While the cause of ISIS continues to attract a wide range of individuals, trends can be observed in terms of motivations, personal context, and intent. Among the report’s findings are the following:

• 80% expressed dissatisfaction with the United States in some respect
• 90% were drawn to the caliphate
• 42% were charged with plotting against American targets
• 50% were involved in discussing, procuring, or possessing firearms
• 26% expressed a desire for martyrdom
• 87% of the charged individuals are male
• 77% are U.S. citizens
• 89% use social media
• One-third lived with their parents at the time of arrest

Center on National Security Director Karen Greenberg was quoted in a New York Times article that featured the report.

“These individuals seemed to be looking to attach to something that can help define them as well as give them a cause worth fighting for,” said Karen J. Greenberg, the director of the center.

Read the full article.

Read the report (PDF).

Guns in America

The shooting in San Bernardino will not change the larger dynamic at work in the contentious debate over the role of guns in American society. The gun rights position and the gun violence reduction policy agenda are each a product of a complex amalgam of  interests and ideologies.  Each must work in the increasingly dysfunctional world of American politics,  a reality in which the wealthier, more entrenched interest tends to win: in this case guns. We are unlikely to see major changes at the national level and will continue to see the nation drift in opposite directions at the state level—“Red America” will likely continue to expand the right to carry in public and “Blue America” will pass some more regulations consistent with the way the courts have construed the meaning of the right to bear arms in recent years.

– Saul Cornell, PhD, Paul and Diane Gunther Chair in History and author, A Well-Regulated Militia: the Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America.

Fantasy Sports Shutdown

After a period of spectacular growth in an unregulated market, both FanDuel and DraftKings will have a rocky 2016. The New York State Office of the Attorney General will likely prevail in its quest to shut down these sites in New York (which had the largest number of players of any state), but only after months of litigation and appeals. However, it is likely these daily fantasy sports sites will continue to operate in other states, although in a more regulated fashion. The ultimate solution would be to legalize sports betting in some fashion, which would eliminate the need to debate whether daily fantasy sports constitutes gambling or not. I don’t see that happening next year, but [perhaps]in the next five years.

– Mark Conrad, Area Chair and Associate Professor of Law and Ethics, Gabelli School of Business and director of its sports business concentration

Prison Reform

This coming year, New York State and the federal government will be challenged with following suit on their commitment to prison reform and improving community reintegration for incarcerated people of all ages. Ending solitary confinement, a form of inhumane punishment, will continue to gain state and national support. The shift from punishment to rehabilitation will open the door for trauma-informed care, [and]concerted efforts of local and national advocacy groups will increase public awareness of the consequences of mass incarceration, resulting in an increase of public support for humanistic prison reform and more community reintegration. In our own backyard, Fordham’s Be the Evidence project is collaborating with the New York State Department of Corrections to establish a statewide initiative for a discharge planning unit for the most vulnerable of prison populations—the aging and seriously ill. Perhaps most importantly, Sesame Street will continue to enlighten people about the experiences of young children who have an incarcerated parent. It may be the puppets (as opposed to the politicians) that will release us from the invisible prisons that separate each of us from one another’s common humanity.

– Tina Maschi, PhD, associate professor at the Graduate School of Social Service and president of Be the Evidence International

Escalating Humanitarian Crises

In 2005, Madame Sadako Ogata, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said of the Balkan crisis, “There are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems,” stating that only political action can bring about real change. That statement is still true 10 years later. In 2016, due to political inaction, the current Middle East migration crises will worsen, and increased human displacement and suffering will continue. Perhaps, even worse, the humanitarian community will continue to lack critical and needed financial support and qualified personnel. Other countries in the region, especially Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon, will therefore see an increase in unrest, adding to the overall migration numbers.

– Brendan Cahill, executive director of Fordham’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs

Reproductive Ethics

Uterus transplant clinical trials are currently—and will continue to be—a major news story in 2016. At this stage, a study in Sweden involving nine women who received uteruses from living donors resulted in five pregnancies and four live births in 2015. Two other clinical trials are set to begin next year: one in the United Kingdom, and one at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States.  A significant ethical issue with the Swedish trial was the fact that the living donors had to undergo major surgery with potential complications for something that had no direct physical benefit for them. But the new trials will differ from the one that took place in Sweden, because each uterus will come from a deceased donor, eliminating potential harm to a living donor. However, many questions remain unanswered, including whether uteruses transplanted from deceased donors will result in pregnancies, and whether women will view posthumous [womb]donation differently than donating other organs currently used in transplants, such as kidneys and hearts, because of its unique role as the organ responsible for gestation.

