This research examines how terrorist alerts and terrorist threats interact in space and time. It will do so by first outlining several important finding from game theory. In particular, when a country issues an alert this leads terrorist groups to engage in target transference, shifting the space or mode of their attack to a softer target. In a globalized world, and especially in an integrated Europe, this then gives rise to a defensive race among the states; once one state takes defensive measures, terrorists (could) shift to another state, which forces that state to take defensive measures.
To see if the necessarily simplified game theoretical findings correspond to reality the paper uses process tracing to examine the 2010 European-wide terrorism alert. Amazingly, a cohesive analytical narrative of this event has not been constructed. This alert originated with a US drone strike in Pakistan and a subsequent blanket travel advisory warning of a possible Mumbai-style attack somewhere in Western Europe. Other countries followed suit in quick succession and a string of arrests and defensive measures followed, with attention eventually focusing on Germany. In the end the only attack was in Sweden, incidentally the first country to go on alert in October.
Because process tracing events involving a high level of secrecy is difficult, the article will allow itself wide latitude for hypothesizing about what the event sequence may indicate about actors’ responses. Specifically, the process tracing will be used to derive the several possible adaptations terrorists made to their strategies. In a second step this will then be used to inform on appropriate alert strategies. Finally, the findings will be used to comment on the initial game theoretical observations and recommend paths for future research, especially the need to better model transference in time rather than just transference in place.
