The Reasons for the Scare

Abstract

It is very difficult to objectively assess what has prompted the recent upsurge of anxiety about World War Three, for two principal reasons. In the first place, there has been such a wide variety of disturbing strategic developments over the past decade that it is hard to say which of them has played the greatest part in sparking the revival of alarm. In stark contrast to the ‘age of peace’ in the 1970s, when ‘doomwatchers’ from both sides of the political spectrum faced an uphill struggle in trying to convince people that all was not as tranquil as it seemed, the 1980s have witnessed so many frightening events that the burden of proof in debates about the risk of war has come to rest almost as heavily upon those who are not seriously alarmed.