This is all the more the case because new threats have often not been adequately defined or contained, public sensitivity to them is high, and existing mechanisms for dealing with them are weak. Exaggerated or spurious threats include, among others, fundamentalism, terrorism, and information security. While the threat of all three can be real, all three examples can also illustrate how the political manipulation, exaggeration or misunderstanding of a threat may undermine capacity to deal with it. Countries must and should cooperate to reduce its impact and prevent its spread. Yet, when we look at what terrorism is defined as, controlling it can in some countries be a cover for repression of what, in others, would be seen as a legitimate movement for self-rule.
Similar considerations apply to fundamentalism.
This can be a serious problem but, because the threat has been so exaggerated in the past, it has been debased. Politicians crying wolf have, to some extent, desensitised their populations to this threat, at a time when it may now actually be becoming more serious. Information security is likewise of real concern to all nations. However, in some central and eastern European countries, what is understood by this term is very different to what it has come to mean in the West. Indeed, information security may even be abused as a catch-all justification for state control of information, where a government fears free expression and would rather reimpose authoritarian control.