pre-existing notions, and they are loath to change their pre-existing beliefs, even
when confronted with strong counter-evidence.^42
Attention to threat and fear management can become an institutionalized schema
within states as a pattern of organizing intelligence gathering, perceptions, and plans
guiding action and reaction between individuals and groups. Fear is institutionalized,
for example, in ethnic and racial conflicts when groups who are presumed to be
dangerous to each other are physically separated. In colonial Africa, the colonizers’
fear was institutionalized in pass books that the colonized had to carry so that the
colonizers knew who someone was and whether they had good reason to be where
they were at any given time. Fear is both acknowledged and institutionalized in the
fence Israel built between Palestinians and Israelis in 2002 and 2003 and in the
process of establishing and maintaining checkpoints along that border. In each case,
an individual’s fear may be both partly resolved and normalized through the practices
of the organizations charged with meeting a particular threat. The fence allows
some actual physical control of a perceived threat and the illusion of greater control.
On the other hand, the passbook or the fence separating others may also remind,
rehearse, reinforce and heighten the fear and animosity between groups. Institu-
tionalized fear may increase individual fear.
Like pass books and fences, military strategies are the conscious and unconscious
institutionalization of a fear schema. Defensive doctrines are certainly rooted in fear
and uncertainty. Yet even ostensibly aggressive strategies may have fear at their root
if the aggressive aim is rooted in a larger insecurity about the long-term intentions
of the other. For example, fear of certain and imminent war led to the develop-
ment of pre-emptive strategies in Europe prior to the First World War. In the
late 1800s, Germany feared that war with Britain, France and Russia was likely,
indeed inevitable. It was also common at the beginning of the last century to believe
that the best defence is a good offence.^43 The German Chief of Staff, Alfred Von
Schlieffen developed the Schlieffen Plan: Germany would pre-emptively strike
France, and then after France was defeated in six weeks, Germany would strike
Russia. The French also had an offensive strategy – Plan 17 – to avenge their losses
in the Franco-Prussian war. So did Russia, which thought pre-emption could
succeed quickly against both Austria and Germany. Assuming war was inevitable,
all sides built up their military forces. When a crisis occurred (the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in June 1914) reciprocal fear of surprise attack
and mobilization escalated. Each side – Germany, France, and Russia – believed war
was inevitable and thought they were doomed if their country did not go first. All
mobilized in an action-reaction sequence. And when they went to war in August
1914, nearly all leaders thought pre-emption would work and that the war would
be over in a few weeks or months.
Fear is institutionalized not only when it drives a state to adopt a particular
military doctrine, but when actors assume that fear ‘works’ – that the deliberate
production of fear in an adversary can coerce the target. Indeed, when not based on
simple denial or destruction, military strategy rests on fear – the promise of more
punishment withheld in exchange for capitulation or compliance. For example, the
Rethinking ‘man’ 167