Your having a hard time letting go of the fear factor.   

You work on the assumption that a team must function through fear and you're wrong.   There are thousands of leaders of high performance teams that are successful because they have the respect of their team.   Managing your team with fear will get you fired in most quality companies.    

It could be were confusing the terms of fear and respect?     

Our enemies and our allies, take our power to inflict death seriously.   The US could eliminant life on this planet as we know it.   That's created plenty of fear over the last 60 years.  We don't have to have a 'public beheading' every few years to remind other people that we can be scary.

Most US citizens see our nation as protecting the rights of civil freedom and democracy  worldwide.  That's something to admire, not to be afraid of.   

Good talking with you.