Overview

What underlies the spatial and temporal patterns of insurgent attacks? Stathis N. Kalyvas proposes that systematic patterns of violence occur based on territorial control by rival actors. Criminologists propose that individual combatants, like individual burglars, are governed by bounded rationality and seek to maximize their benefits by attacking in repeat patterns. This paper will unpack each of these theories and address their limitations on predictive analysis within the operational environment. I propose a theoretical construct that combines the systematic analysis of Kalyvas with the individual decision making of criminology scholarship to predict why attacks occur within space and time. The significance of this proposal is important to the military profession because it offers an alternate to traditional military intelligence by incorporating a multi-disciplinary academic approach to determine the causation of enemy combatant attacks.