Can air bombardment break the morale of an enemy and force it to capitulate or does it strengthen the enemy's determination to resist? In the first major book since the Vietnam War on the theory and practice of airpower and its political effects, Robert A. Pape helps policy makers judge the purpose of various air strategies, and helps general readers understand the policy debates. Pape examines the air raids on Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq as well as those of Israel versus Egypt, providing details of bombing operations and governmental decision making. His detailed narratives of the strategic effectiveness of bombing range from the classical cases of World War II to an extraordinary reconstruction of airpower use in the Gulf War, based on recently declassified documents. Pape argues convincingly that airpower is no "magic bullet" nor a way to win inexpensively. His conclusions will provoke debate from the highest military circles to the armchair generals in academia and Congress and have ramifications for questions from defense budget cuts to international policy in Bosnia. The wealth of systematically collected evidence should be a source of scholarly debates for years to come.

"Cutting the Fuse" offers a wealth of new knowledge about the origins of suicide terrorism and strategies to stop it. Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman have examined every suicide terrorist attack worldwide from 1980 to 2009, and the insights they have gleaned from that data fundamentally challenge how we understand the root causes of terrorist campaigns today - and reveal why the War on Terror has been ultimately counterproductive. Through a close analysis of suicide campaigns by al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka, the authors provide powerful new evidence that, contrary to popular and dangerously mistaken belief, only a tiny minority of these attacks are motivated solely by religion. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people alike to carry out suicide attacks. "Cutting the Fuse" calls for new, effective solutions that America and its allies can sustain for decades, relying less on ground troops in Muslim countries and more on offshore, over-the-horizon military forces along with political and economic strategies that empower local communities to stop terrorists in their midst.

Can air bombardment break the morale of an enemy and force it to capitulate or does it strengthen the enemy's determination to resist? In the first major book since the Vietnam War on the theory and practice of airpower and its political effects, Robert A. Pape helps policy makers judge the purpose of various air strategies, and helps general readers understand the policy debates. Pape examines the air raids on Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq as well as those of Israel versus Egypt, providing details of bombing operations and governmental decision making. His detailed narratives of the strategic effectiveness of bombing range from the classical cases of World War II to an extraordinary reconstruction of airpower use in the Gulf War, based on recently declassified documents. Pape argues convincingly that airpower is no "magic bullet" nor a way to win inexpensively. His conclusions will provoke debate from the highest military circles to the armchair generals in academia and Congress and have ramifications for questions from defense budget cuts to international policy in Bosnia. The wealth of systematically collected evidence should be a source of scholarly debates for years to come.