The analytical process known as counterterrorism (CT) net assessment anticipates our ability to counter threats and thus provides a perspective on the factors that could define success or failure for US CT policy that is fundamentally different from other methods. 

In 1942, not long after the United States entered World War II, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox gave a speech in which he said, "Modern warfare is an intricate business about which no one knows everything and few know very much." He spoke at a time of great adversity, when the German Army's blitzkrieg on land and the Imperial Japanese Navy's aircraft carriers at sea had transformed the face of battle. U-boats were decimating shipping along the East Coast of the United States, and Stuka dive-bombers had already turned many European cities into rubble...

The rapid rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) seemed to stun American leaders. US President Barack Obama stated, "There is no doubt that their advance, their movement over the last several months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates and, I think, the expectations of policymakers both in and outside of Iraq," an observation echoed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper...

What types of countries are more likely to experience terrorism? This seemingly simple question is crucial when conducting a net assessment of the environment in which terrorist activity occurs. Understanding which countries are terrorism-prone—what might be called "terrorism hotspots"—helps experts understand the conditions that are conducive to terrorist activity...

Metaphors are universal in human languages and pervasive in the language used by national security experts. For instance, power can be "soft," diplomacy can be a "lever," and war can be a "fog." Metaphors, when well defined and understood, can facilitate communication, but they will create potentially dangerous confusion if they are poorly defined or misunderstood...

Kinship drives culture, and cultural rules shape society. National community in modern times is shaped by imagined kinship and the need for collective belonging and identity. Modern nations construct kinship through the belief that all citizens are related, and thus committed, to one another, and the state itself becomes the central meditative and celebratory agent for the affirmation of national kinship, especially in war...

Organizations increasingly belong to complex networks that enable them to work together in support of shared and complementary goals. To understand this trend, scholars, policy makers, and leaders regularly seek new viewpoints from which to explore the conditions and complexities associated with human networks and organizational systems. Sociologists have developed a range of analytical models for identifying actors and organizations within formal and informal systems, and for explaining the various relational ties that link these organizations together...

Americans were left bewildered in the wake of the Vietnam War (1964–1975). “How is it that the ‘greatest power in the world’ could suffer defeat at the hands of … [bandits] ‘in black pajamas?’”  A phrase, both explanatory and palliative, was often proffered for this puzzle: We fought with one arm tied behind our backs...

Metaphors (figures of speech) are a common part of the English language, and official speech about war, terror, foreign policy, and defense, including the net assessment of violent state and non-state actors, is no exception...

This volume of CTX is devoted to discussing ways to refine net assessment concepts and address the complexity of the terrorism/counterterrorism dynamic. It might therefore seem heretical to question whether net assessment can make any contribution to countering terrorism, but that is what this article does...

This interview is taken from the collection of the Combating Terrorism Archive Project (CTAP). Dr. Cécile Fabre is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She specializes in the ethics of war and has written most recently on that topic in her book Cosmopolitan War (Oxford University Press, 2012)...

In my previous column, I called into question the self-definition expressed by some military officers, that they are merely "tools." Such a perception, I wrote, implies that these officers see themselves not necessarily as independent ethical agents but rather "simply as instruments—the ‘tools'—of a greater organization, and the means by which some directive or policy or strategy or law will be carried out." As I stated in that column, such a self-image disturbs me because it suggests the forfeiture of personal moral responsibility. It also raises the question, "Why does a tool need to be bothered about ethics?"...