Dr. Richard J. Chasdi’s most recent book, Counterterror Offensives for the Ghost World War, provides a historical and analytical look at patterns, relationships, and effectiveness in counterterror practice. Chasdi’s well-researched, 877-page effort provides several significant theoretical and analytical contributions. Bottom line: the text is both a good read and reference. ... Counterterror provides an excellent basis for analysis and is in itself a sufficient reason to read this text. ... Counterterror provides a deluge of descriptive and inferential statistics in the form of frequency tables, bar graphs, contingency table analysis, and negative binomial regression models. The vast majority of the book is dedicated to the presentation and discussion of these results, making it mostly a quantitative contribution. ... In balance, Dr. Chasdi provides three major contributions in Counterterror. He provides a conceptual framework that makes sense. He provides detailed statistical analysis that is useful to both modeling and understanding counterterror considerations. And he provides reasonable analysis of interactions and relationships among factors. In balance, the text is a worthwhile read and reference.

Armed Forces & Society

Richard J. Chasdi’s Counterterror Offensives for the Ghost War World is an intense read....It should serve to generate further research in striving to produce a metrics that benefits U.S. foreign policy and counterterrorism strategies in future environments by having studied a range of past efforts. To this end, Chasdi must be commended.

Democracy and Security

Chasdi's work deserves praise and it is up to others to offer similarly detailed data-based accounts of post-9/11 counterterrorism practices. It is indeed striking that one decade since 9/11, this is still one of the first genuine empirical attempts to figure what 'works' in the fight against terrorism.

E-Extreme

Rigorous measurement of the effectiveness of counter-terrorist measures has so far been elusive. No longer—thanks to Professor Chasdi's innovative empirical study, we now know what works and what doesn't. A remarkable breakthrough with profound policy implications.

Alex P. Schmid, Terrorism Research Initiative, Vienna

Chasdi's book identifies critical issues for consideration and provides previously unavailable empirical support for integrated counterterrorist policy initiatives. It is full of unexpected insights regarding the success of less aggressive counterterrorist actions, the importance of context-specific explanatory factors in different operational environments, and the broader link between political reform and collaborative counterterror policy efforts. Policy makers should heed his advice on the importance of tailoring counterterrorist policies to the specific geographical locations at issue.

Richard Weitz, Center for Political-Military Analysis, Hudson Institute