The other night, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly again insisted that ISIS poses a dire threat to the United States. On this occasion, though, O’Reilly surpassed the shrill warnings of his ideological colleagues, insisting that the situation was the same as the nation faced in 1938 with the rise of Nazi Germany and its fascist allies. 

It is a preposterous comparison. In 1938, three of the top seven world powers were governed by fascist regimes and were linked together in the Tripartite Alliance. Those three countries, Germany, Italy, and Japan, were all modern, powerful nation states, with large, productive economies. They also were able to field several million ground troops backed by extremely capable air and naval forces. Together, those countries posed a credible threat not only to American security but to the entire global balance of power.

The resources ISIS can draw upon are puny by comparison. The movement controls a very limited territory, the shaky “caliphate” in western Iraq and eastern Syria, and that redoubt is nearly surrounded by hostile regional forces—Iran and its Shiite allies in Iraq, the Kurds, and the Alawite-led government in Syria. The correlation of forces was not favorable to ISIS even before Russia added its considerable military weight to the anti-ISIS coalition.

The closest historical model to the ISIS threat is not the menace that the fascist powers posed in the late 1930s, but the far more limited one that radical anarchists mounted in the last half of the nineteenth century. Akil N. Awan, Associate Professor in Modern History, Political Violence and Terrorism at the University of London, ably shows the similarities in a recent article in National Interest Online.

Awan points out that anarchists were responsible for an alarming series of mass shootings, bombings, and high-profile assassinations. An 1893 attack on the opera house in Barcelona, Spain, which killed 22 people and wounded another 35, was eerily similar to the recent incident in Paris. In a period of less than five decades, anarchists assassinated two U.S. presidents, a Russian czar, an Austria-Hungarian empress, an Italian president, a French president, an Italian king, and two Spanish prime ministers. And as in our own era, there was a growing atmosphere of panic, with calls for drastic measures that would do lasting damage to fundamental civil liberties.

We should keep that historical precedent firmly in mind when we see similar efforts to hype the ISIS threat and use it as a justification for draconian security measures. The recent ISIS attacks are scary (indeed, that is the whole point of terrorist tactics), but my colleague Mike Tanner correctly placed the risk in context in an article on National Review Online. Mike notes that the risk for Americans dying in a terrorist assault is still an infinitesimal one in 20 million. Indeed, the chance of dying in an automobile accident is nearly 200 times greater. It is far more rational to worry about an incompetent, distracted, or drunk driver barreling down the road at you the next time you get into your automobile than it is to fret about being the victim of a terrorist attack.

ISIS is the twenty-first century equivalent of the nineteenth century anarchists—a movement of violent malcontents with very limited power. It is a wild exaggeration to compare the threat they pose to the fascist powers of the 1930s (or the Soviet Union during the Cold War). Invoking such a false historical analogy to panic the American people does a profound disserve both to historical truth and fabric of liberty. 

The two Koreas recently chatted at Panmunjun, the truce village within the Demilitarized Zone. They reached an agreement — to talk some more, starting on Friday.

That’s the way it usually is. When there’s a specific issue that must be resolved, real results sometimes are reached. But promises of future talks usually fall short.

Will this time be any different? The two sides scheduled talks with vice ministers for December.

Even if the discussions actually occur, the agenda remains unclear. The joint statement pointed to “issues that will improve relations between the South and the North.”

But those issues, of which there are many, rarely have been susceptible to settlement via negotiation. Most problems on the peninsula grow out of the North Korean regime’s determined misbehavior.

Topping the list for the South was family reunions, or “divided families,” according to MOU spokesman Jung Joon-hee. Visits are a fine humanitarian gesture, but irrelevant to the larger geopolitical conflict.

Jung said at their meeting the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea focused on restarting tours of its Mount Kumgang resort. But they were suspended years ago after a North Korean guard shot and killed a tourist who wandered into a forbidden area.

Although it went unmentioned at the Thanksgiving meeting, North Korea also desires a resumption of aid, which was suspended (the “May 24 measures,” as they oft have been called) after the sinking of a South Korean warship and bombardment of a South Korean island in 2010. But the DPRK never accepted responsibility for the first and justified the second as defensive.

There also could be discussion of reunification, but no serious person believes it is possible with the current regime in Pyongyang. Conventional arms control would be a logical topic, but so far the North has seen little reason to drop its threatening military posture.

