Turner surveyed the literature concerning targeted killing in general, and leadership decapitation in particular, in order to better understand and evaluate its potential usefulness for the United States of America’s “long war”. His inspection provided a number of answers. He then concluded the terrorist organizations which the U.S. attacked were the ones most resilient to such policies. According to Turner, this explained why after more than fourteen years of fighting this war, and the killing of hundreds of terrorist leadership figures, these policies did not seem to be effective.

• Contributing Reviewer(s): Shahaf Rabi

• Original review publication date: 20 October 2020

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Details of the Reviewed Article

• Title: Targeted Killings: Is Organizational Decapitation an Effective Counterterrorism Strategy?

• By: J. Todd Turner (LTC(P), U.S. Army) ***Not redundant to add that his views do not reflect the official policy of the U.S. government.

• Publication: Master’s Thesis United States Army War College

• Published: March 2015

Summary, notes, insights & remarks:

Turner writes that “[t]he purpose of this paper is to determine the effectiveness of targeted killings within the broader U.S. counterterrorism strategy.”(p. 1) He plans to do it by:
(a) declaring and explaining important terms and definitions;
(b) providing an overview of the national security and counterterrorism strategy policies of the U.S.; and then
(c) focusing his examination on leadership decapitation studies. He pays special attention to previous insights of the scholarship concerning with:
(c.1) the probability of organizational collapse post leadership decapitation incidents;
(c.2) similarities and differences of groups which appeared more and less vulnerable to leadership decapitation;
(c.3) if killing is or is not better than capturing leadership figures; and
(c.4) evaluations of post-decapitation weakening of terrorist groups.
By doing this last part of the plan – this literature review - Turner crafts his findings, conclusions, and translates these into policy recommendations.

Reviewer notes: 
Overall, I considered this research study as one of the least insightful studies among the many I have read so far. I don’t doubt that the author invested time and effort into his M.A. thesis, such as when he notes going over two hundred sources. Yet there are some major problems with this research study to the extent that it is possible to contest whether he even manages to achieve the purpose of his study in the end. That is, actually answering the research question.

First, it is a nice-to-have body of text, literature review, of leadership decapitation studies. However, this entire research study is just about that, and this is where the good part ends. Turner summarizes the existing scholarship up to March 2015. His findings rely exclusively on others’ work without expanding or clarifying the already existing body of knowledge.

Second, although the author has no notable expertise to offer, he reconciles conflicting findings and conclusions of other experts’ research based on his own judgment. This is not serious, however, because leadership decapitation studies vary from one another, contain quite a fair amount of varied and often conflicting findings. Therefore, it would be quite careless to rely on his conclusions.

Importantly, I believe Turner could have chosen a better alternative and design for his research study which would have at least produced some merit. For instance, if/ with some creativity, he’d have offered to methodologically analyze the literature in order to produce a well-crafted map identifying strengths and weaknesses, etc. (e.g. consider analysis such as Bart Schuurman’s 2018 Terrorism and Political Violence article “Research on Terrorism, 2007-2016: A Review of Data, Methods, and Authorship” [sidenote: it’s a free open access article]).

This is exacerbated by the fact that his final conclusions are not broadly put as he briefly concludes in the end of sub-chapters. For instance, consider “Kill vs. Capture” sub-chapter. He concludes there: “The majority of researchers agree that killing a terrorist leader produces higher rates of organizational collapse over capturing the leader.” (p. 17)

However, Turner actually embraces very specific points in his “Conclusion”:
“This paper analyzed and assessed the body of work to determine the effectiveness of targeted killings within the broader U.S. counterterrorism effort. Based on the preponderance of evidence, the literature supports the following findings:
•	Terrorist organizations collapse at an average rate of 30 percent following a decapitation event.
[…]. (p. 22).

If the author would have kept it broad, it would have remained as a “nice to have” piece even if it does not advance the knowledge on the subject. Yet such specific conclusions are a step too far and cannot be taken seriously.

Finally, it is noteworthy that in the end, Turner’s conclusions leave out clarifications about the volume of the targeted killings policy “within the broader U.S. counterterrorism” activities, (p. 1, 17) as phrased in the purpose of his research.