| | | | ISIS has called for – and reveled in – the kind of attack that took place in Manhattan on Tuesday, which officials believe was undertaken "in the name of ISIS." But in its quest to inspire and spread terror in the West, the group might end up inspiring something quite different, write Amarnath Amarasingam and Colin P. Clarke: Terror fatigue.
"The ISIS strategy is one of attrition -- continue to maintain a high operational tempo of attacks throughout the globe, but especially in the West, to make the threat of terrorism seem ubiquitous," they write in Slate. "According to the Institute for the Study of War, 54 attempted terrorist attacks have been linked to the Islamic State in Europe this year.
"The common assumption is that more terrorism inevitably means people are more terrified, but some research suggests the opposite. In essence, individuals find ways to integrate and normalize some violence as part of their life, and make strategic choices to navigate threats. This is true regardless of whether we are talking about bar fights, gang-affected neighborhoods, or terrorism. We avoid some gathering places and steer clear of certain neighborhoods after dark, and these insights become points of resilience for everyday people who factor in whom and what to avoid throughout their day." "While al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen, had called for vehicle attacks in the West beginning in 2010, it was really only when ISIS leaders called for such operations three years ago that they began to occur frequently," Bergen writes.
"Since 2014 there have been 15 vehicular attacks in the West by jihadist terrorists, including Tuesday's attack in Manhattan, according to a count by New America, a nonpartisan research institution." - Why ISIS might stay quiet. Tuesday's attack might bear many of the hallmarks of an ISIS-style attack, but don't be surprised if the group doesn't claim responsibility for attacks when the suspect is in custody, writes Conor Gaffey in Newsweek.
"Theories about why ISIS refrains from claiming attacks in which the perpetrators survive vary. Some have suggested that it is in case the captured attackers denounce the group or provide information about their associates to authorities…in any case, it is clear that the militant group's ideal outcome of vehicle attacks like the one in lower Manhattan on Tuesday is for the attacker to be 'martyred.'" - No, don't add Uzbekistan to the travel ban. President Trump might be tempted to add Uzbekistan to the travel ban list after the suspect in the Manhattan attack was identified as an Uzbek native. But doing so would undermine the administration's defense of the ban – and "further expose the travel ban criteria as the sham that they are," writes David Bier for Cato at Liberty.
"Uzbekistan does not fail the travel ban criteria that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created to justify the ban," Bier writes. "The president could always add additional criteria to try to justify including Uzbeks in the travel ban, but any additional criteria would result in the failure of even more countries -- many of whom meet the DHS criteria and are allies of the United States."
| | Upgrading U.S. Nukes Comes With Very Hefty Price Tag | | Modernizing America's nuclear force would likely cost more than a trillion dollars over the next three decades, the Congressional Budget Office says in a new report, even if President Trump decides against expanding the U.S. arsenal.
"CBO estimates that the most recent detailed plans for nuclear forces, which were incorporated in the Obama Administration's 2017 budget request, would cost $1.2 trillion in 2017 dollars over the 2017–2046 period: more than $800 billion to operate and sustain (that is, incrementally upgrade) nuclear forces and about $400 billion to modernize them," the report says.
"That planned nuclear modernization would boost the total costs of nuclear forces over 30 years by roughly 50 percent over what they would be to only operate and sustain fielded forces, CBO estimates. During the peak years of modernization, annual costs of nuclear forces would be roughly double the current amount." - Japan's Trump-sized security headache. Uncertainty over the level of U.S. commitment to its allies under President Trump will intensify the debate in Japan over whether it should change its pacifist constitution, writes Hugh White in the Straits Times. And unless Japan wants to play second fiddle to a rising China, part of that debate will need to include going nuclear.
"Japan must consider the kind of strategic posture it should adopt if it loses U.S. support. That means especially how it would respond to China's obvious and growing ambition to become East Asia's dominant power," White says.
"Without the U.S. nuclear umbrella, Japan will need nuclear forces of its own unless it is content to become a small power in China's East Asia. That is the real question that will lurk in the shadows as [Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to amend the constitution] unfolds." | | Africa's Remarkable Stability | | | A few notable exceptions aside, Africa's borders have remained remarkably stable. But that doesn't mean the continent is immune from the types of independence movements that have long been a feature of Europe, writes David Pilling for the Financial Times.
"Unlike Europe, where frontier-altering wars raged for centuries, where Yugoslavia shattered into pieces just a generation ago, and where even today the integrity of countries such as Spain and the UK is hardly settled, Africans have mostly accepted their borders -- for good or ill," Pilling writes.
"This is despite the fact that the continent's modern states were carved out at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 by colonialists with little knowledge of the ethnic, political or geographic realities. Countries were cobbled together from often dozens, even hundreds, of ethnic and linguistic groups, many of which, like the Ashanti, the Yoruba or the Buganda, had been distinct, sophisticated states in their own right before the arrival of Europeans."
"Yet Africa today is not immune from the secessionist sentiment that has sprung up from Catalonia to Kurdistan and from Scotland to Quebec. In anglophone Cameroon, once again in Biafra and, unusually, even in western Kenya, separatist cries have gone up. Though each situation is different, all stem from a failure of central government to give political, economic and cultural expression to groups that find themselves outside the fulcrum of power." | | Be Careful What You Wish for on Brexit and Trump | | Those hoping that the Brexit result will somehow be reversed risk falling into the same trap as those calling for Donald Trump to be impeached, writes Paul Ovenden in The Independent. They would be addressing the symptom, not the cause of populist anger. And they risk making things much worse.
"Recent polling shows that while a large chunk of those who voted Remain in the [Brexit] referendum have hardened their position, there is little evidence of buyer's remorse amongst Leavers. Put simply, a second referendum held today would not result in a landslide win for the so-called Good Guys. It would merely lead to deeper resentment on both sides," Ovenden says.
"Likewise, the deposition of Trump would pour petrol over the fire of those who already distrust the American state. It will not, as some hope, lead to 'Politics As Normal' and the scrapping of the wall. The furies that produced it will be back: bigger, nastier, angrier." | | | | | | |
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