Costs and Difficulties of Blocking the Strait of Hormuz

To the Editors (William D. O’Neil writes):Caitlin Talmadge’s analysis of the threat of Iranian action to close the Strait of Hormuzis not only timely but provides many valuable insights.1 Several aspects of this complexissue call out for further clarification, however. Costs of closure:To begin, Talmadge should have put greater emphasis on the costs that Iran would almostsurely bear in the wake of any closure attempt. Unless the Iranians were able toconvince the world that it was an act essential for self-defense, closure would inflameopinion widely against them. Closing the strait would be seen not only as a serious violationof international norms but, worse yet, one that directly and significantly touchedthe interests of most states, virtually making it a campaign of piracy. Even states readyto accept Iran’s right to retaliate against some offense would and it hard to forgive a responseso indiscriminately damaging. Under these circumstances, the United States could have wide latitude for action.U.S. leaders might well take the opportunity to leave Iran not only greatly impoverishedthrough a loss of oil revenues and massive destruction of critical infrastructurebut stripped of its naval and air defenses. U.S. forces would probably need to seize theIranian-held islands lying near the shipping lanes east of the strait, and they would notlikely be returned. Given the geographic isolation of the region near the strait from therest of Iran, it is even conceivable that this area might be held under occupation. Andthe residue of suspicion and resentment against Iran would surely linger among thosewho suffered losses from the closure, prompting support for a tight sanctions regime. In short, Iran would find itself essentially in the same position as Iraq after the 1991Gulf War, if not worse. Such a prospect might sober even the most adventurous or desperateof Iranian leaders.Published under the section: Correspondence

What Makes Terrorists Tick

What Makes Terrorists Tick? How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. By Audrey Kurth Cronin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. 330 pp. $29.95. A battle is raging in terrorism studies. Proponents of the "strategic model" claim that rational people participate in terrorist groups mainly for the political return. Proponents of the "natural systems model" claim that rational people participate in terrorist groups mainly for some form of social gain. The first model argues that terrorists attack civilians for the collective benefit of coercing political concessions, whereas the natural systems model claims that individuals engage in terrorism for the personal, selective benefit of participating in an exciting, tight-knit, social group. Although this debate is spearheaded by academics, it is hardly academic: The question of terrorist motives is fundamental to counterterrorism because one cannot expect to cure a malady without understanding its underlying cause.1 Cronin, professor of strategy at the U.S. National War College, does not explicitly align herself with either school of thought, but How Terrorism Ends suggests that social calculations are more determinative than political ones. Her analysis of how terrorism ends indicates that it is seldom due to rational, political considerations. Cronin finds, for example, that negotiating with terrorists "very rarely" works since most "terrorist groups choose not to negotiate at all." This aversion to compromise results because "organizational survival overshadows the [stated] cause." The logic is clear but sadly familiar: "If violence is part of the identity or livelihood of participants themselves, then the likelihood of negotiations resolving a conflict is miniscule." The Oslo accords arc illustrative: By embracing them, Palestinian terrorists of all persuasions would have unquestionably advanced their stated territorial aims. But groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad instead ramped up their violence, helping to derail the peace process in order to ensure their organizational survival. In fact, Cronin notes that what usually brings terrorists to the negotiating table are generally threats to the organization itself rather than to its putative political purpose. She finds that terrorist groups rarely abandon the armed struggle due to achieving their official political goals. This conclusion is expected given the fact that terrorist groups virtually never attain their given political aims, a point underscored in this reviewer's 2006 study in International Security, which compared the abysmal success rate of terrorist campaigns to other forms of protest.2 Her case studies do, however, bolster the thesis that terrorism is inherently politically counterproductive by hardening governments and discouraging them from making concessions. She sensibly focuses on the handful of terrorist groups in modem history that achieved their policy demands such as the African National Congress and shows that they did so "despite the use of violence against innocent civilians [rather] than because of it." The author is quick to point out that this does not mean terrorism accomplishes nothing at all; as previous studies have shown, terrorist acts can undercut the organization's professed political agenda while simultaneously boosting membership, morale, and cohesion. …

The Social Market Roots of Democratic Peace

Democracy does not cause peace among nations. Rather, domestic conditions cause both democracy and peace. From 1961 to 2001, democratic nations engaged in numerous fatal conflicts with each other, including at least one war, yet not a single fatal militarized incident occurred between nations with contract-intensive economiesthose where most people have the opportunity to participate in the market. In contract-intensive economies, individuals learn to respect the choices of others and value equal application of the law. They demand liberal democracy at home and perceive it in their interest to respect the rights of nations and international law abroad. The consequences involve more than just peace: the contract-intensive democracies are in natural alliance against any actorstate or nonstatethat seeks to challenge Westphalian law and order. Because China and Russia lack contractualist economies, the economic divide will define great power politics in the coming decade. To address the challenges posed by China and Russia, preserve the Westphalian order, and secure their citizens from terrorism, the contract-intensive powers should focus their efforts on supporting global economic opportunity, rather than on promoting democracy.

