[citation needed] Pape published his first full-length book in 1996, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, which assesses the efficacy of different airpower strategies.

Pape contests the validity of international economic sanctions in achieving policy goals, judging that only 5% can legitimately be considered successes, as opposed to 34% claimed in the work of other scholars.

"[citation needed] Pape's response, in the same issue of 'International Security', insisted that he had not mischaracterized the data, and that his view of economic sanctions is meaningfully different from the picture put forth by Elliot and others.

[9] Pape also presents evidence that the majority of suicide terrorists do not come from impoverished or uneducated backgrounds, but rather have middle class origins and a significant level of education.

[10] Similar criticisms were made by Michael C. Horowitz, who concludes the presence of an occupying power is not a statistically significant indicator of likelihood to incite suicide terrorism.

[16] In 2015, Pape and neuroscientist Jean Decety received a $3.4 million grant from the Department of Defense's Minerva Research Initiative to study the social and neurological construction of martyrdom.

[17] In May 2019, Pape participated in the Christchurch Call, a plan launched by Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron to end the promotion of extremist content online.

[24] In November 2019, Pape and the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) co-hosted a colloquium at the University of Chicago discussing ways to improve responses to future terrorist attacks and advance academic research on the impact of militant political violence and terrorism.

In 2020, Pape published the results of his analysis of the impact of the deployment of US Department of Homeland Security agents on political violence in Portland[26] and conducted research studies of the demographic profile of right wing extremists in the US from 2015-2020.

[27] In 2021, Pape published the first systematic study of the demographic profile and political geography of individuals arrested for assaulting the US Capitol on January 6, 2021,[28][29] which received significant attention in the media in the U.S.[30] and internationally.