The most important issue is Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. However, to believe that Kim Jong-un is prepared to negotiate away the military’s most important and expensive weapon is to believe in the Tooth Fairy or Great Pumpkin.

Still, talks are better than no talks. As Winston Churchill observed, better to “jaw-jaw” than “war-war.”

Perhaps the best policy is to seek to expand North Korean contacts with the West. That should include the U.S.

First, there is no reason to think the Kim monarchy (with Communist characteristics) is likely to disappear. The regime has withstood famine, poverty, and the death of two dominant dictators.

Second, the regime has been less confrontational when engaged diplomatically. That suggests the North actually desires engagement, and perversely is willing to threaten to get it. There’s little reason not to respond positively, as long as expectations are kept low.

Third, change actually is occurring in North Korea. Private markets continue to spread. Moreover, Paul Tjia, a Dutch business consultant who works in North Korea, recently observed: “The country is really opening up. They want more investment and trade.”

Most important, the DPRK economy has been growing. Cho Dong-ho, a professor at Ewha Women’s University, recently argued that annual growth was likely close to five percent. Felix Abt, who co-founded a business school in the North, reported: “Poverty has dropped and, equally visible, a middle class has emerged.”

Fourth, coercion has failed. As long as China refuses to cut off energy and food, the Kim regime is likely to survive. If the West is forced to live with Pyongyang’s current rulers, it’s worth considering another approach. Abt contended that in his experience “intense interaction can lead to many changes.” He acknowledged fears of propping up the regime, but believed involvement “also helps transform it.”

As I explain in National Interest online: “Rather than the gift that keeps giving, North Korea is the horror story that keeps playing. Attempting to ignore it isn’t working, however. The U.S. should follow the South in addressing Pyongyang.”

Expectations should be low, even nil. But society is changing within the DPRK. When no other policy seems to work, why not give engagement a try?

Before becoming wedded to statism in America, liberalism was a philosophy of liberation. But while leading liberals of the past advocated peace, many foreign (“classical”) liberals today favor war—at least, if conducted by America.

For instance, former chess champion Garry Kasparov has taken on the heroic but thankless task of battling for democracy in his Russian homeland. Alas, he also is surprisingly generous with other people’s lives. He recently declared: “Anything less than a major U.S. and NATO-led ground offensive against ISIS will be a guarantee of continued failure and more terror attacks in the West.”

Kasparov is confused over cause and effect, since terrorism most often follows intervention, as did the recent Islamic State strikes against France, Hezbollah and Russia. But there is a more basic point.

It’s easy for a celebrity Russian living in the West to argue that it is the job of Americans, with maybe a couple Europeans tossed in, to destroy ISIS, save Syria, and more. But there’s actually nothing liberal in pushing a broader, longer war on others.

Kasparov is not alone. A number of foreign liberals—Lithuanian, Russian, Slovakian, Swedish, for instance—have criticized American libertarians for advocating a non-interventionist foreign policy. They’ve instead argued that a “compelling” argument can be made for a “globalist” strategy.

Actually, that’s true only so long as one isn’t paying the cost of the foreign policy. As foreigners typically do not for American intervention, unless it is directed at them.

Indeed, foreign liberals who call for intervention mostly talk about America. After all, the Russian government is interventionist, but not in the right way. Lithuania, Slovakia, and Sweden have minuscule militaries. No one cares whether the latter three countries even have a foreign policy.

About the only option for them is to ask someone else, namely America, to defend them. Thus, when they advance “collective security,” they really mean Americans should do the creating and investing—and, ultimately, fighting.

But U.S. foreign policy should, indeed, must, be guided by what is in the interest of those doing the paying and dying, namely the American people. The Pentagon exists to protect them, and the liberal republic which governs them, not conduct grand “liberal” crusades around the world.

First, as social critic Randolph Bourne warned, “War is the health of the state.” Military spending is the price of one’s foreign policy. Moreover, war kills, disables, and wounds. The national security state generates economic controls, restraints on civil liberties, and restrictions on political freedoms.

Second, U.S. alliances act as a form of international welfare. Washington doing it ensures that no one else will do it. Yet today the European Union enjoys a greater GDP and population than America.

Third, an interventionist, warlike policy kills. Not just Americans, but foreigners. The foolish Iraq invasion unleashed sectarian war that killed perhaps 200,000 Iraqis before ebbing, only to flare again under the Islamic State, a malign force spawned by the conflict.

Fourth, Washington does badly at social engineering at home. It does far worse attempting to remake the world, especially the Middle East.

