Can you use footnotes to provide elaboration?

So, in my paper I say something like the following: "al-Qaeda is clearly losing its influence in the region ". This is referring to the death of bin Laden and the Arab Spring. The topic of my paper is not related at all to the Arab Spring, but I use this to later make a point. So, I could devote some of my paper to explaining why the Arab Spring implies al-Qaeda is losing influence, but I'd rather just insert a footnote at the end and elaborate there. Is that ok? I know you can use footnotes to clarify on people and words that aren't commonplace terms. Can you do the same with ideas?