Abstract :
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.