As I argue in the American Conservative, “Given these realities, the kind of aggressive U.S. policy toward Russia desired by many foreign liberals would be foolish and, yes, illiberal, for America. Russian activities harm the liberties of other peoples. Doing more to stop Moscow would do greater damage to the liberties of Americans.”

Moreover, where is Europe? The continent enjoys around eight times the GDP and three times the population of Russia.

Is the result a good outcome? No. But nothing in liberal philosophy requires residents of the globe’s most powerful “liberal” nation to bankrupt themselves, sacrifice their liberty, and court national destruction to try to remake the earth. Americans, especially traditional liberals, should choose domestic peace over international conflict. 

Over the last month, GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s counterterrorism policy prescriptions have included creating a database of Arab and Muslim Americans, and more recently, a call for a ban on all Arab/​Muslim immigration to the United States. While he has yet to call for the creation of WW II-style ethnic/​religious concentration camps for our Arab/​Muslim American neighbors, at this point nothing seems beyond the pale for Trump. Unfortunately, as I have noted before, when it comes to stigmatizing–if not de facto demonizing–Arab/Muslim Americans, he’s getting some help from DHS, DoJ, and the legislative branch.

Indeed, in the ongoing legislative battle to pass dubious cybersecurity legislation, House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R‑TX) is being wooed to support the revised cyber information sharing bill with a new carrot: the inclusion of his “countering violent extremism” (CVE) bill in the FY16 omnibus spending bill–a measure condemned earlier this year by civil society groups from across the political spectrum.

To date, McCaul has been opposed to the Senate’s approach to cybersecurity issues in the form of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), and, keeping that in mind, House and Senate supporters have largely excluded him from their negotiations over a final cyber bill. By dangling the inclusion of his CVE legislation in the omnibus is a clear effort to get McCaul to drop his opposition to CISA by giving him one of his priorities: Passage of CVE legislation would create yet another bureaucracy in DHS to essentially monitor the Arab/​Muslim American population for signs of extremism. 

The fact that a similar CVE effort in the U.K. failed miserably has not deterred Congressional boosters like McCaul from pursuing that same discredited approach at the expense of the civil and constitutional liberties of a vulnerable minority population. Additionally, the expense of American taxpayers is likely to be at least an additional $10 million per year for the proposed DHS CVE office. 

As former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw reminded us this week, Arab and Muslim Americans have died for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have paid for our freedom with their blood and their lives. Proposals that would strip them of their rights and attempt to turn them into political and societal lepers should be repudiated–vocally and forcefully. Those who propose such un-American and unconstitutional discrimination are the ones who should be shunned and permanently confined to the unhinged fringes of American political and social life.

Is NATO a military alliance or social club? The “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization just invited Montenegro to join. With 2,080 men under arms, Podgorica is a military nullity.

As I point out on National Interest online: “Adding Montenegro to NATO is like accumulating Facebook Friends. They do little more than allow preening Washington officials to wander the globe gloating how popular the U.S. is.”

During the Cold War NATO was viewed as deadly serious. For years war seemed to be a real possibility.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed. The quintessential anti-Soviet alliance no longer had anything to defend or defend against.

As Public Choice economists would predict, institutional instinct took over. Supporters subordinated the military to the political, and NATO became a geopolitical Welcome Wagon for former Warsaw Pact members.

The good times came to a halt last year with the Ukraine crisis. The Baltic States suddenly looked vulnerable and alliance members remembered Article 5, which committed them to battle against a nuclear-armed power to protect largely indefensible nations. Americans and Europeans were expected to risk nuclear war as an act of international charity.

Proposals to add Georgia and Ukraine would multiply the dangers. Russian aggressiveness, though unjustified, illustrates how important Moscow views its influence in both nations. Nothing in Kiev or Tbilisi is worth a nuclear confrontation.

The problem is not just NATO’s recent expansion. Turkey also is undermining U.S. and European security.

Ankara spent years prosecuting a brutal campaign against Kurdish separatists and occupied more than one-third of the Republic of Cyprus. Turkey has turned in an ever more authoritarian and Islamist direction as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped his liberalizing pretensions.

Worse is Ankara’s irresponsible shoot-down of the Russian plane. Turkey may have been protecting the illicit oil trade or insurgents in an area dominated by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, or attempting to punish Moscow for backing Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

The first two undermine American interests. The latter runs against the more fundamental objective of destroying the Islamic State. Nothing justifies allowing Ankara to drag NATO into a war with Russia.

