Another round?

21 July 2005, 1435 EDT

Reported explosions in London. Based on preliminary reports, this smells like a copycat bombing. The most frightening scenario so far, I imagine, is that this is a planned second round – one with the aim of destroying any sense of returning normalcy in the city – but I can’t help think that one would expect something a bit more powerful and deadly if that was the case.

Counterterrorism blog, among others, should have good updates throughout the day.

UPDATE: News stories suggest the same range of possibilities:

“The worst-case scenario … would be that these are devices that haven’t triggered properly. Beyond that, it looks like it may be people messing around, copycat-type stuff,” said Shane Brighton of the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) said it appeared that Britain now had to deal with a concerted militant campaign.

“You had four guys that died (on July 7), but the infrastructure that trained them, equipped them, funded them, pointed them at the right target — the infrastructure’s still in place, still here.”

Filed as: London and terroism

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.