Improbable Dangers: U.S. Conceptions of Threat in the Cold War and After

Why did U.S. policymakers so regularly exaggerate the Soviet threat during the Cold War? And with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, is this alarmist tendency likely to persist?Robert H. Johnson examines these questions by using psychological and political analysis and focusing upon U.S. conceptions of threat in the European, nuclear, and Third World arenas of conflict. He offers a different kind of Cold War revisionism, concentrating on mistaken ideas about threats while accepting the reality of threat and the need for a policy of containment. Within this framework, American alarmism can be seen to stem from the human need for order and control and from the necessities of domestic politics.Improbable Dangers advances a cyclical view of U.S. alarmism in the Cold War and includes numerous case studies. Against this background it looks to the future, critiquing emerging views of the fresh perils that may confront this country and suggesting broad guidelines for a more realistic U.S. foreign policy.