My article from 2014 - No title

 Terrorists are rational actors that attack against military and, specially, civilian targets to cause impact and target political purposes. Suicide terrorists are more specific, but still are rational actors. The psychological study of their acts show that the act itself has a more precious gain, higher than the political meaning. Generally they are moved by religious and philosophical thoughts. It’s a complex analysis between the rational though and the strategic. Rational Choice Theory identifies specific units of analysis and attempts to rationalize their decision as to why they engage in terrorist activity. (LINDAUER) Prove the assumption of terrorists as rational actors is important to understand the psychology, empirical and concrete motives for the actions and their modus operandi.

            Rational thoughts derives from the economics, it assumes a behavioral proclivity as a given and attempts to explain how changes in policy predictably after the behavior. Martha Crenshaw explores that. Think of a terrorist organization as an organism:

“Significant campaigns of terrorism depend on rational political choice. As a powerful activity, terrorism is the result of an organization’s decision that it politically useful means to oppose government. The argument that terrorist behavior should be analyzed as "rational" is based on the assumption that terrorist organizations possess internally consistent sets of values, beliefs, and images of the environment. Terrorism is seen collectively as a logical means to advance desired ends.” (CRENSHAW, 1981)

            There are three potential motivators in the mind of the terrorist: political, cultural or psychological. For the political terrorist “the motivation may be to affect a political reform, or overthrow a regime perceived as illegitimate or lacking public trust and support. Terrorism may be used to demonstrate the weakness and vulnerability of the regime, to reveal its inability to provide security, to provoke government repression to help recruit followers, and ultimately to force leaders from power.” (SANDERS)[i]

            The economy and politics walk together. Economy is a fuel to move the politics, and to a nation have power, it must have stable economy and control for its natural resources. For the control of the whole nation, the economy must be stable into micro groups, so the sources for a successful propaganda, like terrorist attacks against civilians, causing fear and recruiting more soldiers, the group must have to be economically active, example of Bin Laden that was a funder for the Al Qaeda leaders.

            In this economy, terrorism affects capital accumulation through three different channels. First, terrorist events directly destroy part of the capital stock of a country, d. As explained above, in practice, the quantitative importance of this effect seems to be small.

Second, terrorism changes the process that determines the return to capital, affecting the overall investment position of the individuals in the world economy. However, the direction of this second effect is theoretically ambiguous. In the absence of a terrorist attack, every unit of capital is either consumed or saved as productive capital. 

As shown in Eq. (4), terrorism increases the consumption–wealth ratio if go1 and decreases the consumption–wealth ratio if g41. The reason is that terrorism reduces the average return to investment and increases its variance. As a result, terrorism induces a negative income effect and a positive substitution effect on consumption. The negative income effect dominates when g41. However, the positive substitution effect dominates for individuals with risk aversion smaller than that given by logarithmic utility. (The substitution and income effects are derived in the Appendix.)

Finally, and most importantly for the purpose of this article, terrorism affects the allocation of productive capital across countries. The international investment position of the domestic economy is determined by the fraction of the world’s capital owned by residents of the domestic economy, y, and the fraction of the world’s capital allocated to production in the domestic economy, bv. In the notation of the model, the international investment position of the domestic economy is equal to foreign holdings of domestic capital ð1yÞbvKðtÞ minus domestic holdings of foreign capital. Therefore, the international investment position of the domestic economy (normalized by the amount of productive capital allocated to the domestic economy) is equal to 1y=bv. [1]

“Briefly, microeconomics is the study of behavior using economic units and is concerned with the factors that affect individual economic choices, the effect of changes in these factors on the individual decision makers, how their choices are coordinated by markets, and how prices and demand are determined in individual markets.” (LINDAUER)

            In this case, the internal sectors suffer a very strong impact, like tourism, local commerce, financial markets, possible partners and international commerce, for example. The impact comes first from inside and rapidly affects in a kind of domino effect is in diverse areas and influencing the macroeconomic sector.

            So, this relation between costs of the operations and which tactic will use to achieve it’s goals shows that the terrorist actions are all well calculated, in general, leaders have money to finance an attack, and promises good return, also spiritual return.

            Using the strategy of manipulate the mind of the soldier for a bigger cause, using religion to manipulate. The combination of rational and strategic (more empiric) thoughts show that:  “Strategic choice theory potentially offers vital insights into the potential payoff of terrorist versus government actions. By uncovering otherwise cryptic benefits, this approach may help explain otherwise enigmatic behaviors. Insofar as humans evolved to function as sophisticated calculators of risks and benefits insofar as groups function collectively to actualize the will of their members, one can make quantitative predictions regarding the theoretical circumstances under which terrorist behavior serves group and individual interests.” (VICTOROFF, 2005)quil  In the Rappaport theory of the Fourth Wave of Terrorism, Crenshaw says: “Thus the "new" terrorists seek to cause high numbers of casualties and are willing to commit suicide or use  weapons of mass destruction in order to do so. Finally, whereas traditional militants were linked in tight, centralized, structured conspiracies, the organization of the "new" terrorists is decentralized and diffuse.” (CRENSHAW, 2000)

            It’s very complex to link a logic on suicide terrorism and rational theories into economy, but it’s coming back to the Durkheim theory of anomic suicide, when there is no reason to live. In general the social problems and economics, are linked and religious fanaticism can be a trigger for invite people for a cause, not excluding their own will.

