This month’s Cato Unbound began yesterday, with a fascinating title and topic: Keep Calm and Carry On: How to Talk about Terrorism.

The term is trite, perhaps, but terrorism is handily described as a form of psychological warfare. It’s a wonder, then, that more time and attention hasn’t been paid in official Washington to communications strategies pertaining to terrorism.

People elsewhere have been giving it focus, and the author of the lead article is Bill Burns, a research scientist at Decision Research and consultant at the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events. His piece is called “The Path Well Taken: Making the Right Decisions about Risks from Terrorism.”

You are hereby assigned it as reading, but here’s an inspiring quote from Burns’ closing paragraph:

America may yet offer the voice of calm and deliberative action to a world as shaken as we. And through these travails, we must lead by example, inspired by our constitutional freedoms and drawing from the best of our science and culture.

Watch for follow-on commentaries by Bernard Finel (January 7), John Mueller (January 9), and Camille Pecastaing (January 12).

Burns is a speaker, and this topic will be one of the subjects, at Cato’s two-day conference on counterterrorism strategy which begins on Monday next week. Read more and register here.