– Elizabeth Yuko, PhD, bioethicist at Fordham’s Center for Ethics Education

Rate Increase Ripple Effects

When the Fed set its monetary policy in December 2015, they were making policy [strictly]on the basis of the U.S. economy, but at the same time it affects the entire world. The new interest rate hike clearly appreciates the dollar, and the real question for the emerging market countries is, if something looks risky to an investor in another country, why keep your money there when you can get guaranteed dollar-denominated deposits? Even at .25 percent, when multiplied by hundreds of billions of dollars, that is real money. So investment is flowing back to the United States. Given that people will be less willing to invest in emerging markets—China, Brazil, Argentina, and the Middle East—their currencies will depreciate. If there are slowdowns in some of these nations, their domestic debt crises could compound quickly.

– Paul McNelis, SJ, Robert Bendheim Professor of Economic & Financial Policy, Finance and Business Economics, Gabelli School of Business

Climate Change and the Marginalized

The coming year looks hopeful for the environment. The agreement reached at COP21 finally replaces the question of climate change with a dialogue about combatting it. While international agreements do not solve local problems, they can create a more supportive climate for local communities trying to address them. In Paris, I saw attention shifting to the role of indigenous peoples and a renewed appreciation for the traditional knowledge of local communities. These inevitably slow-but-vital shifts in global perspective bring to light the marginalized person whom development efforts should ultimately target. These people offer us ideas on how to achieve economic growth without harming the environment. Scaling their daily work to reach the goals set by world leaders is key to sustainable development.

– Elizabeth Shaw, graduate student in Fordham’s International Political Economy and Development program, and attendee at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21)

2016 Presidential Election

Elections are ultimately determined, in part, by which voters show up. The 2016 election’s likely turnout of 60 percent, while lower than many would like, will exceed the turnout in 2014 by about 20 percentage points. Higher turnout generally favors Democrats, because many voters who abstain in midterms and other low-salience elections are young or new voters and minorities. Still, many things are up in the air: For example, if Donald Trump fails to get the GOP nomination, do his supporters sit out the election or does he mount a third-party candidacy that appeals to them? Turnout—along with outcomes generally—is also driven by fundamentals like perceptions of economic performance and the incumbent party. Seeking your party’s third term in the White House seems to carry a general-election penalty of 4 or 5 percentage points, so the Democratic nominee will have to work hard to mitigate that effect.

— Costas Panagopoulos, PhD, professor of political science and director of Fordham’s Elections and Campaign Management program

ISIS

ISIS has defined itself as “ISIS against the world.” That offers the US and other nations a unifying focal point. I think the strategy we have now will continue to grow, which is to engage with more Muslim heads of state and  leaders from various countries to mount a united front. It’ll be interesting to see how Iran fits into that conversation and what happens with the U.S./Saudi alliance, but I don’t think it will change U.S./Russian relations very much. Domestically, ISIS has provided a unifying focal point as well. It’s been very reassuring to see strong pushback against Trump’s anti-Muslim comments. Individuals from across the political spectrum have declared that his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country violates the most fundamental constitutional guarantees.

– Karen Greenberg, PhD, is the director of the Center on National Security

“It’s a game changer in terms of the issues that will be bruited in the presidential election campaign,” said Steven Simon, a visiting lecturer at Dartmouth College.

Otherwise, it will likely spur only the usual reexamination of possible security weaknesses that typically follows these kinds of attacks, he said, referring to such efforts in New York City in particular.

“Everything’s a game-changer,” he said. “Everything’s a wake-up call, everything’s somebody’s 9/11. God knows after 1941 how many things were somebody’s Pearl Harbor. So I’m not inclined to think in those terms.”

He appeared with Jonathan Stevenson, professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College, to discuss the recent Foreign Affairs article they coauthored, “The End of Pax Americana: Why Washington’s Middle East Pullback Makes Sense.” The Nov. 18 event was hosted by Fordham Law’s Center on National Security and moderated by its director, Karen Greenberg, PhD.

Both men served in the Obama administration— Stevenson as the U.S. National Security Council staff’s director for post-military affairs for the Middle East and North Africa from 2011 to 2013, and Simon as director for Middle Eastern and North African affairs at the White House from 2011 through 2012.

