A Dangerous World?: Threat Perception and U.S. National Security

In 2012, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey contended that ＂we are living in the most dangerous time in my lifetime, right now.＂ In 2013, he was more assertive, stating that the world is ＂more dangerous than it has ever been.＂ Is this accurate? In this book, an edited volume of papers presented at the Cato Institute’s Dangerous World Conference, experts on international security assess, and put in context, the supposed dangers to American security. The authors examine the most frequently referenced threats, including wars between nations and civil wars within nations, and discuss the impact of rising nations, weapons proliferation, general unrest, transnational crime, and state failures.

Christopher A. Preble is the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and the author of three books, most recently The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes us Less Safe, Less Prosperous and Less Free (Cornell University Press, 2009). John Mueller is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science at the Ohio State University. Mueller is the author of many books including Terror, Security and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits and Costs of Homeland Security (Oxford University Press, 2011), Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda (Oxford, 2010), and Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (Free Press, 2006).