Opinion: What Can Soccer Teach Us About Fighting Terrorism?

You have to hand it to the Russian government. Just as the United States scrapped its widely mocked color-coded threat-level system, Duma lawmakers have adopted a near replica in response to a suicide bombing at the Domodedovo Airport that killed 40 people.

Moscow has not grasped the sheer inanity of such a ridiculous system. Like American lawmakers after 9/11, they seem to be more interested in creating the appearance of being tough on terrorism than in actually keeping Russians safe and secure.

But could such efforts actually make them, and us, less safe?

Consider what Israeli scientists discovered in a 2007 study on soccer goalies. During penalty kicks, the scientists found that 94 percent of the time, goalies dive either to the left or to the right. Yet they found that the goalie's best chance of stopping the ball -- given the probability of a kick's direction -- is actually not to do anything but rather just stay put in the center. So then why do goalies almost always dive to the side instead?

The answer, the scientists found, is because they do not want to look like they are doing nothing. Better to overreact (lunge to one side) than to under-react (stand motionless).

Interestingly, what is true for goalkeepers is also true for political leaders.

They are subject to the same sort of whims and pressures to appear to be doing something. To sit on their hands in the face of a threat -- a swine flu pandemic, a near-terrorist attack, a Katrina-like natural disaster -- would not only look bad, it would probably cost them their careers. They must create the appearance of doing something, however cosmetic or catastrophic.

Yet as Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations explained last year in The Guardian, history proves that "counterterrorist strikes in retaliation for specific terrorist plots or operations have often proven to be militarily ineffective, and unsuccessful in deterring the targeted group from pursuing additional terrorist attacks."

He cites the 1986 U.S. bombing of Tripoli in response to Libya's involvement in the bombing of a Berlin disco (Moammar Gadhafi only emerged more defiant and radicalized) and the blowing up of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and lobbing of missiles into southern Afghanistan after the 1998 attacks against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (The Sudanese aspirin factory had nothing to do with the embassy bombings and Osama bin Laden emerged unscathed.)

In both cases, the U.S. government, like the soccer goalkeeper, had to appear to be doing something, even if the best response would have been to address the deeper systemic failure.

Indeed, often it is the over-reaction, not the scale of the threat, that matters most. "[T]he physical threat to our population is extremely low, if fairly constant, and by no means poses any serious threat to our nation's existence or infrastructure," Scott Atran, an anthropologist, wrote shortly after the near-Christmas Day bombing. "But each near success breeds a monstrously outsized reaction, given the actual damage that could be done to society."

Risk analysts call this the "jerk effect," named for a study written during the early days of the automobile. The report found that when drivers hit a bad pothole, they would tense up and become jumpy at the expectation of future potholes. This affects people's bias and alters their perception of the risk posed, however real or imagined, according to psychologist Baruch Fischhoff of Carnegie Mellon University.

Even though the politicians and the public have a huge incentive to make a correct decision, their bias compels them to take an action that reduces their chances of success. Like the driver who just swerved to avoid a pothole, we create threats when sometimes none may exist.

Of course, in the case of Russia, there is a real threat. But its people may soon realize that a color-coded threat-level system is just a ploy by politicians to create the appearance of enhancing security.

Unless the Kremlin is willing to go all out -- deal with the root causes of Chechen extremism or really beef up security at airports' arrival terminals -- sometimes the best course, like the soccer goalie, is just to do nothing.

Lionel Beehner is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project and Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University.