Almost every week, suicide bombers attack. We know the dangersuicide attacks kill more people than all other forms of terrorismand in response we have sacrificed the lives of soldiers and civilians, trillions of dollars, and America's reputation abroad in a futile quest for absolute security. But do we really understand what drives people to deliberately kill themselves on a mission to harm the innocent? Cutting the Fuseoffers a wealth of new knowledge about the origins of suicide terrorism and strategies to stop it. Robert A. Pape, James K. Feldman, and the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism have examined every suicide terrorist attack worldwide from 1980 to 2009. Their work fundamentally changes how we understand the root causes of the most important terrorist campaigns today and reveals why the War on Terror has been ultimately counterproductive. Since 2004, the number of suicide attackswhether within a country or transnationalhas grown with shocking speed.

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 Fusecalls for new, effective solutions that America and its allies can sustain for decades, relying less on ground troops in Muslim countries and more on off-shore, over-the-horizon military forces along with political and economic strategies to empower local communities to stop terrorists in their midst.