            The psychological terrorist exists in the confines of any modern society. “Some terrorists are unbalanced, violent individuals suffering some form of psychosis. Others may be egomaniacs driven to achieve recognition through violence, and who attract a following of other dysfunctional individuals. This characterization may be accurate in cases where terrorists appear to have no logical goal, or motivation, or a purpose that makes little sense to normal people. This can include cases where the goal is the psychological benefit achieved by vengeance (Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing). Psychologically motivated terrorism is simply a criminal act, like serial killing, and doesn’t qualify for analysis as political violence.” (SANDERS)

                For Sanders, the third potential motivator of terrorism is the “culturally motivated terrorist”. “This motivation is most common in situations where an ethnic or religious group fears extermination, or loss of their common identity, language or culture. It may also be combined with political motives, where the rulers discriminate against the ethnic group in terms of jobs, economic opportunity or access to the political process. In the case of oppressed minorities, opposed by a strong, entrenched regime, terrorism may be seen as the only available option. This is especially true where demands for political reform are ignored, where there are few, if any, external allies, and where the regime resorts to collective punishment for what are seen as reasonable and justified demands.” (SANDERS)

            We check all the assumptions and possibilities of terrorist attacks, it’s not simple random. Imagine a terrorist that want to execute an attack, it must be precise, have to focus on any political end, show the media and society it’s strength and cause commotion, the psychological and social factor enters now. Commotion, the image that he will show is important and media is it’s best allied.

            Psychological factor also explains the motive of the terrorist, first he had the political motive, and for sure calculates mathematically and economically the possibilities of the execution being successful, but he have to exclude feelings. Motivations seems aleatory, just an act of an irrational figure, but the end of this the religious dogmas, fault, punishment, is something that the terrorist have to face, and there is a psychological factor that excludes feelings on him.

            Cultural motives are very close to political motives. Any of the five waves of terrorism were followed by these three motives, economy and policy and cultural, psychological motive is the trigger for the conclusion of any act.

            To explain the psychological motive Borowitz uses the history of Herostratos and in his book “Terrorism for Self Glorification: The Herostratos Syndrome”, he uses the “Herostratus Syndrome” in history of many different actions that happened for an egocentric reasons. The theory is about to observe the ideal behind and beyond the mind of the terrorist actor, in general his ego. Example, each terrorist from Palestine before the suicide attack use intimidating pictures, record a video explaining the motives and how he would be glorified by God. This same attitude can be sewn in the case on Rio de Janeiro, when a teenager guy did the same attitude of the Columbine massacre, when he went to a school and attacked some kids. This maybe the figure of the lone wolf terrorist, like, also, McVeigh doing all alone. Bin Laden when assumed the attack in public was too much ego. Bin Laden had the emotion and enthusiasm for the attack, finances to spend on it and political ideology adverse, the three potential motivators for the attack.

            And beyond these examples, many others can be explained as egoist, the media spreading the message of his own act, spreading the image and causing fear. For Borowitz:

 "In Quixote's idiosyncratic thought, the same "desire of winning fame" that is disgraceful trio from teh past also inspired wordly heroes at their bravest moments. Horatius leaping from a Roman bridge, Caesar crossing the Rubicon; and the valiant Spaniards, led by the most "courteous Cortes", scutting his ships so that he and his forces would be "stranged and isolated in the New World."

"Herostratos' drive to win fame through sacrilege is also cited in Portugal's national epic, The Lusiadas, by Luís Vaz de Camões (1572). the poem draws on episodes of Virgil's Aeneid in celebrating Vasco da Gama's voyage to India in 1497 and 1498; the Olympian gods divide in fostering or opposing da Gama's explorations."

"The videotape of Osama bin Laden that recorded for broadcast his rejoicing in the destruction of the World Trade Center seemed at least as much designed to satisfy the al-Qaeda leader’s desire for self-aggrandizement as to spread terror or recruit killers. The elusive Osama does not seem bent on surrendering his life for the cause, but even suicide bombers may be moved, like Herostratos, by a wish to enhance and perpetuate their own sense of importance. "

Conclusion

            The assumption is true, suicide terrorists are rational actors. Using terrorism as a middle to obtain it’s goals, leaders use the strategy and modus operandi, rational though – economy – and philosophy – religion – and have a good propaganda and way for manipulation of soldiers, using a bigger well, that will be common for everyone, like future for the children without influence of any other culture they assure it’s destructive.

            Suicide terrorists are all well prepared and doctrine, and they know all about to do, volunteering to the action. Political measures have to be taken, because philosophy aligned with fanaticism it’s a dangerous weapon, because combine aggressive behavior, will, means and tactics.

[1] http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/aabadie/twep.pdf Pagina 6

[i] http://economyincrisis.org/content/fighting-rational-terrorism