Successful for whom?

Abstract

Targeted killings are a prominent strategy for combatting terrorism and are regularly claimed to deter political violence. Employed
against terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and others who are argued to be prominent terrorist threats, a growing body of
evidence suggests that targeted killings do not achieve their desired general deterrent impacts. Yet, this strategy still enjoys great political support and targeted killings continue to be touted as examples of previous counterterrorism success even before
their impacts could be observed. Aiming to disentangle whether there is an empirical basis for these divergent claims regarding the impacts of targeted killings, this study examines the impact of the killing of bin Laden on global patterns of terrorist fatalities.
Employing group-based and dual trajectory models, our findings indicate that regardless of whether an explicit cut-point is
included in the analysis, the killing of bin Laden coincided with a global increase in terrorist fatalities in many but not all countries,
some of which had previously declining trajectories of fatalities from terrorism. The potential impacts of future targeted killings
and general deterrence are discussed along with the need to consider terrorism consequences beyond national borders.