Finally, Europe could, if it was so inclined, defend itself. Why, 70 years after the conclusion of World War II, are Europeans still dependent on America?

Why can’t an area with a larger economy and population than the U.S. provide its own soldiers for defense? Why can’t an area of such economic prowess, which has around eight times the GDP and three times the population of its only possible antagonist, Russia, deter any threats?

The reason the Europeans don’t do so is because they don’t want to and don’t have to. Some don’t believe that Moscow actually poses much of a threat. Others figure only the nations bordering Russia face any risk, and there’s little interest in “Old Europe” for confronting Moscow over “New Europe.” And almost everyone assumes America will take care of any problems.

Particularly striking is the lack of military effort from those supposedly threatened by the supposed new Hitler to the east. Over the years American officials have pleaded, cajoled, contended, and begged the Europeans to do more.

To no effect. Reported Jan Techau of Carnegie Europe: “while European membership in NATO has nearly doubled since 1990, defense spending by Europeans has gone down by 28 percent since then.”

The U.S. should announce that the world has changed since creation of a U.S.-dominated NATO. It was time to refashion the alliance.

One possibility for the future would be a European-run NATO, with America perhaps as an associate member. Another alternative would be a continental defense run alongside the European Union. Maybe there’s something else.

But the time for subsidizing, coddling, and reassuring the Europeans is over. American taxpayers finally deserve at least as much consideration as European ones. 

Tuesday at noon, John Schuessler will be at Cato to discuss his new book, Deceit on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics, and American Democracy. Its subject is U.S. leaders’ manipulation of public opinion to win support for wars, particularly World War II, Vietnam and Iraq. With help from Elizabeth Saunders and Trevor Thrall, we’ll discuss whether the United States is especially prone to this kind of deceit, why that might be, and deceit’s dangers.

If that sounds overly theoretical, consider the 2011 war in Libya. If you believed the Obama administration then, bombing Libyan troops would be geopolitical magic. The cost would be tiny: no U.S. ground forces, minimal risk to pilots, expenses amounting to federal pocket change. That minor effort would produce bountiful returns: democratic transition in Libya once the rebels took power, stronger U.S. alliances, prevention of refugee flows that would destabilize neighboring states, a cowing of dictators that would invigorate the Arab Spring, accelerating the region’s transformation to liberalism, and hundreds of thousands of lives spared from Gaddafi, who had promised to crush innocents like “cockroaches,” “showing “no mercy and pity.”

Those claims all relied on combinations of dubious logic, wishful thinking, and the case of the last, deceit. Gaffafi’s bloody threats explicitly excluded non-combatants. His forces committed war crimes but did not engage in mass slaughter of civilians in areas they captured. As critics predicted, the war’s chaotic results undermined its purported benefits. None of its rationales seem right in hindsight.

An unfortunate conclusion here is that, as with the Iraq War, democracy’s free marketplace of ideas is mythical or at least overrated. That theory says that democracy, by forcing debate, prevents leaders from launching reckless wars. Divided power and a free press mean that vigorous debate should expose faulty arguments and block the foolish policies they promote. Anticipating resistance and evaluation, leaders avoid making bad or dishonest arguments in the first place.

In Libya, the president offered just about every half plausible argument for war. Debate stayed anemic and largely unofficial. War advocates, especially powerful ones, basically ignored the few pundits and academics criticizing their arguments. Congress paid little attention, even once it took up the Benghazi attack. There was neither a congressional authorization nor an appropriation vote. The Pentagon transferred already-appropriated funds to cover the bill. In the few relevant hearings, Congressional consideration of the issues raised above was limited, at best.

Debate did not improve as Libya unraveled. It simply grew quieter. The war backers who attacked critics and hailed the “model intervention” when the rebels took power mostly went silent. A few repeat old talking points or labor to revitalize them. Mostly they shifted their attention. A bipartisan chorus, probably including our next president, makes similarly fatuous claims in pressing for more aid for Syrian rebels.

That lack of correction contrasts with the war in Iraq, which produced some policy reassessment, especially about U.S. capability to succeed in occupational warfare. Iraq’s far higher human and fiscal costs probably explain the difference. Because Libya seemed and stayed cheap for Americans, the public could stay rationally ignorant. Congress then had little reason to interfere. There was no reckoning. It’s not that the overstated arguments for war clearly worked, manipulating the public. Low costs prevented interrogation of the arguments.

