Threat inflation

Jeffrey Cavanaugh of Mississippi State University takes a look at post-Second World War threat inflation in American foreign policy in From the "Red Juggernaut" to Iraqi WMD: Threat Inflation and How It Succeeds in the United States Political Science Quarterly Dec 2007. His focus is on three periods: the early years of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the current Iraq War.

The picture presented here as to the efficacy of U.S. institutions in preventing threat inflation or rationally confronting threats to U.S. security is not a pretty one. Given strong enough trigger events and the presence of some degree of elite and popular consensus, secrecy, and the president’s commanding position over the security bureaucracies provide significant opportunities to engage in threat inflation. More disturbing still is that threat inflation has succeeded not just once, but at least three times in the past half century and has resulted in the unneeded expenditure of vast amounts of blood and treasure. A communist Vietnam proved inconsequential to U.S. security, while Iraq, as of yet, has increased antipathy toward U.S. policy abroad, failed to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, has not brought significant political liberalization to the Middle East, and has, moreover, increased terrorism and unleashed chaos in the heart of the world’s most important oil-producing region. The Cold War, although probably inevitable, was made more dangerous and more expensive by fear mongering that demonized the Soviet Union. All this suggests that the way in which the United States formulates its foreign policy is deeply flawed. Current emphasis on intelligence reorganization will probably solve little, because the ultimate sources of threat inflation or deflation lie outside the purview of intelligence collection and analysis. Threat inflation or deflation occurs and succeeds because it is politically feasible, even beneficial, to instigate or go along with it. It is at heart a political act, and only political reform will make engaging in it more difficult. (my emphasis)

The Cheney-Bush administration, especially since 9/11/2001, has been one long exercise in threat inflation in foreign policy. The results for the country have not been good.

Tags: bush doctrine, cold war