To separate real threats from imagined ones

Somewhere on somebody’s threat list, there may be a small group of British jihadis who want to murder their fellow citizens. As a threat, it is a classic unknowable, but it is likely.

More tangible is the threat from Russia. There were 40 serious military incidents between Russia and western powers in 2014, including “violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided mid-air collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs and other dangerous actions”, according to the European Leadership Network.

In a way, that’s just Vladimir Putin trying to look like Brezhnev. The real threat is that Putin uses diplomacy, propaganda and economic pressure to make the EU’s common foreign policy a dead letter, and Nato’s security guarantees to countries on its eastern flank pointless.

Other threats are available, and no longer simply on a scale of conventional versus unconventional. 

Russia, jihadis or cyberwarfare – which is the most urgent of the new threats we face?