Social Cohesion, Collective Defence, And The Latent Power Of Democracy

Collective security in democracies is unviable without public trust and a publicly cogent threat assessment. Thus, it follows that democratic security architects should promote an internally-focused threat perception and engage in realistic perception management. There needs to be a greater focus on what we have that is worth protecting, and why; moreover, threat perceptions should focus on what the democracies can do, rather than the inverse perception of what harm a threat can inflict, as such threat perceptions promote enfeeblement. This paper argues that an internally-focused threat perception, reinforced through a ‘seductive’ model of message discipline, will foster social cohesion and consequently collective defence.