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Halloween is a big event in my neighborhood, and tomorrow night our street will be filled with lots of scary monsters. They aren't really monsters, of course; it will just be a bunch of kids trying to look as frightening as possible. And that got me thinking: what are the "scary monsters" that have haunted foreign policy debates in the past, and which turned out to be not so scary after all?

So, in honor of tomorrow night's revels, here's my Halloween list of "scary monsters:" those overblown threats, dubious nightmares, and (mostly) fictitious demons that people dreamed up to frighten us unnecessarily.

1. The "Domino Theory."  This hardy perennial posits that a single defeat in one area will trigger a cascade of similar defeats elsewhere, either because allies "bandwagon" with the enemy, enemies become emboldened, or status quo forces become disheartened. It was famously used to justify prolonged U.S. involvement in Indochina, but variants were also invoked in Central America and the basic idea is making something of a comeback in debates about the war in Afghanistan. If we win, Islamic radicals will be on the run everywhere; if we lose, it will be hailed as a great victory and will spawn new troubles throughout the region and beyond. As Jerome Slater and others showed, both the internal logic and the empirical evidence for the theory was always paltry, but the idea that the fate of the entire free world might hinge on a single marginal event in some far-away land was an effective way to scare people into overstating the importance of otherwise peripheral conflicts.

2. Y2K. Remember the widespread fear that the world's computers would simply stop working at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, when their internal clocks ran out of digits? Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre called it "the computer equivalent of El Nino" and said there would be "nasty surprises" around the world. In fact, it was a virtual non-event, even in countries that hadn't taken significant precautions. It's one of those episodees that makes me suspect that the growing hype over "cyberwarfare" and "cyberterror" is being exaggerated too. It's a legitimate concern, but watch it get over-sold in the months and years to come.

3. "Rogue States."  This phrase become popular in the 1990s, in a period when the U.S. faced essentially no significant great power threats. So national security worriers started to talk about the threat from "rogue states" like Cuba, Libya, Syria, Iran, or Iraq, even though their combined capabilities were paltry compared with the United States (let alone the U.S. plus its allies).  Specifically, the combined GDP of all the potential "rogues" was less than the size of the U.S. defense budget, and most of these states weren't even in cahoots with each other. The same was true (but even more so) for the Bush administration's famous "Axis of Evil," a conceptual monstrosity intended solely to scare the American people into launching an unnecessary and tragic war.

4. "Monolithic Communism."  The Cold War was a fertile source of exaggerated dangers, and this dubious idea was one of the best. Many people in the West believed that all Marxists (and maybe even a few socialists) were reliable tools of the Kremlin, despite the abundant evidence of deep rifts within the international Communist movement and the repeated tensions between Moscow and its various clients. The belief that the Kremlin controlled a potent world-wide revolutionary movement fueled the insane fear of communist subversion during the McCarthy period, and even led some highly placed U.S. officials to view the Sino-Soviet split as a clever communist plot to lull us into a false sense of security. Not only did we exaggerate the threat, but we missed opportunities to wean leftists away from Moscow and fought foolish wars in places that didn't matter, like Indochina.

5. "Strategic Minerals and Resource Dependence."  The United States and other industrial powers have repeatedly exaggerated their dependence on so-called strategic minerals (cobalt, chromium, manganese, platinum, etc.), and used the fear of cartels or cutoffs to justify a more interventionist foreign policy and greater power-projection capabilities. Alarmists point to the fact the United States imports most of its consumption of these materials from Africa and other conflict-ridden places, but this simplistic view ignores the reasons why this is the case and the various options we have for dealing with possibility of a cutoff. One option is stockpiles (which the U.S. possesses), and another is the fact that additional supplies often exist, albeit at higher prices. We import most of our consumption because these sources are the cheapest, not because they are the only ones available. Moreover, the danger of a complete and lasting cutoff is remote. With the (partial) exception of oil, strategic minerals are an issue that deserves a modest degree of attention, but are hardly cause for alarm.

6. Immigration.  Throughout U.S. history, people who had made it here from abroad have tended to panic over the next group to arrive after them.  The Anglo-Americans opposed the large-scale German migration in the mid-19th century, and every subsequent group -- Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Muslims,. etc. -- seems to have provoked nativist alarm declaring that this latest group will never assimilate and will gradually destroy whatever it is that past immigrants have come to value. This sort of thing can even lead formerly sensible people like newsman Lou Dobbs to rail against illegal immigration now, and it inspires militia groups seeking to patrol our southern borders.

