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Deterrence without threat

Nuclear weapons or Gandhi?
The current renewed nuclear arms race will likely end in Armageddon unless replaced by a diverse watchdog press and training in nonviolence and guerilla war.

Every individual and group has a right and an obligation to defend itself. Unfortunately, when most humans1 think of defense, they think of violent responses to provocations. They fail to understand that (a) most uses of violence are counterproductive, and (b) there are usually nonviolent options that would more effectively promote broadly shared peace and prosperity for the long term. These misunderstandings are routinely cultivated by major media outlets whose funding comes primarily from “people”2 who believe they could be threatened by nonviolence and would prefer counterproductive uses of force. A military posture that supports projecting force beyond one’s own borders may be as likely to provoke as prevent an attack.3

This article outlines a 3-part strategy that research suggests would more likely lead to better outcomes for the vast majority of humans. The biggest risk today may be the risk of nuclear Armageddon, which seems on average to grow over time consistent with experience with “system accidents” in other fields: Managers of complex systems subject to rare, catastrophic failures are encouraged to take ever greater risks, because they have “safely” done so in the past — until there is a catastrophe.4 

  1. Citizen-directed subsidies for local news nonprofits with a firewall to prevent political interference in the content. 
  2. Training in nonviolent noncooperation for anyone willing to listen. 
  3. Forbid uses of force beyond one’s own borders and covert interference in foreign countries. 

We now discuss each of these briefly. 

1. Citizen-directed subsidies for local news nonprofits with a firewall to prevent political interference in the content. 

This is central to national defense, because most uses of force are driven by misunderstandings of the situation and the available options. This is especially true with overt and covert interference in foreign countries.  

For example, there is substantial documentation available today that the suicide mass murders of September 11, 2001, likely would not have occurred if the US had treated the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as law enforcement issues. Muslim clerics all over the world initially condemned those acts. Al-Qaeda was dead. Their funding had largely dried up. And bin Laden was scheduled to be extradited the following month to Saudi Arabia to be prosecuted for treason, where he would likely have been convicted and executed. 

But it seemed questionable at best whether major media executives in the US would have given favorable coverage to such a diplomatic solution. Instead, the US bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Then Muslim public opinion turned 180 degrees to acknowledge, “Bin Laden was right: The US is an evil empire.” The US became bin Laden’s only indispensable ally, according to the CIA agent responsible for tracking bin Laden at that time.5

Leading Saudis started supporting al-Qaeda, including some working for the Saudi embassy and consulates in the US. Only one country seems to have been involved in the preparations for the September 11 attacks, and that was Saudi Arabia. But Saudies were friends of the Bush family, and a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.6 So the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, both on grounds that senior journalists and leading media executives should have known at the time were questionable and likely fraudulent — to the detriment of nearly everyone except the “people” who control most of the money for the media.7 

And those 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were reportedly motivated as retaliation for US support for torture, transferring a colleague of bin Laden to Egypt for torture.8 The major media in the US has provided ample coverage of, e.g., promises by Donald Trump supporting torture9 while largely suppressing honest discussion of the research on it. For example, around 1629 the Duke of Brunswick was discussing torture with two leading Jesuit scholars, who supported it. They insisted that only humans identified by other confessed witches were tortured. The Duke then led the Jesuits to a woman being stretched on the rack and asked her, “You are a confessed witch. I suspect these two men of being warlocks. What do you say? Another turn of the rack, executioners.” “No, no!” screamed the woman. “You are quite right. I have often seen .. . They can turn themselves into goats, wolves, and other animals. … Several witches have had children by them. … The children had heads like toads and legs like spiders.” The Duke then asked the Jesuits. “Shall I put you to the torture until you confess, my friends?” One of the Jesuits was Friedrich Spee, who thanked God he had been led to this insight by a friend and then wrote a book against torture.10 

There is also documentation that the US helped Pakistan get nuclear weapons and destroyed the career of an intelligence analyst, Richard Barlow, for telling his managers they should not lie to Congress about it. Barlow has insisted that neither Pakistan nor North Korea would have nuclear weapons today if the US had followed its own laws, including commitments under the 1968 non-proliferation treaty. Barlow’s claims, including his punishment by administration officials, has been reported in major media outlets11 but not in a way that would seriously limit the ability — and need — for administration officials to lie to Congress. 

