For more than a decade, alarmists have essentially argued that, because the 9/11 attackers proved to be good with box-cutters, they would soon be able to fabricate nuclear weapons. And now, after the dramatic and horrible Paris terror attacks, a similar process of alarmed exaggeration seems to be happening with ISIS. In a reactive pose… Read more »
Author: John Mueller
John Mueller is a Professor of Political Science at Ohio State Institute, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He was the main speaker at the PRIO Annual Peace Address in 2015.
Why the ISIS Threat is Totally Overblown
One of the most remarkable phenomena of the last year is the way ISIS, the vicious insurgent group in Iraq and Syria, has captured the imagination of the public in Western countries. And as usual, officials and the media have fallen over themselves to respond with urgency. Americans had remained substantially unmoved by even worse… Read more »
The Dangers of Alarmism
Threat identification and threat inflation are clearly important elements in international affairs. However, determining which threats and fears people and policymakers will embrace as notable and important is difficult. Thus, the American public and its leaders have remained remarkably calm about the dangers of genetically modified food while becoming very wary of nuclear power. The… Read more »