In fact, immigration has long been a great source of strength for the United States, and it will probably remain so for many years to come.  And the dirty little secret here is that American society -- and especially certain American businesses -- aren't upset at all about having a low-wage workforce to exploit.  Keeping a lot more people out of the United States wouldn't be that difficult if we really wanted to do it-but we don't.  That's a good thing, by the way, because it means the United States won't face the same demographic problems that Japan, Europe, and Russia will (i.e., a shrinking and progressively older population).

7. Soviet Military Power. Don't get me wrong: the Soviet Union was a serious adversary and it possessed considerable military power. But lots of people tended to portray it as a monster that was ten feet tall, and capable of seemingly magical feats of military deering-do. Richard Pipes famously told readers that the Soviet leadership genuinely believed it "could fight and win a nuclear war," other hawks seriously declared that the Red Army could easily defeat NATO and overrun Western Europe (in perhaps as little as two weeks), and Caspar Weinberger's Pentagon used to use U.S. tax dollars to produce a glossy document -- Soviet Military Power -- containing various ominous descriptions of Soviet weaponry and capabilities, much of it exaggerated.  Of course, what they portrayed as the ultimate scary monster turned out to be a colossus with feet of clay.

8. "Bogeymen from Latin America"  As befits a regional hegemon, the United States has long exaggerated the threat from various not-very-powerful forces in the Western hemisphere.  The list of bogeymen is a long one: Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa in Mexico, Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua,  Fidel Castro in Cuba, Juan Jose Arevalo and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Salvador Allende in Chile, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, the New Jewel Movement in Grenada, etc., etc., right on up to Hugo Chavez in contemporary Venezuela. One might concede that some of these individuals or groups were an annoyance or even a regional problem, but U.S. officials often depicted them as mortal threats to U.S. security. Remember when Ronald Reagan declared that the Sandinistas were but "a two-day march from Harlingen, Texas?"  In other words, we were supposed to fear an invasion from an impoverished country whose total population was less than that of New York City. What's really scary is that some of Reagan's listeners probably believed him.

9.  "Declinism."  Fueled by books like Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, many Americans thought that "imperial overstretch" in the 1980s was going to lead to the rapid erosion in America's global position.  A corollary to this argument was the fear of Japanese dominance, as illustrated by Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One and other similar works.  This view even infected the international relations literature, as when Robert Keohane called his major work on institutions After Hegemony and realist Robert Gilpin offered a similarly gloomy forecast in War and Change in World Politics.

Of course, we now know that it was the Soviet Union whose decline was imminent (as others realists, notably Kenneth Waltz, had foreseen) and the Japanese Godzilla that many feared soon succumbed to a combination of speculative bubble at home and a sclerotic political system.  But might one sound a cautionary note: were these fears dead wrong, or just premature? I'd say wrong, unless we keep doing a lot of stupid things abroad and don't get our economic house in order back home.

10. "Islamofascism."   No list of scary monsters would be complete without neoconservativism's bedrock bogeyman: the claim that there is a powerful, cohesive, ideologically united movement of Islamic radicals, backed by assorted Islamic governments, seeking to re-establish the medieval caliphate, subjugate the West, and impose Islam on all of us. One thing is clear: the people who make this claim don't understand Islam very well and don't understand fascism at all; "Islamofascism" may in fact be the most misleading neologism in contemporary political discourse.  

Sure, some Islamic radicals harbor wild fantasies about transforming and uniting the entire Muslim world under their banner; the good news is that they are as likely to accomplish this goal as I am to flap my arms and fly to the moon.  Let's remember that Osama bin Laden isn't leading an vast army of followers to overthrow the existing Arab governments; he's hiding in some remote part of Pakistan and praying we don't find him. And surveys suggest that Al Qaeda's efforts aren't winning them any mass support; just recruits among a small number of disaffected.  But the more we fear this monster and overreact to it, the more sympathy they may win and the more trouble they can cause....even if its nowhere near the amount they would like.

I could go on and discuss the fear of fluoridation and flu vaccines, paranoia about foreign ownership of U.S. assets, the "window of vulnerability," China's "foreign aid offensive" in Africa, the fear of subversion that led to the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and so forth.   But I'll stop with these ten, and just make two final points. 