Biased reporting by major media was also a major driver in getting the US to commit military forces to Vietnam: The major media in the US gave massive coverage of the fraudulent claims by Senator Joe McCarthy of communists in the US government. Those claims were rarely questioned in the major media until McCarthy had otherwise discredited himself.12 The major media of that day also included little if any honest discussion of the massive corruption of the South Vietnamese government supported by the US and the resulting popularity of the communist Ho Chi Minh.13 By early 1964, then-President Lyndon Johnson seemed to believe that he might lose that year’s election if he were seen to be soft on communism. So he worked to provoke an attack that he then denounced as “unprovoked” to request US military support for the corrupt South Vietnamese government.14 Only two senators and none in the US House voted against the resulting Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,15 and they were defeated in their reelection bids.16 

Horton (2024) provides massive documentation of many things the US has done to push Putin to invade Ukraine, as happened in 2022. This includes documentation that the West is supporting Nazis who are mistreating Russian speakers in Ukraine, information routinely suppressed by major media in the US and Western Europe. Leading economist Jeffrey Sachs addressed the European Parliament 2025-02-19, claiming that the tragedy that befell Serbia in 1999 and subsequent US uses of force in Iraq and Syria, plus wars in Africa including Syria, Somalia and Libya and the current wars in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, “are to a very significant extent the result of deeply misguided US policies.” He said that Europe should craft its own foreign and military policies, independent of the US.17 Le Monde Diplomatique noted that Sachs’ speech has circulated among social media since but has yet to be seriously discussed by major European media.18

The research on “system accidents” applied to national defense says that political and military leaders in nuclear weapon states will continue to push ever more confrontational policies, because their intuition has been trained by decades of experience that they can do so “safely” — until nuclear Armageddon proves them wrong.19 The major media will continue to reward political and military leaders who do so at the expense of less confrontational leaders, who are less likely to reward the “people” who control most of the money for the media. Simulations of a nuclear war between the US and Russia suggest that such a war would likely produce a nuclear winter lasting years during which 99 percent of humans in the US, Europe, Russia and China would starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner. Over three quarters of humanity would similarly die. In all nuclear wars simulated for this study, over 90 percent of the fatalities were in countries not involved in the nuclear exchange.20

Of course, nothing is certain. At minimum these arguments seem sufficiently compelling to justify the cost of experiments in citizen-directed subsidies for local news nonprofits with firewalls to prevent political interference in the content, as recommended in the Wikiversity article on, “Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government”.21

2. Training in nonviolent noncooperation for anyone willing to listen.

A major driver of the current conflict between India and Pakistan is mistreatment of Muslims in India. Simulations of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan suggest that such a war would likely produce a nuclear autumn lasting years during which a quarter of humanity would starve to death if they did not die of something else sooner. Over 90 percent of those would be in countries not involved in the nuclear exchange.22

The recent “2025 India–Pakistan conflict” was a response by India to violence in Indian-administered Kashmir by terrorists allegedly supported by Pakistan.23 India would have had much more difficulty justifying violent repression of nonviolent protests, especially if a more diverse media ecology gave such protests more and more sympathetic coverage. 

During the Great Depression, ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia were harder hit by increasing trade barriers than their non-German neighbors. They were therefore more open to populist and extremist movements such as fascism, communism and German irredentism.24 If those ethnic Germans had used nonviolent noncooperation to highlight their grievances, and if Czechoslovakia at that time had had a substantially more diverse media system, it seems likely that they could have gotten reasonable redress of grievances. If so, it would have been harder for Hitler to use that as an excuse to invade Czechoslovakia, as he did in 1938.25

An ideal settlement of the current Russo-Ukraine war might include training in nonviolent noncooperation made more effective through a more diverse media culture as suggested above. A substantial portion of the Ukrainian population, especially the Ukrainian military are reported to be vicious anti-Russian Nazis, and the Ukrainian government has outlawed many uses of non-Ukrainian languages, especially Russian. A campaign of nonviolent noncooperation with a vigorous, diverse adversarial press would make it harder for Ukraine to continue persecuting Russian speakers. It would also make it harder for major media in the US and Western Europe to suppress honest discussion of anti-Russian racism in Ukraine. Swanson (2022) said that the Baltic states have implemented such training in preparations for a possible Russian invasion; they might be asked to support such training in Ukraine (and elsewhere).26

None of these policies would be without risk. However, it’s hard to imagine how the risks of such policies could exceed the risks of the current war with its threats of nuclear Armageddon. 

