{"id":14986,"date":"2012-05-17T09:39:12","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T17:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=14986"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:39:12","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T17:39:12","slug":"drowning-people-in-fear-is-the-key-to-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/17\/drowning-people-in-fear-is-the-key-to-power\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Drowning People in Fear is the Key to Power&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago I pointed to an important piece in <em>Foreign Affairs<\/em> by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/137279\/micah-zenko-and-michael-a-cohen\/clear-and-present-safety\">Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen who argued<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0despite the constant fear-mongering and threat inflation in America, we are actually very secure and face very few, very minor external threats. I especially liked their explanation of why this threat inflation comes about. I called it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/23\/fear-threat-inflation-and-public-choice\/\">the public choice of U.S. warfare<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Warnings about a dangerous world also benefit powerful bureaucratic interests. The specter of looming\u00a0dangers sustains and justifies the massive budgets of the military and the intelligence agencies, along with the national security infrastructure\u00a0that exists outside government \u2014 defense contractors, lobbying groups, think tanks, and academic departments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See Zenko interviewed on these ideas further:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-Y9DtZkpOpA\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As Less Antman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/09\/less-antmans-antiwar-speech-at-the-lp-convention\/\">said recently<\/a>, &#8220;Drowning people in fear is the key to power.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago I pointed to an important piece in Foreign Affairs by\u00a0Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen who argued\u00a0that\u00a0despite the constant fear-mongering and threat inflation in America, we are actually very secure and face very few, very minor external threats. I especially liked their explanation of why this threat inflation comes about. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14987,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14986\/revisions\/14987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14986"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}