Stevenson agreed the attacks can change things in the “limited context” of presidential politics.

Conservatives, for example, might argue that if “we’d gone into Syria harder … then we could have done more to bog down ISIS and distract its attention from out-of-area attacks,” he said.

But he offered an easy counterargument: “If we’d done that, and weakened them there, it would have been all the more reason to undertake operationally less challenging terrorist attacks … in loosely defended Western cities.”

The speakers said that the Obama administration’s pullback from the Middle East makes sense in light of “what’s going on there” as opposed to “what’s going on in Washington,” in Stevenson’s words.

Simonson said the Middle East’s civil wars “have taken on a decidedly sectarian character,” making it unlikely the United States would heed its allies’ pleas to get involved.

The conflict in Syria is a case in point.

“It would be awkward, to say the least, for us to get integrally involved, say, with some kind of ground deployment in what is at its core a sectarian war,” said Stevenson, “and very difficult for us to extricate ourselves from it once we were there.”

“It seems to me we learned this lesson with arguably an even simpler scenario, and a less complicated one, in Iraq.”

Simon noted other constraints on American action in the Middle East, like the eventual costs—on the order of $4 trillion—of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the need to prepare for China’s rising military influence.

“The Chinese are spending like there’s no tomorrow, and they’re allocating their money to technologies and capabilities that are designed specifically to impede U.S. maritime operations in the Western Pacific,” he said. “The United States needs to do a lot of investment in that domain.

“You’ve got this global picture and you’ve got this budgetary situation that have sort of bumped up against political dynamics internal to the Middle East, [and]that have made gains from intervention [there]really rather low,” he said. “I mean, vanishingly low, at this stage.”

Raymond Kuo, PhD, an assistant professor of political science who joined Fordham in September, focuses his scholarship on international relations, with a focus on security and grand strategy. Before working in academia, Kuo worked for the National Democratic Institute as a program officer overseeing political party development projects in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa. He also worked for the United Nations and the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan as a foreign policy analyst and organizational strategist.

We asked Kuo to share his thoughts on what The Intercept‘s findings mean for the U.S. drone program.

Fordham News: The first drone was used by the U.S. military in 2000. Why hasn’t the targeting technology improved much?

Kuo: The technology has definitely improved since 2000. In addition to arming the MQ-1 Predator (the drone we commonly associate with these strikes) with Hellfire missiles, the U.S. has upgraded its sensor and targeting platforms. But the U.S. military has stopped acquiring Predators and is focusing more on the MQ-9 Reaper, its bigger, badder cousin. It is significantly faster and larger, able to carry a larger payload, and has a substantially longer operational range and loiter time (i.e. the time it can monitor an area before it has to refuel).

However, we could think that unintended civilian deaths or “collateral damage” are a sign that the program needs improvement. But the issue is not technology, but targeting: Are we hitting the right people and avoiding killing innocent bystanders? And that requires good intelligence. The MQ-9 and other strike vehicles have impressive signals intelligence collection capabilities. However, human intelligence is just as, if not more, important in effective targeting.

But developing human intelligence is not easy nor cheap. The U.S. would either need boots on the ground or rely upon local governments and informants to provide us the targeting information, which they may not have or may not be equipped to acquire.

You should always evaluate policy in comparison to other alternatives, never in isolation. Are we as Americans willing to pay the cost of a more accurate, but costly and assertive strategy? If not, are we willing to walk away and let terrorist networks potentially grow in power and membership? If we decide that the drone program is the best way to balance these costs and benefits, then we need a clear understanding of its actual effects, as I’ll address in the next question.

FN: Aside from more accurate intelligence, and stealth technology, despite the Intercept’s report, and the ongoing protests against the usage of drones, will the U.S. stop using them?

Kuo: The short answer is no. The U.S. will continue to use drones in battlefields or countries where it has already established air superiority (either militarily or through agreement with a host government) and does NOT want to commit troops in a direct combat role.

But the deeper answer is no, the U.S. will continue the program because it seems to work. Both the Pakistani Defense Ministry and the U.S. Army War College claim that a relatively small number of civilians have been killed by the strikes. Somewhere around 3-4 percent of those killed are civilians. Now, the Intercept is correct that America’s targeting rules are far too loose. The “signature strike” policy – where we target people simply because they are male and seem to be of a certain age group – is counterproductive and ultimately harmful to our interests.

