An interesting topic indeed. Cultural Monuments, such as parliament buildings, major economic targets (stock exchanges and corporate headquarters), historical monuments, residences of kings, presidents and prime ministers, are all high value targets for terrorists. And it will be attacked, no questions asked. Simply because of the high value attached to them. Instead of destroying the whole country, what better way to hit a country hard than to hit these cultural monuments? So these targets will always will be high on the priority list of terrorists. For example, the IRA hit the British Prime Minister's residence, the Al Queda hit NY and Pentagon, the Pakistani based jihadi's hit the Indian Parliament Building, the J&K State Parliament Building, the Mumbai Stock Exchange Building, Jihadi's hit the Jakarta Stock Exchange Building, the Luxor shooting in Egypt, so on and so forth.
So how do we protect them? The authors suggest that one should (1) be ready to accept that these targets will be attacked and create an good acceptance expectation around this; and (2) when it does happen, then re-construct the damaged monument extremely quickly. This will, (1) allow the populace to draw together into the national ethos and (2) counter the terrorists consequent target selection exercise. By and large, the author's do make sense, but one has to consider certain aspects. There are several monuments that are simply not able to be replaced. If somebody blew up St. Paul's Cathedral, I would expect it to be very difficult to replace. Or St. Peter's. Or the Taj Mahal, etc. etc. Furthermore, let us not forget the propensity of governments and bureaucracy to just freeze from the shock or just get hung up on legality (think about the 9/11 Twin Tower replacement project, its more than 5 years and they are still faffing around. Criminal. )
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
TY - JOUR
JO - Defence and Peace Economics
PB - Taylor & Francis
AU - Frey, Bruno S.
AU - Rohner, Dominic
TI - PROTECTING CULTURAL MONUMENTS AGAINST TERRORISM
SN - 1024-2694
PY - 2007
VL - 18
IS - 3
SP - 245
EP - 252
AB - Famous cultural monuments are often regarded as unique icons, making them an attractive target for terrorists. Despite huge military and police outlays, terrorist attacks on important monuments can hardly be avoided. We argue that an effective strategy to discourage terrorist attacks on iconic monuments is for a government to show a firm commitment to swift reconstruction. Using a simple game-theoretic model, we demonstrate how a credible claim to rebuild any destroyed cultural monument discourages terrorist attacks by altering the terrorists' expectations and by increasing the government's reputation costs if they fail to rebuild.
UR - http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/10242690600951664
ER -
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