Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat

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Exaggeration

27

stron

6284

ID

Ohio State University

2005

rok

It has been common, at least since 1945, to exaggerate and to overreact to foreign threats,

something that seems to be continuing with current concerns over international terrorism. This paper

sketches threat exaggeration during the Cold War and applies the experience from that era to the

current one. Alarmism and overreaction can be harmful, particularly economically. And, in the case

of terrorism, it can help create the damaging consequences the terrorists seek but are unable to

perpetrate on their own. Moreover, many of the forms alarmism has taken verge on hysteria. The

United States is hardly ‘‘vulnerable’’ in the sense that it can be toppled by dramatic acts of terrorist

destruction, even extreme ones. The country can, however grimly, readily absorb that kind of

damage, and it has outlasted considerably more potent threats in the past.

Keywords: terrorism, threat perception, weapons of mass destruction