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Fear is a pervasive term used to describe insecurity, threat, and angst. It is applied in many different ways and to particular country contexts but its specificity is lost when used in a malleable way. Thucydides, the author of The History of the Peloponnesian War who published his study around 400 BC knew this malleability problem. The first real historian offering a dispassionate account of fear and war in which the gods played no part, the Athenian introduced several key concepts, rarely used today, originating in the understanding of fear. Revisiting these ideas can be important in deconstructing political fears in our times.
This book applies Thucydides' principal concepts to the author's research in six states usually described as Western: Britain, Russia, Germany, Australia, Japan, and the US. The result is a unique and subtle comparative study of political fear. The sources of fear differ, predictably, from state to state. Political fear's main competitor today is liberalism, a dominant philosophy that may become a victim of its own success. Today, liberalism insists on the greatest possible freedom from external constraints apart from maintaining order among unfettered individuals. Findings from this comparative study can help explain how the juncture and friction of xenophobia and liberalism has critical implications for our future.