Many people including myself were impacted by this day in some shape or form and the current events happening in Afghanistan are becoming a growing concern to many. This poses a negative externality on the foreign country because the relative cost for terrorists to attack the foreign country decreases. As a result, the foreign country must also increase deterrence efforts or face an increased likelihood of being attacked.
Both countries must compete with each other to not be the least prepared against attacks since terrorists will consider their country the least cost choice. Additionally, Sandler and Arce illustrate the advantage of cooperation between two countries working together against a terrorist group by modeling the outcomes of one country trying to freeze the assets of the terrorist group.
If only one country freezes assets, the terrorists will divert their assets to the other country. When enforcement against terrorist activities is lowered, the cost for terrorists is also lowered allowing terrorist attacks to increase. On the other hand, when attacks increase, countries respond by increasing enforcements which deter terrorists since their cost increases, but unfortunately, once the frequency of attacks decreases, countries lower their enforcements and the cycle repeats itself.
They planned, coordinated, and delivered their plan under the U. In the years following, we formed alliances and heightened our enforcement against terrorists to make sure an attack like this never happened again, but recently it seems we may have forgotten. Statistically speaking, only six percent should have checked the same one. In reality, 60 percent checked the top left square. This means that people can reach the same conclusion when properly motivated without having even spoken to one another.
Although Schelling certainly could not have foreseen the application of this idea to defeating ISIS, it is eerily appropriate. If we apply the 16 squares scenario with radicalization, what we are trying to prevent is, in effect, this "psychic moment," as Schelling calls it, when likeminded individuals all come to check the same box: engage in terrorism.
Around 20, plus foreign fighters, many of whom grew up in prosperous, democratic countries, have already done so. In Schelling's theory, these individuals would have made their decision through "rational behavior Given the fact that most of the world's Salafis are not violent, however, it cannot be the Salafi ideology alone that encourages violence.
Moreover, given that ISIS disseminates a good deal of nonviolent messaging -- it recently released its own set of textbooks on geography, history, and Arabic poetry for a course to "educate" future jihadists -- it is not violence alone that attracts individuals to its worldview. It is, rather, ISIS' ability to sell and validate its worldview in light of distinct circumstances that Muslim communities either experience or observe.
Specifically, for both those socially and economically disenfranchised by life in the developed world, as well as for those experiencing or witnessing the violent unrest in Syria, ISIS offers the promise of a tranquil and authentic Islamic state, full of opportunity for those who accept its authority.
The brutality and sectarian nature of the Shiite-Alawite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad further buttresses ISIS' cause because it validates its claims that only its Sunni worldview is just and fair. Indeed, the group's carefully curated magazine, Dabiq , consistently juxtaposes pictures and stories of ISIS providing for its people i. Essentially, those who buy into ISIS' worldview opt for terrorism not as an ends, but rather as a means for joining a cause in which they can find both physical and spiritual fulfillment.
Schelling himself noted in that "terrorism is contagiously suggestive and furthermore looks easier the more there is of it. But ideology alone doesn't draw recruits to Syria. If the West is serious about preventing a "focal point of radicalization" from ever being created, it will not be enough to counter the ISIS narrative. That is because theoretically, focal points need a foundation -- after all, to check the same box among 16, there first needs to be a grid, or what British economist Michael Bacharach calls a "frame.
He defines a frame as "the set of concepts or predicates an agent uses in thinking about the world. ISIS helps construct this frame in two ways.
It offers material enticements concubines, money and ideological ones -- the promise of a society based on a highly rigid strand of Sunnism whose principal appeal is its claim of truly representing the vision of the Prophet Muhammad. It has shown it can deliver on both. It has quickly overtaken large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and enacted its version of sharia.
It has earned hundreds of millions of dollars through oil sales, ransoms, the selling of looted artifacts, and taxes, just to name a few of the group's methods. However, when this frame fails, it also becomes the principal catalyst for driving potential recruits away from ISIS. Indeed, the New York Times recently revealed in an article titled "Promise of Statehood Falling Far Short" that former "citizens" of the Islamic State were disgruntled by the group's excessive taxes, inability to pay its fighters, and the closure of hospitals and schools since they were "stresses [that] could provide opportunities for the group's many enemies.
From the perspective of countering violent extremism, this objective can be achieved operationally rather than rhetorically, by stopping cash flow and disrupting access to natural resources.
Essentially, these tactics increase the "stresses" on the functions of the state and prevent the realities on the ground from validating their narrative. But the Western world also helps in erecting frames. When it was discovered a few months later in August that Assad had, in fact, used chemical weapons, the United States decided not to do anything.
Salafi—jihadists perceived the move as tacit approval of Assad's oppression of Syrian Sunnis. In the fourth issue of Dabiq , released in September , the group featured a lengthy story on Washington's support for the Shiite-majority Iran titled "The crusade serving Iran and Russia.
In a July op-ed in the New York Times , scholars Chams Eddine Zaougui and Pieter Van Ostaeyen noted that after interviewing foreign fighters who had returned home, they realized that these recruits were motivated by Assad's "industrial-scale torture, barrel bombs, and chemical attacks.
As Bacharach explains this "is a story of the progressive internalization of these externalities. When ISIS entered the scene, it provided a Sunni call to arms and enabled potential recruits to externalize their frustrations. A policy of striking at the heart of ISIS recruitment should involve not only countering the ideology, but rather, rewriting the narrative of events.
The aim in doing so should be preventing two "psychic moments" from taking place among would-be jihadists: first, the framing of regional conflicts in sectarian terms and, second, the perception that ISIS is the solution to these conflicts. To accomplish both, the West must form a strategy that empowers local actors who want to rebuild stable, inter-sectarian states and these voices do still exist and, simultaneously, continue to destroy ISIS' infrastructure and state capabilities.
Doing both would show not only that ISIS' narrative is inauthentic, but also that in practice, it is unrealistic.
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