"The new century has brought on its own terrible dangers, which although not reaching the apocalyptic potential of the Cold War, still have the capacity to shake our world"
About this Quote
Schiff’s sentence is calibrated to do two political jobs at once: lower the thermostat on panic while keeping the public on alert. By conceding that today’s threats don’t match the Cold War’s “apocalyptic potential,” he borrows the moral gravity of that era without triggering its hair-on-fire fatalism. It’s reassurance with a time stamp. We’re not living under the shadow of instant annihilation, he implies, but we are still living on unstable ground.
The phrase “the new century” functions like a soft reset button. It frames danger as a feature of our updated operating system: globalization, digitized infrastructure, porous information ecosystems. “Terrible dangers” is deliberately nonspecific, a catchall broad enough to cover terrorism after 9/11, cyberwarfare, democratic backsliding, pandemics, climate shocks, and great-power conflict without naming any single culprit. That vagueness isn’t a flaw; it’s an invitation to consensus. You can project your preferred fear onto the line and still nod along.
“Shake our world” is the key rhetorical move. It avoids the finality of “destroy” while preserving the drama of systemic disruption. The subtext is that institutions - elections, alliances, supply chains, trust - are now the battleground, and the damage can be profound without being nuclear. For a politician associated with intelligence oversight and national security debates, this also doubles as a case for sustained vigilance: funding, alliances, and the unglamorous work of prevention.
Contextually, it reads like post-Cold War realism after the brief triumphalism of the 1990s: history didn’t end; it just changed weapons and tempos.
The phrase “the new century” functions like a soft reset button. It frames danger as a feature of our updated operating system: globalization, digitized infrastructure, porous information ecosystems. “Terrible dangers” is deliberately nonspecific, a catchall broad enough to cover terrorism after 9/11, cyberwarfare, democratic backsliding, pandemics, climate shocks, and great-power conflict without naming any single culprit. That vagueness isn’t a flaw; it’s an invitation to consensus. You can project your preferred fear onto the line and still nod along.
“Shake our world” is the key rhetorical move. It avoids the finality of “destroy” while preserving the drama of systemic disruption. The subtext is that institutions - elections, alliances, supply chains, trust - are now the battleground, and the damage can be profound without being nuclear. For a politician associated with intelligence oversight and national security debates, this also doubles as a case for sustained vigilance: funding, alliances, and the unglamorous work of prevention.
Contextually, it reads like post-Cold War realism after the brief triumphalism of the 1990s: history didn’t end; it just changed weapons and tempos.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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