Libya isn’t special because our leaders oversold the case for war. All U.S. wars share that quality. Libya instead exemplifies trends conducive to unchecked overselling of war. Wealth and power permit the United States to make war with great discretion in many places. The same factors limit dangers at home, making wars’ stakes more remote. Remote stakes mean that hawks eager to win support for war struggle to make them seem more important to domestic safety. They exaggerate more. Remote stakes also encourage leaders to hold down costs. Dead Americans seem likely to increase public attention, debate, and opposition. A gap widens between the nation’s limited willingness to pay for wars and the overwrought reasons we claim to fight them.

Relative power then produces lots of wars waged with limited risk and dysfunctional democratic debate. That is the current situation. Lately, we are hawkish in the number of places we make war—especially with airpower, including drones—but dovish in our willingness to take bloody risks in those wars. An unthreatened public pays little attention as an interventionist elite repeats arguments for war that bear little scrutiny. As long as costs stay low, scrutiny is an academic concern of little practical relevance for policymakers.

Every Republican wants to be Ronald Reagan reincarnated. At least that’s what GOP candidates say. But the 40^th president probably wouldn’t feel comfortable running today.

First, he’d have a good laugh at the fear-mongering. For instance, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared: “I don’t believe that I have ever lived in a time in my life when the world was a more dangerous and scary place.”

Reagan lived through World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. He likely would explain that never in its history has America been as secure from serious threats.

Reagan almost certainly would see Russia as a challenge more than a threat like the Soviet Union. He would appreciate how far America’s Asian and European allies have come over the last quarter century, which gives them the wherewithal to act in their own defense.

Second, Reagan likely would be skeptical of the GOP mantra of more military spending as an answer to invisible, unnamed threats. Reagan sought more Pentagon dollars because he feared America was behind the Soviet Union, an aggressive global antagonist. Today the U.S. is far ahead of everyone, accounting for 40 or more percent of the entire globe’s military outlays, and allied with most of the world’s industrialized states.”

Third, Reagan would insist on negotiating with adversarial regimes, especially that in Tehran. He did so with the worst of the Soviet leaders. Shortly after taking office Reagan advocated “meaningful and constructive dialogue.”

In fact, one reason Reagan pushed a military build-up was to allow America to negotiate from a position of strength. Which Washington certainly can do now. Not only does the U.S. enjoy overwhelming military advantages compared to Iran. So do Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, the ultimate anti-communist understood the importance of people. He dropped the label “evil empire” for the U.S.S.R. once Mikhail Gorbachev took control. A similar personality shift occurred in Iran when Hassan Rouhani succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Reagan almost certainly would have explored the willingness of Tehran to make a deal.

Fourth, Reagan was horrified by the prospect of war. That is what animated his commitment to missile defense. In contrast, most of the Republican presidential candidates seem to believe that breathing threats and proclaiming toughness are essential elements of manhood.

Once elected he seldom used the military. Reagan preferred to rely on proxies when possible, as in Afghanistan and Nicaragua. Twice he employed the armed services in narrow operations—to retaliate for a Libyan terrorist attack on Americans in Berlin and overthrow a brutal Communist junta in Grenada, where U.S. medical students were potentially at risk.

He also intervened in the Lebanese civil war, which turned American personnel into targets. He soon recognized that he had made a great mistake and withdrew U.S. forces. The neoconservatives were horrified that Reagan didn’t double down to occupy and transform the country.

Fifth, he probably would have few delusions about past policies. Having backed the Mujahedeen against the Soviet Union, he almost certainly would not have devoted American lives and money to nation-building in Afghanistan. Reagan would have recognized that Iraq had turned into a disaster.

And while he would not have been impressed by the competence of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy team—who could be?—Reagan would realize that it was Dubya who really squandered the Reagan legacy. Nuance highlighted Reagan’s policies but is largely lacking in the current “bomb ‘em, invade ‘em, occupy ‘em” GOP crowd.

As I wrote for National Interest online: “If Ronald Reagan was running today, his competitors would be denouncing him as a wimpy appeaser, a naïf enthused with negotiation, a president far too reluctant to use the military. Bloggers, columnists, talk radio hosts, and Fox News would be piling on. Come the first primaries he’d likely end up as political road kill.”

There is much that we can learn from Ronald Reagan today. But those candidates who most claim to represent Reagan’s legacy are least like him.