As 2016 presidential contender Rand Paul catches flack for his so-called foreign policy “isolationism,” the neocons go on frightening the public. According to the hawks, the world is getting more dangerous.
In a Politico interview last Monday, Dick Cheney said, “The world’s not getting safer, it’s getting far more dangerous.” On the same day, Newt Gingrich said on CNN:
After 9/11, the United States is not safer … in an increasingly dangerous world… If you look at what’s happening around the world today, it’s almost impossible to say that we’re safer… The worldwide scene is not a very safe scene.”
Senator John McCain also said on CNN that the world is “in greater turmoil than at any time in my lifetime.”
divWhile 2014 may in some ways be less safe than 2013, foreign policy hawks ignore long-term trends that show an increasingly safer world. Consider the following evidence from HumanProgress.org. First, all types of wars, from civil to interstate, are less deadly:
Second, deaths from genocide are on a downward slope:
Third, terrorism poses relatively little threat. As my colleague John Mueller has stated, terrorism outside of war zones has claimed fewer lives each year since 9/11 than annual bathtub drownings in the United States. The data reflect this, showing a declining trend since the early 1980s:
While we’re on the topic of politicians frightening Americans with misleading claims about global violence, note that U.S. rape and homicide rates have dramatically dropped since the early 1970s:
Why should you care that fear-mongers try to make the world seem less safe than it is? Because, in so doing, the hawks drum up support for policies that may make us less secure and less prosperous.
