ABSTRACT
This chapter examines whether deterrence properly understood and tested through a more proper research design would enable us to find empirical evidence for the proposition that strategic deterrence success could be achieved against terrorist organizations. It describes the arguments developed in two schools of thought in the deterring terrorism literature, the skeptics and the marginalists. The "marginalist" school argues that deterring terrorism is possible. The chapter discusses a description of unresolved issues and puzzles in the literature and suggests a framework that addresses them. It also discusses the logic and scope of deterrence theory with particular emphasis on the requirements for the resolution of the credibility problem in conventional asymmetric deterrence situations. The chapter describes the way present scholarship deviates from this perspective and the consequences the deviation had for theory construction and empirical validation, and suggests what needs to be done to resolve the problem.