First, we are often told that international politics is a dangerous business, and that it makes sense to prepare for the worst case. This is nonsense, because there are real costs to exaggerating various potential threats. Not only may this policy lead us to ignore more likely and more legitimate problems and to waste resources addressing fantasies, but it can also lead a country to take active steps that either make minor problems worse or lead to enormous self-inflicted wounds (see under: Iraq). Fixating on scary monsters can leave you ill-prepared when real problems arise.

Second, even if these foolish fears led us to undertake various boneheaded policies on occasion, we should nonetheless be thankful that these various monsters turned out to be far less fearsome than we often believed. But given that Nov. 26 is the official day to give thanks this year, maybe I'll just hold that thought until that holiday arrives.

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When I offered my "IR Theory for Lovers" guide back on Valentine's Day, I said I might follow up with some IR-inspired reflections on parenthood for Father's Day. I try to keep my promises, so here goes the "IR Theory Guide to Parenting." 

First off, modern realist theory focuses on the structure of the system and especially number of major powers in it. Right off the bat, this perspective can tell you a lot about the dynamics parents face as the size of their family increases. When parents have one child, the balance of power is in their favor. They can double-team the lucky kid, and give each other a break by taking turns. Life is good.  

But if you have a second child the dynamics shift. If one parent is alone at home and both kids are awake, the balance of power isn't in the parent's favor anymore. Instead of double-teaming them, they get to double-team you. And once the kids are mobile, you learn about another key IR concept: the window of opportunity. You're feeding or changing Kid #1, and Kid #2 makes a bolt out the front door, just like North Korea tested a nuclear weapon while we were busy with Iraq. Or you're in the middle of a crowded department store and they each decide to head down different aisles. The potential complications of a multipolar order were never clearer the first time this happened to me.  

Moreover, once your children learn to overcome sibling rivalry and form alliances (e.g., by backing each other's alibis), your problems get even more complicated.  Plus, children quickly master "divide-and-conquer" diplomacy -- "But Mom said I could stay up until midnight!" -- and soon learn that if they don't get the right answer from one parent, just ask the other. Of course, if you decide to have three, four, five (or more), you'll face even more complicated diplomatic dynamics and dilemmas of collective action, not to mention complete exhaustion. Yes, there are probably some economies of scale and maybe you'll learn from experience, but expanding NATO and the EU didn't make them easier to govern. If you decide to raise your own platoon, good luck to you.

Moreover, realists from Thucydides have stressed the destabilizing effects of shifts in the balance of power. This dynamic is built into family life: kids grow up, get older and smarter and bigger and more independent. Their parents get older, slower, more tired, and eventually dependent on the children. If you're lucky, your kids will help out when you're past your prime. Hmmm…is that what the United States has been doing for Great Britain?  

Second, as Tom Schelling described in Arms and Influence, the closely related subjects of deterrence and compellence are central to the parenting experience (just as the use of "salami tactics" is central to being a kid).  Most of us love our children deeply, which puts real limits on the amount of punishment we are willing to inflict. Total war just isn't an option, and the ability to use force is limited, so we're stuck with coercive diplomacy. And kids quickly figure out which threats are credible and which are not, and they are geniuses at probing the limits of our resolve.  

Moreover, no parent can monitor everything a child does (and you'd end up with a pretty neurotic kid if you tried), and you eventually reach a point where physical restraint (in IR terms, "pure defense") isn't practical. So we all rely on deterrence -- "if you hit your sister/brother, I'll take away your X-Box for a week." But we all know the various subterfuges that states (and siblings) employ to negate a deterrent threat. Remember classics like: "It's not my fault….he started it!" Or "I didn't hit him, I just poked him." (Sounds like the Middle East, doesn't it?) And when parents get desperate, they turn to foreign aid (aka bribes): "If you finish your homework, I'll take you out for ice cream." Schelling was probably right: you can learn just about everything you need to know about this subject by raising a child.  

Third, the whole field of asymmetric conflict can prepare you for another aspect of child-rearing: your superior education, physical strength, and total command of financial resources will not translate into anything remotely resembling "control." A two-year old who is barely talking can destroy a dinner party or a family outing just by being stubborn, and a smart, loving, strong and wealthy parent can be damn near helpless in the face of a sufficiently willful son or daughter. Read Andrew Mack, Ivan Toft, or James Scott on "asymmetric conflict" and the "weapons of the weak" before you have kids, and at least you'll be forewarned.

