Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation in Counterinsurgency Campaigns

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Is killing or capturing enemy leaders an effective military tactic? Previous research on interstate war and counterterrorism suggests that targeting enemy leaders does not work. Drawing on newly collected data on counterinsurgency campaigns, the speaker conducts new analysis on the effectiveness of leadership decapitation. His results challenge the conventional wisdom in two ways. First, counterinsurgents who kill or capture insurgent leaders are significantly more likely to defeat insurgencies than those who fail. Second, his results suggest that insurgent lethality drops  when insurgent leaders are successfully removed but not when counterinsurgents mount failing bids to remove them. This finding is robust to numerous estimation strategies and model specifications. Although leadership decapitation is not a silver bullet, when taken together these results suggest that leadership decapitation helps counterinsurgents achieve their twin goals of degrading insurgent organizational capability and reducing insurgent violence. The seminar concludes with a discussion of the academic and policy implications of the results.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.