Moreover, overall the program seems fairly successful, at least in Pakistan. C. Christine Fair of Georgetown University has described how locals in that country’s tribal areas come outside when they hear drones overhead. They consider the drones to be accurate and generally targeting foreign fighters, allowing them to reassert control over their villages and get on with their lives.

So the policy is widely popular in the Pakistani districts in which it operates. Christopher Swift makes a similar finding in Yemen, and I would hope that other operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are also successful. However, the program has created enormous public backlash within the wider Pakistani public. This is a significant strategic headache for the U.S., but one which I think can be partially addressed, as I’ll discuss later.

FN: If we schedule a drone strike and it doesn’t achieve its goal, and/or kills innocent civilians, it’s not surprising if it inspires new recruits for ISIS and the like. Why doesn’t that change our tactic? Are ‘boots on the ground’ just that much less well received by the American public? [Ed. It was announced on Oct. 30 that the U.S. will be sending special ops troops to Syria.]

Kuo: Any civilian deaths in war are tragic, particularly among the wounded and children. But it’s also important to note that civilian casualties are completely allowed under the laws of war. They cannot be intentional or directly targeted, however. So if the deaths are truly accidental, the result of bad intelligence, poor targeting, or some other factor, it’s a horrible situation but they are still legally and even morally allowed. Military necessity – the desire to bring a conflict to a close sooner and potentially save even more lives – unfortunately means that civilians can be caught in the crossfire. Effective militaries want to minimize that as much as possible, but recognize that innocent deaths may occur in the course of their duties.

But you ask a deeper question about the strategic effects of strikes. Do they cause more harm than good? Preliminary results from my research suggest that strikes actually stabilize the areas in which they fall, so long as we kill the right people. The opponents of the program are correct if we only concern ourselves with “regular” militants. For each one the U.S. has killed in Pakistan, 47 civilians leave their districts, suggesting that they are moving for safer or better prospects elsewhere. However, killing a militant leader acts as an enormous brake on this outward migration. Over 1,100 people stay in their districts for each leader killed. And finally, killing a civilian means that 98 people want to stay. That is, the public seems willing to absorb a certain degree of innocent deaths so that the program can achieve its objectives.

Again, these are preliminary results, and I’m still subjecting the data to more tests. But I should note that the region of Pakistan where the numbers are drawn from is an active conflict area. The U.S. doesn’t have a military presence there, and it’s difficult for journalists to make their reports. So the numbers that organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (one of the sources the Intercept report relied upon) receives come from the people on the ground. In other words, the militants themselves. So even using their numbers, we’re still seeing evidence suggesting the drone program is having a positive effect overall.

FN: Is it possible that our drone strategy would change if a Republican president were to take office in 2016?

Kuo: Drones have been used under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. I actually don’t think the party in office matters too much to the drone program per se. The operations are in place because they are a relatively cheap option which seem to achieve some of their goals while preventing American casualties. If a more aggressive or militaristic president or Congress emerges, I suspect they’ll commit actual troops to these battlefields, rather than rely upon drones as the primary intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike vehicles.

But as I mentioned earlier, the program does have a substantial political drawback: It engenders extreme dislike in the wider public. But we should keep in mind that drones – for all the terror and awe they may induce – are actually pretty weak combat platforms. The Predator was originally designed as a surveillance and reconnaissance platform. Drones in general are relatively slow and unmaneuverable, which you want since they will be loitering over an area. But even a minimally competent air force or air defense network could swat them out of the sky. Drones can only operate where the U.S. has air superiority, typically by reaching an agreement with the host government.

And it is those individuals who need to take more responsibility for the program. In Pakistan and Yemen at least, the U.S. operates with the consent and even active (though hidden) support of the government. As an illustration, consider that in 2008, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani reportedly stated “I don’t care if they (the Americans) do it (the drone program) as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.” There are even suggestions that the program has been manipulated by these groups to selectively strike at political enemies, rather than target all insurgents.

So host governments have been playing both sides: protesting against the strikes, even urging their people to do so, while secretly pushing for more drone operations. That is pure political cowardice, but it also makes political sense given the incentives these politicians face. So if (and that’s a big if) this is an important enough issue, the U.S. needs to push these individuals to be open about their decisions to deal with the general public backlash against strikes.

Learn more about, and contact, Kuo on his website.