Network theory is still underdeveloped in the field of international relations, but it tells you a lot about your social life once you have children. You used to pick your friends based on common interests, professional associations, or simple serendipity; now you'll find that your children are in effect choosing some of your friends for you, depending on who they like in school or who's on their soccer team. This is actually one of the unexpected benefits of parenthood; just don't be surprised if your social circle looks a lot different by the time your child reaches ten.

Fifth, the IR literature on norms and socialization is obviously relevant, because there's a lot of socialization and norm development involved in trying to raise a reasonably well-adjusted child. Regime theory tells us that states create norms in part to reduce the transaction costs involved in cooperation, and that's exactly why parents set bedtimes and (try to) impose other general rules. My kids might like to negotiate every single aspect of their lives, but who has time? And as with most norms, failures in the short-term are less important than success in the long run. The fact that some states violate some norms doesn't mean that norms have no impact at all, and the fact that kids sometimes break the rules doesn't mean that they aren't internalizing a lot of the core principles over time. At least that's the hope that I cling to.

And then there's adolescence. Once again, we are back in the Jervisian world of misperception, reinforced by linguistic barriers, cultural gaps, hormonal eruptions, and the like. My teenaged kids are both pretty terrific, but there are those days when I think I am suddenly dealing with a creature who is as predictable as Kim Jong Il, as honest as Pinocchio, and as amenable to compromise as Torquemada. And the scary part is that on those days, they probably see me as the reincarnation of Joseph Stalin, with a bit of Mussolini thrown in. Bottom line: after you've raised a teenager, you'll never have quite the same confidence in the rational actor assumption.

There's a whole constructivist dimension to parenting too. For me, marriage merely institutionalized a relationship that was already well-established and formalizing it didn't feel like a momentous change. But parenthood felt like an instantaneous and overwhelming transformation of identity: there in the delivery room, I went from the comfortable role of "husband" to a new and frightening identity -- "Dad." And as the constructivists like to remind us, identities shape behavior in all sorts of unpredictable ways.

But to be honest, IR theory comes up short in one big dimension. I don't know of any body of IR theory that adequately explains why parents love their children, even when they are driving us bananas. But it's a good thing that we do, and for most of us, the joys outweigh the vexations. Happy Father's Day!

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Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. As a public service, I would like to remind FP readers of the important insights that international relations theory can provide for people in love.

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.

Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn't originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.

Realists have long argued that bipolar systems are the most stable. So if any of you lovers out there are thinking of adding more major actors to the system, please reconsider. As most of us eventually learn, trying to juggle romantic relationships in a multi-polar setting usually leads to crises, and sometimes to open warfare. It's certainly not good for alliance stability.

IR theory also warns us that shifts in the balance of power are dangerous. There's an obvious warning here: relationships are more likely to have trouble if one partner's status or power changes rapidly. So that big promotion that you both celebrated may be a good thing overall, but it's likely to alter expectations and force you and your partner to make serious adjustments. The same is true if one of you gets laid off. Bottom line: it can take a lot of patience and love to work through a major shift in the balance of power within a relationship.

Even the best relationships have their bumpy moments, of course, because even human beings who love each other deeply can have trouble figuring out what the other person wants and why they are acting as they are. IR theorists have written lots of smart things about misperception, and it's good to keep some of them in mind. We tend to see our own behavior as constrained by our circumstances, for example, while attributing the behavior of others to their own attributes and wants. "I'm doing this because I have to, but he's acting this way because that’s just who he is!" This sort of perceptual bias is potent recipe for conflict spirals, something IR theorists have long warned about. A small disagreement occurs, and each person's attempt to defend their own position starts to look like an aggressive and unjustified attack. And so we discover another core IR concept: escalation.  

I'm hoping a few readers are nodding their heads in agreement at this point.

Which brings me to an especially helpful IR concept: appeasement. The term has been unfairly denigrated since Munich, but it is a critical strategy for preserving any romantic relationship. And if you don't believe me, ask my wife, who made me put this paragraph in.

So maybe learning some IR theory can actually help your love life. If it does, and you're lucky enough to find the right person, and then you might decide you want to institutionalize the relationship by getting married. (This assumes that you're straight, of course, or fortunate enough to live in a part of the world that recognizes the rights of gay people to marry as well).

And then the two of you might also decide to mobilize your combined resources and grow your own alliance network -- i.e., have kids -- either via the traditional method or by adopting. If you do, you'll get to learn about a whole new set of IR concepts, like deterrence, coercion, salami tactics, and overcommitment. But that's another set of problems, and maybe I'll wait till Father's Day to blog about them.

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