Testing the Blowback Thesis: American Military Presence and Terrorism against Americans

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Noble, Mark
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology

Abstract

Social scientific analyses of anti-American terrorism primarily seek explanations in the political, economic, and social conditions of states where Americans are attacked. A prominent counter-narrative places the focus on U.S. foreign policies positing that anti-American terrorism is blowback for them. The few studies that analyze anti-American terrorism as a potential consequence of U.S. actions abroad do not examine if there are long-term or cumulative effects of U.S. policies and actions. In order to effectively determine if terror events are truly blowback we must integrate an examination of long-term effects. To inject cumulative effects into the discussion, this paper evaluates six methodological approaches to that end and applies them to two replicated studies that are most consistent to the concept of blowback. The analysis demonstrates that military dependency is integral to explanations of anti-American terrorism and that blowback is greater than previously identified when long-term effects are considered.

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