Summary Of The Strategic Logic Of Suicide Terrorism

In his article “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism”, Robert A. Page tried to find the answer on the question: ‘Why is the number of suicide terrorist attacks increasing last decades?’. Answering this question, he developed the theory about suicide terrorism’s logic and he presented it in details. Because it’s controversial matter, he analyzed terrorists’ assessments of suicide terrorism from different sides. To emphasize his arguments, he examined this issue through intifada against Israel.

Page claimed that the suicide terrorist attacks’ targets are democracies. To prove his opinion, he described how relationship between Kurds and Turkey as distinguished from relationships between Kurds and Iraq. But there are several reasons why the

For the first time the dilemma of liberal democracies and terrorism was raised by Wilkinson in 1986. R. Page argued that democracies often seems like ‘soft’, they are vulnerable to any violence. Hoffman explained it through freedom of speech, freedom of association, press freedom, right to privacy, etc. So, people want not only to express their own opinions directly or indirectly, but they also want to implement it. Even if it’s small community, if their issues won’t implement, they start to keep their grievance which leads to violent actions. Other scholars, such as Eubank and Weinberg, did empirical researches that shows that terrorist groups are more likely present in a democracy as compared to an autocracy. North Korea is the country with totalitarian dictator regime. There are no terrorist attacks in this

Why? One of the reasons can be the number of alliance of states and also it can be one of the side of logic of terrorism. Based on RAND data, Savun & Phillips (2009) demonstrated that democracies that engaged in foreign policy crises with other countries attracted more transnational terrorism. For example, alliance ties with the United States and interventions in foreign civil wars also resulted in the country experiencing more transnational terrorist attacks. But because the U.S. is rich country with high costs in security sphere, terrorist attacked the USA from outside. The attack on the U.S. consulate in Turkey on July 9, 2008, or the March 11, 2004, Madrid train bombing are demonstrative examples of this argument that states in which the United States has strong interests may be subject to transnational