Conclusion

The problem of distinguishing legitimate threats from dark, unrealistic fantasies concerning potential conflicts is not unique to today’s security environment. Writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, Richard Cobden, an advocate of what we would call “globalization,” warned that the fantastic scenarios of danger and the imaginary horrors of invasion that sometimes swirled around the British government were difficult to separate from real menaces. Cobden, according to Daniel Pick, “lamented the disastrous consequences of defense panic in wasting resources and in diverting youth … from civil pursuits to military exercises.” Cobden was especially critical of one of the leading defense experts of his time, the Duke of Wellington. Even though Napoleon was long gone, the old duke remained haunted by fears of a resurgent France. As an octogenarian, he insisted on keeping ground forces on alert to defend London from French invasion even in the 1850s. For Cobden, this sort of alarmism not only was “infantile” and unnecessary, but was also downright dangerous because it always posed the threat of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. ¹