Military deployment and international terrorism: do location and mission type matter?

Extant literature documents a relationship between military deployment and the risk of an international terrorist attack against citizens of the deploying country. It appears that deployment significantly increases the possibility of terrorist actions in the home country. In particular, if country A decides to send troops to nation B, then citizens of the former country are more likely to fall victim of an attack carried out by a terrorist organisation originating from the latter country. Contributing to this line of literature, we further refine this relationship by distinguishing between regions where the troops are sent as well as by introducing differences between types of deployment. Our results indicate that missions to Asia and the Middle East are more dangerous than missions to other regions as reflected by the terrorist threat in the home country. Robustness tests do however show that the significance of the location variable Asia is predominantly attributed to the mission to Afghanistan. As for types of deployment, only ad hoc missions seem to increase the risk of an attack, whereas no significant results are found for other missions such as operations under UN and NATO flag. Leaving out the missions to Iraq and Afghanistan however also increases the danger resulting from missions by fixed coalitions. Our results find however no evidence that ‘wearing a blue helmet’ increases the probability of a terrorist attack at home.