Erica Chenoweth

Thank you so much, Shankar.

Basically, this is the story written by Zlata Filipowicz about what it was like living as a child under siege during the siege of Sarajevo.

As a 13-year-old kid, I couldn't help but be moved by the experiences of being a kid that were not going to be available to her or her friends and others because of the war.

Well, I think I was always really fascinated with World War I. I can't actually remember the origins of the fascination, to be honest, but from the time I can remember, I was looking at military history books, and one that really caught my eye was the one about Medal of Honor winners, in part because it described these

situations of heroism and courage, but also these situations of just horrific wartime conditions, trench warfare and the types of experiences that people had just serving in the war on and off the battlefield.

Yes, I was interested in potentially serving in the Army after graduating from college.

And they had an ROTC program, which I didn't eventually enroll in, but I did take the military science course to find out whether it was a path for me.

And there was a really influential article and later book published by a scholar named Robert Pape, who's at the University of Chicago.

And he basically argued that suicide terrorism was on the increase because it was a remarkably effective technique.

And, you know, there was a debate about this and another really important article and set of arguments was emerging from a fellow named Max Abrams.

And he was arguing that actually suicide

looking beyond just suicide terrorism, if you look at terrorist events and you look at sort of campaigns of terrorism or terrorist groups, and you look at how many of those groups have actually achieved what they said they wanted, it's a remarkably low number.

And so he was saying that terrorism was not effective.

And then there was this other political scientist saying that suicide terrorism in particular is very effective.

So there was sort of a vibrant debate happening in the field.

And my research was really on the question of why it is that people use terrorism in democracies, specifically where there are so many other methods of political expression that are available.

So that's sort of where I was in the mid-2000s as well.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And I think I would qualify it somewhat just by saying that it flows from the barrel of many guns.

So, you know, and I think there are a lot of people that would make a similar assumption, that when violence failed, it was more a question of capacity, that rebel groups or terrorist groups were using violence but didn't have really the capacity to back up their political might.