Rasmussen, Mikkel. "Introduction". In The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty-First Century, by Mikkel Rasmussen, 1-11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Rasmussen, Mikkel. "Introduction". In The Risk Society at War: Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty-First Century, by Mikkel Rasmussen, 1-11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

• Western countries are safer now than at any other period in human history, as wars and violent crime have both declined, no totalitarian ideologies challenge the supremacy of democracy, and nuclear tensions are no longer likely to unleash armageddon (1).
• Conceptions of security have fundamentally changed since the end of the Cold War, however, as the focus of security has shifted from 'threats', identified capabilities of a hostile power to harm, to 'risks', potential threats whose existence is unknown (1-2).
• Risks are harder to deal with than threats because the goal of managing risks is to guarantee that risky situations never develop. This means that success means the absence of a threat, not the actual destruction of a preexisting and identified threat (4).
• Strategy has had to adapt to the new realities of focus on risks rather than threats, having to prepare potential responses to events that may or may not materialize. The new threats that strategy has to deal with represent a massive change in thinking because they can cause harm without changing the relations or power balances between states (2-3).
• Risks are potentially infinite, because anything anywhere could be at risk of attack. Resources and time is limited, however, meaning that the best governments can do is manage risks by placing resources for protection in areas and towards objectives that they believe are at the greatest risk (4).
• An essential question underpinning the transition in the West towards discussion of security risk is whether the world has actually changed, so that examining risks has become necessary, or whether the world has remained roughly the same and only perceptions of risk and security have changed (4-5).
• The author proposes that risk is a form of rational governance, an extension of the Weberian tradition of governments seeking to establish legitimacy and authority through formalized and 'rational' bureaucratic procedures (5). Risk management represents the expansion of strategic and rational thinking beyond the military and government to all areas of life, whose security and survival is no protected through rational planning (7). 
• One way in which the world has dramatically changed has been the imposition of international law prohibiting interstate war and the increased focus on states fighting non-state actors. The majority of Western military strategy is now forced to be directed towards non-state actors, which creates a new relationship with the concept of risk (10).
• Preemptive action is also hindered by concerns about burden of proofs and democratic approval of these actions. These issues are more easily handled at the domestic level. When preemptive doctrine is applied to the military, these problems are magnified, as demonstrated in the 2003 Iraq War (9-10).