Max Abrahms’s research while affiliated with Northeastern University and other places

This study analyses the nature and extent of involvement by neo-Nazi and other far�right Ukrainian organisations in the Donbas war (2014-2022) and the Odesa massacre (2014). This issue is highly politicised with contrasting narratives. The Russian and Donbas separatist governments, as well as their media, have contended that Ukraine has been a Nazi or neo-Nazi regime since a fascist coup took place in 2014, while Ukrainian and Western governments and media have maintained that such elements in the Ukrainian far-right were marginal, trivial, even non-existent. The article interrogates the historical record with primary sources in the three most relevant languages—Ukrainian, Russian, and English. The investigation reveals crucial far-right involvement in both the early stages of the war in Donbas and the Odesa massacre. Although the percentage of far-right supporters and fighters in Ukraine was relatively small, they exercised disproportionate influence in the country due to their greater reliance on violence and armed formations. The Russian government, however, exaggerated the role of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine to publicly justify the illegal invasion in February 2022.

Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike on January 3, 2020, at the Baghdad International Airport. The leader of the Quds Force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, was killed en route to his meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in Baghdad. The Quds Force is responsible for military operations outside of Iran and backs terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in Iraq and Syria. President Donald Trump took great pride in the high-profile targeted killing. The following day, he claimed credit for killing the “Number 1 terrorist anywhere in the world” who “made the death of innocent people his sick passion.” According to the Trump administration, taking out Soleimani was the right strategic decision because “the world is a safer place without these monsters” (Trump Says Iran Strike Has Made The World ‘A Safer Place’, Jan 3, 2020). But what is the empirical basis for this claim? This chapter examines the effects of removing leaders from militant groups in so-called decapitation strikes. Empirical research demonstrates that militant leaders are often more averse than their subordinates to engaging in terrorist attacks against civilians, so taking out militant leaders generally promotes indiscriminate violence.

Through the use of survey methods, the study presents the first systematic comparison of America-based international relations professors to think tank employees (TTEs) in terms of their preferred conduct of the United States in international affairs. The difference between the two groups in their support for military intervention is stark. TTEs are 0.47 standard deviations more hawkish than professors based on a standard measure of militant internationalism (MI). Controlling for self-described ideology mitigates this effect although it remains statistically significant. Beyond quantifying their relative foreign policy preferences, this study helps to resolve why TTEs tend to assume more hawkish policies. The authors find evidence that hawkishness is associated with proximity to power. Professors who have worked for the federal government score higher on MI, as do TTEs based at institutions located closer to Capitol Hill. In general, the results point to a self-selection mechanism whereby those who favor interventionist policies are more likely to pursue positions to increase their policy influence, perhaps because they know that powerful institutions are more likely to hire hawks. Alternative explanations for differences, such as levels or kinds of foreign policy expertise, have weaker empirical support.

Within political science, the strategic model is the dominant paradigm for understanding terrorism. The strategic model of terrorism posits that people turn to terrorism because of its effectiveness in pressuring government concessions. The strategic model Is a specific type of rational actor model with intellectual roots in bargaining theory, which emphasizes in the field of international relations how violence enhances the credibility of threats under anarchy, elevating the odds of government compliance. The strategic model is stronger theoretically than empirically. Terrorism indeed enhances the credibility of threats by demonstrating that nonstate actors possess the will and means to inflict physical pain for political noncompliance. Under anarchy, targets cannot otherwise be certain that aggrieved nonstate actors have the ability and intent to impose physical costs for maintaining the political status quo; the use of terrorist violence against civilians enhances the credibility of the threat by leaving no doubt that withholding concessions to the perpetrators will be costly. Although terrorism enhances the credibility of the threat under anarchy, the empirical record demonstrates that terrorist violence is generally ineffective-even counterproductive-at coercing government concessions. Not only is terrorism highly correlated with political failure, but this form of violence appears to lower the likelihood of government compliance, often by empowering hardliners most opposed to political accommodation. This finding holds across a variety of methodological approaches, raising questions about why terrorism underperforms as a coercive tactic despite enhancing the credibility of nonstate threats.

This chapter introduces a new framework for understanding firm creation and firm behavior in the face of terrorism and its ensuing risks such as institutional disruption. There is surprisingly scant theoretical or empirical research on how terrorism impacts firms and their ability to be agile in the face of risk. The extant strategic management literature is underdeveloped for making such assessments because it largely ignores the socio-cognitive impact of collective traumas on society. Building on the traditional assumptions of institutional theory from strategic management, the authors incorporate cosmopolitan memory theory from the field of international relations to offer a theoretically grounded set of testable predictions about terrorism's effects on both new and existing firms.