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A deadlier post-9/11 terrorism landscape for the USA abroad: a quasi-experimental study of backlash effects of terrorism prevention

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Abstract

Objectives

The United States initiated sweeping counterterrorism efforts after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. This study tests a backlash hypothesis as it relates to the nature of attacks against the US abroad.

Methods

Relying on data from the Global Terrorism Database, this study uses a quasi-experimental design to investigate whether attacks against the US abroad became more or less lethal after 9/11.

Results

There is a significant increase in the proportion of attacks with fatalities and a significant decrease in the proportions of non-lethal attacks against US targets and interests overseas after 9/11. The results suggest a redistribution in the lethality of attacks against the US abroad.

Conclusions

This study finds evidence of a backlash of deadlier terrorism violence against the US abroad after September 11. Examining for unintended consequences is an important facet of terrorism prevention research and policy.

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Notes

  1. A nuance worth mentioning is that Hsu et al.’s (2018) study utilizes the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). As we further discuss in the “Data” section of the present study, the GTD does not include terrorism plots or conspiracies, but only terrorist events that have been initiated. As a consequence, the increased costs and difficulties of carrying out terrorist attacks against the US after 9/11 may also be indicated by the failure of terrorism plots and conspiracies in the prelude to the actual initiation of terrorist attacks.

  2. See Guerette and Bowers (2009, pp. 1335–1337) and Johnson et al. (2014, pp. 551–554) for a review of the theoretical perspectives that underlie the notion of crime displacement and diffusion of benefits. Likewise, see Enders and Sandler (2012, pp. 138–169) for a discussion of terrorism displacement or transference.

  3. While the GTD, as an event-level database, does not cover the planning or preparatory aspects of terrorism, there are terrorism projects and studies that examine the pre-event activities of committing a terrorist attack. See, for example, the American Terrorism Study (ATS) at the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas, as well as Cothren et al. (2008); Gruenewald et al. (2019); Schuurman et al. (2017); and Smith et al. (2006).

  4. An average of less than one attack per quarter (0.44 when including Iraq and Afghanistan and 0.25 when excluding Iraq and Afghanistan) had an unknown outcome regarding casualties. Such a small amount of missing data would not be expected to change our conclusions. We nonetheless explored this possibility and found that our conclusions were not sensitive to this issue.

  5. As noted by Dugan (2011), an alternative to the interrupted time-series design would be the time-series hazard model, which involves a straightforward modification of event history analysis. Series hazard models consider data from individual events, however, while the proportions that we study necessarily require aggregating the incidents. Dugan (2011) also notes that inferences from a hazard modeling approach are likely to differ from ARIMA model estimates most clearly in situations with multiple interventions. This is not an issue for the current analysis, which studies the effects of only a single intervention.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Human Sciences and Humanities, University of Houston-Clear Lake, 2700 Bay Area Blvd, Houston, TX, 77058, USA

    Henda Y. Hsu

  2. School of Criminal Justice, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX, 78666, USA

    Bob Edward Vásquez

  3. School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York, 135 Western Ave, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    David McDowall

Authors
  1. Henda Y. Hsu
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  2. Bob Edward Vásquez
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  3. David McDowall
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Correspondence to Henda Y. Hsu.

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Hsu, H.Y., Vásquez, B.E. & McDowall, D. A deadlier post-9/11 terrorism landscape for the USA abroad: a quasi-experimental study of backlash effects of terrorism prevention. J Exp Criminol 16, 607–623 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-019-09393-y

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