Diminishing Returns

Posted on 8/10/2006 by Chirol

Breaking news from the U.K.

Plane Terror Plot Thwarted

Police say they have disrupted a major plot to blow up as many as 20 planes over UK and US cities with explosive devices smuggled aboard as hand luggage. Police are have arrested 20 people in London – the culmination of a covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months.

Passengers trying to board international flights from the UK are not being allowed to carry on normal hand luggage. Sky News’ Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said there were concerns that certain explosives, possibly liquid, could be missed during x-ray screening of hand luggage.

Brunt said the threat was thought to be imminent and those arrested were mainly young, British-born Asian men. He said the plan allegedly involved people boarding flights and detonating explosives on planes over UK and US cities.

Considering how much easier it would be to carry out a few simple suicide bombings whether in the subway or simply downtown, this goes to show you that John Robb is correct in saying that symbolic terrorism suffers from the law of diminishing returns. This helps explains why America and Britain haven’t seen small scale attacks at home. As he notes

Each subsequent attack has less of a psychological impact than the first. In order to compensate for this, a terrorism planner must make each subsequent attack even more damaging or symbolically devastating than earlier attacks. The result is a death march until entire terrorism campaign runs out of steam.

Lucky for us.

About Chirol

Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol (1852 - 1929) was a journalist, prolific author, world historian, and British diplomat. He began his career as a foreign correspondent and later became editor of the London Times. After two decades as a journalist he joined Her Majesty's Foreign Ministry as a diplomat and was subsequently knighted for his distinguished service as a foreign affairs advisor. Additionally, he wrote a dozen books on foreign affairs including The Far Eastern Question (1896), Serbia and the Serbs (1914), The End of the Ottoman Empire (1920) and The Egyptian Problem (1921). He is generally credited with popularizing "Middle East" in reference to the Arabian Peninsula with his book The Middle Eastern Question (1903). "Chirol" is a US citizen and graduate student studying Defense and Strategic Studies and government contractor. As with the historical Chirol, he has traveled to over two dozen countries and lived abroad for many years. Chirol speaks English and German fluently with basic knowledge of manyl of others.
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4 Responses to Diminishing Returns

  1. Pingback: The Glittering Eye » Blog Archive » The solace of diminishing returns

  2. Shloky says:
    8/10/2006 at 3:50 pm

    Ah, but the kicker is that “Constraints Drive Innovation”:http://www.shloky.com/?p=127

  3. Pingback: ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Innovations in Terror

  4. sun bin says:
    8/10/2006 at 8:00 pm

    one can also look at this as how much disproportionately expensive it is to defend against terrorism threat.

    all they need is to find a credible threat, cost perhaps a few thousand dollar. we have to lose billions every day.
    this is a very asymmetric war. current strategy/tactic just do not work. GWOT needs to be more innovative…