3. Forbid use of force beyond one’s own borders and covert interference in foreign countries.

Standard deterrence theory assumes that one’s opponents are rational and do not want Armageddon.27 Lebow and others have provided substantial documentation of case studies claiming that leaders are often not rational, and deterrence based on threatening use of military force beyond one’s own borders has been as likely to provoke as prevent undesired behavior.28 The most obvious portions of this threat can be entirely eliminated by policies clearly and effectively forbidding use of force beyond one’s own borders. This can be signaled in three ways: 

  • Eliminate all weapon systems like missiles and aircraft with a range of more than, e.g., a hundred miles or 200 kilometers with the possible exception of surveillance only aircraft that cannot be easily configured to carry ordinance, e.g., explosives. Similarly eliminate nuclear weapons, which few if any countries would want to use for military defense inside their own borders. 
  • Supply a national guard and reserves with weapons, training, and rules of engagement that prohibit projecting force beyond one’s own borders. Train them also in development and use of improvised explosive devices. 
  • Change the laws of government secrecy so government officials cannot keep secret efforts to interfere in the internal affairs of foreign countries or otherwise project force outside their own borders. In the US, this might be achieved by requiring anyone with information about questionable actions by government officials to provide such documentation to one or more congressional oversight bodies while also allowing any current or former government employee or contractor to file suit in any US federal jurisdiction if they feel they have been punished for refusing to support questionable activities. In addition, federal judges should be authorized to subpoena classified government documents that may be relevant to any case in their jurisdiction and declassify them subject to appellate review if they believe the national interest would be better served by declassification. 

Eliot Cohen, who served as a special advisor to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, wrote, “As the United States discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan, no matter how large, technologically advanced, and proficient an army is, motivated insurgents can still inflict casualties in the tens of thousands.”29 Cohen recommended we “Arm the Ukranians now”. Horton said that the neoconservatives learned from Iraq War II and Afghanistan that the US “should fight like those who defeated them.”30

Connelly (2023) noted that US government secrecy has in the past encouraged administration officials to do things to provoke actions by foreign entities that can then be denounced as “unprovoked” to stampede the US Congress and the public into supporting counterproductive uses of military force.31 A more diverse media culture should make it harder for administration officials to lie to the public and to Congress — and harder to punish government employees who tell their managers that they should not lie to Congress, as they reportedly did to Barlow, mentioned above. The Barlow case and many others explain why the US should, e.g., give federal judges the authority to subpoena classified documents and declassify them if they believe the public good is better served from declassification than continued secrecy.32

These policies would make it very hard for any foreign leader to justify an attack for multiple reasons: First, it would be difficult to convince their supporters that such an attack is necessary. Second, a rational foreign leader might be hesitant to invade a country that is prepared to fight a guerilla war. Germany reportedly considered invading Switzerland during both World Wars I and II and decided against it, in part because Belgium seemed to be an easier route.33 Third, even if foreign invaders defeat the guerillas, they cannot be convinced that their invading forces would continue to follow orders. Ninety-nine percent of Danish Jews reportedly survived World War II because of Danish noncooperation supported by a German diplomat.34

With policies like these in place, it would be hard for foreign leaders to convince their supporters of a need to attack, as Putin did when invading Ukraine in 2022, as India did when attacking Pakistan in 2025, and as Hitler did when invading Poland in 1939,35 to name only three examples. 

What’s next? 

There are now calls for Europe to get their own nuclear weapons,36 while Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Korea and Taiwan have been suggested as other candidates for acquiring nuclear weapons should they feel a sufficient need.37 It’s difficult to imagine how the number of nuclear weapon states could be increased without increasing the risks of a nuclear war, consistent with the discussion of “system accidents” in the introduction to this essay. 

Secondarily, intelligence services with information on political corruption including attempts to intimidate and murder journalists should not be allowed to keep that information secret: They should be required to find ways to leak that information to journalists. Such attacks on journalists in their own country should be exposed and prosecuted if the evidence seems likely to obtain a conviction. Intelligence services with information about such attacks in other countries should be required to find ways to leak it to competent journalists without identifying their sources and methods: Doing so would likely reduce political corruption and with that the risks of war. 

This essay is being written in the hopes of inspiring action to reverse nuclear proliferation and improve the prospects for broadly shared peace and prosperity for the long term. 

Bibliography 

Copyright 2025 Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 international license.

