FALL 2015
the reactions to the War on Terror have
certainly been more drastic and perhaps
more unnecessary than ever before.
Why Such a Difference?
This distinct shift in national security
and military policies is key to understanding the national psyche regarding
the War on Terror. In theory, the threats
of the Cold War and the War on Terror
are quite similar: bombings by our enemies and ideological infiltration both at
home and abroad. However, the differences between these two conflicts and
their perpetrators are far more significant than their similarities. During the
Cold War, the United States fought an
established system of government. Communism threatened to wreak economic
and political havoc on the West. Yet,
communism had developed out of the
nineteenth century and had been created
in the West by Western thinkers, making
it somewhat comprehendible to Western democratic societies. Terrorism, as
we fight it today, is a foreign concept to
the United States. Gone are the days of
military action on American soil, as in
World War II, and even the days of the
red telephone and the space race. Terrorist movements are, according to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s
John Tirman, “largely a cry against alleged Western mistreatment… Since the
spectacular attacks of 9/11, al Qaeda has
provoked little actual violence in the
West. The London and Madrid bombings, small in scale, were the work of
local, self-styled malcontents.” No longer is one country mobilizing against
another. Instead, the United States has
targeted an enemy that is an abstract, secretive, fluid force. Terrorist operatives
often act independently on behalf of
his or her larger cause; “troops” largely
lack the organization and training of a
formal military and guerilla fighting is
prevalent. In turn, the majority of the
War on Terror has involved preventative
measures and nation building; in short,
the United States has worked to head off
INTERNATIONAL
a threatening force rather than to fight
them outright after an attack is made.
While the ideological nature of the two
wars in question suggests similarity, the
two conflicts are in fact quite different,
inspiring different American policies.
Power in Public Opinion
American national security policy
alone was not enough to inspire such
a distinct public reaction. While international threats have certainly developed and changed over past decades,
the changing opinions of the nation are
disproportionate when compared to the
actual increase in danger. According to
the Pew Research Center, Americans
have viewed the United States as growing weaker since the fall of the Soviet
Union. Also according to Pew, American approval for international intervention hit an all time high of 70 percent
during the early years of the War on
Terror, compared to a low of 57 percent
during the Cold War. Of course, the
American people of the Cold War era
were made aware of the threats to the
nation, complete with bomb drills in
schools and propaganda posters, among
other warnings. On the other hand,
today’s American public is exposed
to both more drastic policy and more
rampant commentary about it. Such an
environment results in a new American
perspective. While public opinion polls
show that many people in today’s society argue that the world is a more dangerous and concerning place, comparisons between the physical impacts of the
Cold War and the War on Terror on the
United States show that, in many ways,
it is only the perception and presentation of current conflicts that has shifted.
Of course, the Cold War lacked the
pervasive news media of today. Americans at the time had only newspapers,
the radio, and television news broadcasts. In the informatio