Recognizing that fact, is the fright factor.  If you don't think that's the case - the Falklands War was not a “knife fight to the death,” and nobody thought it was - then your priorities are more civilized.

Naturally, as even Hermann Goering recognized, the trick then is to persuade the populace that they are in that situation, whether or not (particularly when not) the situation is that dire.  Thus the trailer-park jingoism about how invading Iraq and Afghanistan was “fighting for our freedom” or even weirder, “fighting for our country.”  Only if that's what they were doing, could what they were doing be accepted without complaint!