Bøker i Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare-serien

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories.Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

By consulting the work of well-known and obscure al-Qaeda theoreticians, Michael W. S. Ryan finds jihadist terrorism strategy has more in common with the principles of Maoist guerrilla warfare than mainstream Islam. Encouraging strategists and researchers to devote greater attention to jihadi ideas rather than jihadist military operations, Ryan builds an effective framework for analyzing al-Qaeda's plans against America and constructs a compelling counternarrative to the West's supposed "e;war on Islam."e;Ryan examines the Salafist roots of al-Qaeda ideology and the contributions of its most famous founders, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a political-military context. He also reads the Arabic-language works of lesser known theoreticians who have played an instrumental role in framing al-Qaeda's so-called war of the oppressed. These authors readily cite the guerrilla strategies of Mao, Che Guevara, and the mastermind of the Vietnam War, General Giap. They also incorporate the arguments of American theorists writing on "e;fourth-generation warfare."e; Through these texts, readers experience events as insiders see them, and by concentrating on the activities and pronouncements of al-Qaeda's thought leaders, especially in Yemen, they discern the direct link between al-Qaeda's tactics and trends in anti-U.S. terrorism. Ryan shows al-Qaeda's political-military strategy to be a revolutionary and largely secular departure from the classic Muslim conception of jihad, adding invaluable dimensions to the operational, psychological, and informational strategies already deployed by America's military in the region.

Aaron Y. Zelin uncovers the history of Tunisian involvement in the jihadi movement and offers an in-depth examination of the reasons why so many Tunisians became drawn to jihadism following the 2011 revolution. Your Sons Are at Your Service is a meticulously researched account that challenges simplified views of jihadism's appeal and success.

Why do people persist in supporting torture-and can they be persuaded to change their minds? Erin M. Kearns and Joseph K. Young draw upon a novel series of group experiments to understand how and why the average citizen might come to support the use of torture techniques.

Force of Words is a groundbreaking examination of the role of threats in terrorist strategies that explains the broader purpose and meaning of terrorist propaganda. Joseph M. Brown explains how terrorist groups tailor their threats so that the desired political message is sent.

World-renowned experts on terrorism track the evolution of global jihad from the attack on the World Trade Center to the death of Osama bin Laden.

Making the best of cooperation with unreliable partners is fundamental to the success of counterterrorism. Stephen Tankel examines the ways partners aid international efforts as well as impede effective action. With Us and Against Us offers a theoretically rich and policy-relevant tool kit for assessing and improving counterterrorism cooperation.

Boaz Ganor provides an authoritative analysis of Israel's approach to counterterrorism throughout its existence. The book features revelatory personal testimony from senior Israeli decision makers who have played pivotal roles in counterterrorism strategy.

This book provides a groundbreaking analysis of how religious terrorist groups manage and adapt to major shifts in leadership. It argues that how successors position themselves in terms of the founder shapes a terrorist group's future course and examines how and why different types of successors choose to pursue incremental or discontinuous change.