Assessing dangers to democracy, knowing how to respond [View all]

By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a regular reader of “Naval Proceedings,” a beyond-authoritative monthly from the U.S. Naval Institute focusing on maritime global security and written by military professionals and civilian experts.

In it, a piece by Dr. William Bunn, a retired U.S. naval intelligence officer and assistant professor at the Joint Forces Staff College, explains how a national security threat can be “calculated” via a mathematical formula, namely:

Adversary’s Intent times Adversary’s Capability to Take Action equals Level of Threat.

While Dr. Bunn’s article was about Russian aggressiveness in Europe vs. the Pacific (which I packed away for future reference), I noted that the same formula could be used to calculate the danger of domestic threats: whether Proud-Boys type insurrections, Hamas-inspired terror, or Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and goal to become “America’s Autocrat.”

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/burke-assessing-dangers-to-democracy-knowing-how-to-respond/