What's in a Line? Is Partition a Solution to Civil War?

Does territorial partition of countries in civil wars help to end these wars, reducing the risk of recurrence Researchers have proposed territorial partition with or without formal recognition of sovereignty as a solution to civil wars and a way to create self-enforcing peace. Quantitative studies of the effect of partition on the risk of renewed civil war, however, suffer several main shortcomings, including conflicting results in the extant literature that result mainly from data coding differences, selective use of case histories, and methodological problems. A new data set and a benchmark empirical analysis find that, on average, partition is unlikely to reduce the risk of a return to civil war and, in some cases, may increase that risk.

Incremental and Transformational Change (Innovations Case Discussion: Better Place)

ing business plan of his electric vehicle company, Better Place, provides an important lens on the pace and drivers of innovation. First, as Shai describes, his interest in energy issues evolved from his great success in the software industry. As a successful entrepreneur, Shai became inspired by the imperative to change our energy economy, and he recognized that his background and drive might be a unique advantage in becoming an agent of innovation and change. The transportation sector critically needed, and still needs, this sort of fresh look and novel business model. For a period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, average vehicle economy in the United States rose steadily, due to the requirements for greater fuel efficiency through the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards and the lingering worries over oil prices from the two oil embargoes of the 1970s. After that, however, little changed in the transportation sector. In fact, looking at Figure 1, we can see a clear trade-off in the trends in vehicle efficiency and performance: gains in vehicle efficiency were sacrificed for performance. Perhaps improvements in both could have been achieved. Undeniable, however, is the decades of stagnation in improvements in energy efficiency, financial savings, or carbon savings. The petro-politics of the 1980–2005 period were tumultuous, including the Iran-Iraq war, the first and second gulf wars, and the ascension of Japanese car companies to a leading global position. Out of that period, different nations and

Exchange on the Nixon Administration and the Vietnam War

THE STRATEGIC DETERMINANTS OF U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING: EVIDENCE FROM THE COLD WAR

This paper uses a country‐level panel data set to test the hypothesis that the United States biases its human rights reports of countries based on the latters' strategic value. We use the difference between the U.S. State Department's and Amnesty International's reports as a measure of U.S. “bias.” For plausibly exogenous variation in strategic value to the U.S., we compare this bias between U.S. Cold War (CW) allies to non‐CW allies, before and after the CW ended. The results show that allying with the U.S. during the CW significantly improved reports on a country's human rights situation from the U.S. State Department relative to Amnesty International. (JEL: P16)

Planning the Peace and Enforcing the Surrender: Deterrence in the Allied Occupations of Germany and Japan

Much is known about the efforts of the United States to democratize, reconstruct, and deliver humanitarian aid to Germany and Japan after their defeat in World War II. Much less is known about the willingness of the United States to use coercive tactics to deter and counter resistance to its military occupation of the two countries. Many of the scholars and politicians who consider the occupations of Germany and Japan to be models for success, largely because of their peaceful outcomes, often overlook the initial period of occupation, in which latent violence figured prominently. An understanding of this early period, however, is crucial to assessing the determinants of peace.

Without Visible Scars: Digital Art and the Memory of War

What is the role of the artist in re-creating a cultural landscape where the psychology and identity are shaped by multiple narratives of wars? The author's art practice attempts to demonstrate the role of digital media in providing a platform for visual representation of multiple narratives.

Harvests and Business Cycles in Nineteenth-Century America*

Most major American industrial business cycles from around 1880 to the First World War were caused by fluctuations in the size of the cotton harvest due to economically exogenous factors such as weather. Wheat and corn harvests did not affect industrial production; nor did the cotton harvest before the late 1870s. The unique effect of the cotton harvest in this period can be explained as an essentially monetary phenomenon, the result of interactions between harvests, international gold flows, and high-powered money demand under America's gold-standard regime of 1879-1914. (c) 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..