Images: public domain, cropped from: 

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plumbbob_Fizeau_001.jpg

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marche_sel.jpg

_______

  1. We distinguish here between “humans” and “people” or “persons”, because under current US law, corporations are “people” and money is speech, per the US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United (2010) and many other judicial rulings and US law such as the Patriot Act of 2001. See Wikipedia, “Citizens United v. FEC” and “Patriot Act” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act), accessed 2025-05-14. ↩︎
  2. We put “people” in quotes in this essay, because that term includes corporations under current US law. ↩︎
  3. For example, Lebow (2025) cites some of his previous work with others to support the claim that large militaries have been “more more provocative than preventative in” their effects. And Lebow (2024) insists that, “Policymakers respond more instinctively than analytically in deciding that some policy is or is not in the national interest.” See also Lebow et al. (2023). ↩︎
  4. Sagan (1993). See also Wikipedia, “System accident” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_accident). ↩︎
  5. Scheuer (2004, p. xv). ↩︎
  6. Wikiquote, “Paul Romer” (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Romer). ↩︎
  7. Wikiversity, “1998 Embassy bombings and September 11” (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/1998_Embassy_bombings_and_September_11). ↩︎
  8. Mayer (2008, p. 114). See also Wikipedia, “1998 United States embassy bombings” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_United_States_embassy_bombings). ↩︎
  9. McCarthy (2016). ↩︎
  10. Pinker (2011, pp. 138-139). See also Wikipedia, “Friedrich Spee” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Spee). General Stanley McChrystal (2013), who held several command positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, made similar comments about the counterproductive nature of torture. See also Wikiversity, “Winning the War on Terror” (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Winning_the_War_on_Terror). ↩︎
  11. e.g., Stein (2013) “The Perils of Whistle-Blowing”, Newsweek (https://www.newsweek.com/2013/12/06/perils-whistle-blowing-244874.html). See also Wikipedia, “Richard Barlow (intelligence analyst)” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Barlow_(intelligence_analyst)]. ↩︎
  12. Wikipedia, “Joseph McCarthy” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy). ↩︎
  13. Eisenhower (1964, p. 372): “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese [including Vietnamese] affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting [leading to the defeat of the French in 1954], possibly 80 percent would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh”. That perspective got little if any coverage in the major media of that day. President Eisenhower didn’t say this, but he doubtless knew that he likely would have become a lame duck instantly if he had allowed such elections to occur with the predicted outcome. See also Wikiversity, “Winning the War on Terror”, accessed 2025-05-17. ↩︎
  14. Connelly (2023). See also the Wikipedia article on Connelly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Connelly), accessed 2025-05-14, and Connelly and Graves (2023). ↩︎
  15. Wikipedia, “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution”: “It was opposed in the Senate only by Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK).” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution). ↩︎
  16. Wikipedia, “Wayne Morse” “lost his 1968 bid for reelection to [Republican] Bob Packwood, who criticized his strong opposition to the war.” Wikipedia, “Ernest Gruening”: “In 1968, Mike Gravel defeated Gruening in the Democratic Senate primary” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Morse, and 
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Gruening). ↩︎
  17. Sachs (2025-02). ↩︎
  18. Sachs (2025-04). ↩︎
  19. Sagan (1993). See also Wikipedia, “System accident” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_accident). ↩︎
  20. Xia et al. (2022-08-15). See also Wikiversity, “Responding to a nuclear attack” (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Responding_to_a_nuclear_attack). ↩︎
  21. Wikiversity, “Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government” (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Information_is_a_public_good:_Designing_experiments_to_improve_government). ↩︎
  22. Xia et al. (2022). See also Wikiversity, “Responding to a nuclear attack” (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Responding_to_a_nuclear_attack). ↩︎
  23. Wikipedia, “2025 India–Pakistan conflict” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India–Pakistan_conflict). ↩︎
  24. Wikipedia, “Sudetenland”, esp. section on “Within the Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938)” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland#Within_the_Czechoslovak_Republic_(1918–1938)]. ↩︎
  25. Wikipedia, “Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945)” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Czechoslovakia_(1938–1945)]. ↩︎
  26. Swanson (2022). ↩︎
  27. Wikipedia, “Deterrence theory” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory), accessed 2025-05-17. Misra (2015) claimed that the Islamic State “not only believes in the literal meaning of the coming Armageddon – it sees itself as its chief protagonist.” ↩︎
  28. Lebow (2025, 2024), Lebow et al. (2023). ↩︎
  29. Cohen (2022), cited from Horton (2024, p. 1026). ↩︎
  30. Horton (2024, p. 1026). ↩︎
  31. See also Connelly et al. (2023). ↩︎
  32. See also Stern, Harper and Graves (2025), Graves (2014), and Wikipedia, “Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moynihan_Commission_on_Government_Secrecy). ↩︎
  33. Wikipedia, “Switzerland during the world wars” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_during_the_world_wars), accessed 2025-05-17. ↩︎
  34. Wikipedia, “Rescue of the Danish Jews” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews). ↩︎
  35. Wikipedia, “Invasion of Poland” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland), accessed 2025-05-14. ↩︎
  36. Burgard (2025). ↩︎
  37. Ruehl (2024). ↩︎

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