a question (not to be read as a challenge):
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If what Pape offers is more subtle and data-driven than what Jerry Falwell offers, but ultimately is an overly monocausal and far too static analysis, how do you see it becoming “… a useful corrective to the ‘they’re mad as hatters’ view of suicide bombers …”?
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Btw, I’ve never come across “… the simplistic causal argument that ‘occupation=suicide bombers,’ which has been embraced by some to buttress calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq …”. Would you happen to have any links for entertainment purposes?
Comment by nadezhda —
August 20, 2005 @ 11:24 pm
Anodyne — The two types of simplistic thinking about suicide attackers I described tend to ignore the “strategic logic” that’s the focus of Pape’s study. They also ignore the fact, demonstrated by Pape, that suicide is an important tactic of choice by groups that are not Muslim.
To my way of thinking, if you want to defend yourself, surely it’s better to try to figure out where and why the enemy adopts certain tactics than to view the enemy as a cardboard cutout — a cult of irrational zombie-type creatures or a bunch of sociopaths executing theological instructions that are somehow part of their DNA.
Pape argues that the strategic embrace of suicide attacks as a tactic in a conflict can be understood, and I think that’s a useful step. That sugests we can start to understand, beyond the realm of social psychology, why the very same sorts of people who adopt suicide attacks one place (i.e. the guys we think of as “mad as hatters” or solely motivated by religious zealotry) choose not to use the tactic in another conflict that appears to be part of the overall religious cause to which they claim allegiance. Similarly, it suggests we might be able to anticipate or at least better understand a conflict where non-Muslims are willing to use suicide tactics.
Whether you think Pape has gotten to the heart of what drives the “strategic logic” of suicide is another kettle of fish, however. My comments are based on second hand reports on Pape’s work and his own limited “highlights” of his main conclusions — I haven’t spent anymore time on it because I didn’t find what I read about his study sufficiently interesting to dig any further. With that caveat, Pape’s thesis seens to me curiously focused on the fact of occupation eliciting a response (choice of suicide as a tactic) from a one-dimensional antagonist. It doesn’t account for the “tango” of conflict that one would expect in what is basically an hypothesis about insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. It also ignores the dynamics among groups that are fighting the same opponent (whether or not the opponent is an occupier) where some groups choose suicide tactics and others do not (Bloom’s study). Of course, even if you buy Pape, it’s another question altogether whether you think that US policy should be changed in order to remove the stimulus for suicide attacks that Pape has identified.
As for links to folks who’ve used Pape’s “occupation” argument to buttress their case for withdrawal, well there’s Pape himself in the American Conservative interview. I’m too lazy to go searching for other links. But when his study was first reported I read pieces in which Pape’s study was hailed as evidence of the argument “it’s not us or our freedoms they hate, it’s our policies,” and “when they say they attack us because we’re occupying Arab lands, they mean it, it’s not just an excuse.”
If you’re interested in prowling for examples of the sort of anti-war arguments that fit with Pape’s thesis, I’d check out Norm Geras’ site, since his favorite hobby is to collect those sorts of anti-war arguments found in the respectable press, most recently in the UK after the London bombings. Norm views these types of op-eds as no better than apologies for mass murderers. He also picks up articles that rationalize tactics used by the Palestinians in the intifada — my impression is that Pape’s study has also been put to some use in debates on that sensitive topic. The Guardian is Norm’s favorite source of “outrages” so his is a rather sedate collection — he rarely bothers with the more entertaining blogospheric outpourings.
Personally, I find it hard to disagree with Pape that the Iraq war has increased the supply of people who would be willing to strap on explosives and blow up large numbers of their fellow men, including but not limited to Americans. I think he’s right to point to “occupation” in the generic sense as an important circumstance and source of grievance that increases the likelihood that suicide tactics will be chosen by some — Muslims and non-Muslims. I also agree that the decision to wage war in Iraq has made the US less rather than more secure — but for all sorts of reasons, not principally because it has encouraged the adoption of suicide tactics. As for suicide tactics themselves, jihadist violence against US interests appears to be a rather over-determined phenomenon these days — Iraq has simply added a great deal of fuel to a fire that had moved beyond the smoldering stage. Furthermore, violence within Iraq itself is clearly not exclusively driven by opposition to US occupation. So all told, I doubt seriously whether withdrawing US or UK forces from the Middle East is going to dry up the supply of suicide candidates any time soon, either within or outside Iraq. A case for withdrawal should be made on other grounds.
That’s it for intermission. I now await the wisdom of Jim.
Comment by Anodyne —
August 21, 2005 @ 2:35 am
nadezhda,
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Are you the nedezhda connected to Liberals Against Terrorism? Anaa saäiid jiddan bimuqaabalatak.
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You said “The two types of simplistic thinking about suicide attackers I described tend to ignore the ’strategic logic’ that’s the focus of Pape’s study”.
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Yet in reference to his own data, Pape has been quoted as saying, “This information tells us that most [suicide bombers] are walk-in volunteers.” The point is that there seems to be a something of a motivational disconnect between suicide bombers and those who would use them to achieve a strategic purpose. Futhermore, although I confess I don’t completely understand the implication of Pape’s argument that suicide bombing is not a supply-limited but a demand-driven phenomenon, it appears to suggest that the number of people willing to kill themselves is quite small, regardless of religious affiliation. So, maybe suicider bombers are, by conventional standards, mad as hatters. The fact that they are being manipulated for strategic purposes seems to simply agitate war hawks further. That is, Pape’s narrow findings can just as easily be used to reinforce a “simplistic” view as they can to correct it.
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As to the occupation=suicide bomber ==> immediate withdraw argument, I didn’t see where in the TAC article you referred me to that Pape went this far. I’ll take your word that there are examples of this argument floating around the blogosphere. I also see the merit in giving non-peer reviewed analyses, such as Pape’s the once over before using them to make a policy statement, lest the endeavor backfire. So let the games begin, er, …continue.