In the years after invading Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military realized that it had a problem: How does a military force set the economic conditions for security success? This problem was certainly not novel-the military had confronted it before in such diverse locations as Grenada, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The scale and complexity of the problem, however, were unlike anything military planners had confronted beforehand. This was especially the case in Iraq, where some commentators expected oil production to drive reconstruction. When the fragile state of Iraq's infrastructure and a rapidly deteriorating security situation prevented this from happening, the problem became even more vexing: Should a military force focus on security first, or the economy? How can it do both? This is the challenge of Stability Economics. This volume on Stability Economics begins to fill the gap that expeditionary economics did not: the operational details. What is the theoretical relationship between economics and security? What strategic, political, and environmental contexts do military planners need to consider in order to write economic development lines of effort into operations? At what point do economic development efforts pass from being necessary to achieve the security mission to being humanitarian aid mission creep? Stability Economics also puts the CERP effectiveness and force structure debates into their proper operational context. With respect to CERP effectiveness and money as a weapon system, Stability Economics recognizes that setting the economic conditions for security success entails more than targeting money effectively; it also entails a thorough appreciation of the social, political, and geographic conditions of the fight in which a military unit is engaged. In fact, armed with a robust theory of how economies grow in turbulent post-conflict environments, commanders could recognize that there are times when it is actually better to not spend money. By broadening the theoretical aperture, Stability Economics gives commanders and planners the perspective they need set the economic conditions for security success. It is about more than spending money. It is about understanding the unique characteristics of post-conflict economies.

Rarely is it a good idea for any field of human endeavor to be dominated by a single theory aimed at addressing a pressing problem. However, such dominance has recently occurred in the American approach to counterinsurgency warfare. In recent years, driven by the perceived failures in the American war in Iraq, the United States military, and in particular the United States Army, has determined that when it comes to counterinsurgency, the population-centric approach is the only way to go. The population-centric approach dominates the Army's capstone manual on Counterinsurgency, Field Manual 3-24, a document published in late 2006 in order to help redress shortcomings in fighting the war in Iraq.1 The driving force behind the manual, General David Petraeus, took the principles contained therein with him to Iraq, applied them during the famous surge of 2007-2008, and ultimately turned that war around. According to this popular account, the population-centric approach had been vindicated, and it became something of received truth about how to prosecute counterinsurgency.

There is a flourishing and growing debate among political scientists regarding the links between democracy/democratization and terrorism. Most recent research on international terrorist incidents has a global focus; Instability and Terrorism takes a regional approach, focusing on Africa and Asia, two regions sorely underrepresented in the literature. Cox, Falconer, and Stackhouse will examine how democratization affects the development or suppression of terrorism in African and Asian nations. They will begin by defining "terrorism" and reviewing the literature on the subject, in particular the ongoing debate about whether democracies are more or less vulnerable to terrorism than other states. Using statistical analysis and case studies of nations in the Horn of Africa, elsewhere in Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, the authors will present and interpret their findings, setting out implications for the broader study of democratization and terrorism in conjunction with effective international counter-terrorism efforts.