The discussion on the deterrence doctrine, conducted by Bitarch and me on one side, and the Anti-State public on the other, continues.
To ensure you don’t get confused, here is the backstory:
1. Deterrence Doctrine — Coercion to Non-Aggression. Ancap-tyan, May 8, additions made May 14.
2. Regarding the Deterrence Doctrine. Ved, May 9 (response to the first edition of the original article).
3. Again on the “Deterrence Doctrine” and Coercion to NAP. Ved, May 16 (response to the second edition of the original article).
4. Deterrence Doctrine, Response to Criticism. Bitarch, May 17.
and finally, the latest:
5. A Bit About Democracy, the Deterrence Doctrine, and Politi-ECU. Ved, May 26.
1. I described the development of the idea of a deterrence doctrine, namely, the prevention of war by designating a threat that is unacceptable to the adversary. It was argued that the only unacceptable threat to a total modern state is a threat to its leaders, whereas threats to the economy, infrastructure, army, and ordinary citizens do not prevent war and may even, conversely, lead to a total conflict until one of the parties is completely destroyed.
2, 3. Ved responded that the elimination of a leader leads either to their replacement while maintaining the previous course, or to the collapse of the state, or to the “deep state” replacing public policy—and a reversal of democracy would not be beneficial for us. Furthermore, a habit of terror tactics is fraught with danger: one gets used to them, begins using this tool left and right, like Daenerys with her “dracarys,” and then it turns out that for people, you are worse than any state. Now, crypto-anarchists are a different story: they develop their Bitcoin completely non-violently, and nothing can be opposed to them.
4. Bitarch countered that for the formation of corporate-type contractual jurisdictions—that is, rather providers of government services—the deterrence doctrine is perhaps indeed not very suitable. However, political-type contractual jurisdictions—that is, rather providers of a lifestyle, such as Catholic, liberal, or transhumanist ECUs—are characterized by greater motivation among their members and will therefore be more inclined to use force. Here, the deterrence doctrine would act as the lesser evil, since within its framework, force is only demonstrated.
5. Finally, Ved, in his rather detailed article, pointed out that not only is the service of “unacceptable damage through guaranteed destruction of leaders” migrating from a luxury category available only to superpowers into the mass segment as technology evolves, but services like a convenient flag, offshore jurisdictions, etc., will also become cheaper and penetrate business practice more widely, regardless of how large states try to fight it. Therefore, systematic political activity to develop alternatives to territorial states will yield the desired result without any waving of the deterrence doctrine.
As usual, when several intelligent people discuss correctly, it turns out they are talking about roughly the same thing, just from slightly different positions. Indeed, state leaders are unlikely to accept that some private individuals dare to threaten their power. For them, this is a familiar terrorist threat, and they will fight it with familiar anti-terrorist methods. Therefore, it is important not only that state aggression against private individuals is punished by damage to the leaders of the aggressor state. It is also important to convey to the aggressor the idea that this is specifically an interstate conflict, a conflict between equal subjects of law, which cannot be resolved unilaterally, even if it initially looked like the simple dismantling of an offshore platform.
Therefore, in a hypothetical conflict in the Andaman Sea, a contractual jurisdiction wishing to fulfill a contract for protection against aggression from the Kingdom of Thailand must clearly state that the married couple who purchased the platform are its citizens, and aggression against them is a casus belli; the conflict can be settled in an international court, but if Thailand refuses, there will be war. This is done not out of simple satisfaction of a sense of justice, but to expand the understanding of the state and state jurisdiction.
Without negotiations, it will be impossible to create a precedent. But without an explicit threat, there will be no negotiations. State representatives will simply refuse to recognize the contractual jurisdiction as a state, and therefore, as a subject of international law.
One might object that the resources of a state and a private company are incomparable, but that is a strange argument. First, they might be comparable. Second, it is like with computing power. If a laptop is sufficient for a specific task, the fact that the state has a supercomputer at its disposal does not give it a serious advantage. In other words, the deterrence doctrine begins to work precisely when the price becomes affordable for people. In this situation, individual statesmen may show off a bit, but they will quickly realize that the most profitable strategy is to be “sweeties” and truly safeguard the interests of people. As if the good old territorial state were no worse than the trendy ECUs.
Ved writes about the expansion of the practice of offshore jurisdictions, but as we see, existing offshores are quite helpless against political pressure from large powers. Even Switzerland allowed its arms to be twisted—first in the sphere of banking regulation, and recently in questions of special tax regimes for foreign companies (thus largely losing its ability to be a convenient contractual jurisdiction). What can be said about somewhere like Cyprus? Meanwhile, the use of the deterrence doctrine could help an offshore protect itself from political pressure by traditional states.
The movement toward the desired future, in which the monopoly of territorial states on aggressive violence will be trampled and the sovereignty of the individual, conversely, will triumph, occurs along several vectors simultaneously, and arguments over which one is the only important one, or which are not needed at all, smell of sheer preference. Some people undermine the territoriality of states by creating extraterritorial analogues. Others undermine the ability of states to rob people through monetary emission and develop the cryptocurrency industry. A third group undermines the monopoly on violence itself by making weapons cheap, precise, and stealthy, to launch the deterrence doctrine and prevent the doctrine of total war.
This can be viewed in different ways, but progress in this direction is already happening, and nothing can be done about it. It is within our power only to formulate a doctrine for the use of new means of warfare to minimize damage and maximize benefit. The doctrine consists of justified political demands backed by the threat of destroying the adversary’s leaders, which can be illustrated by non-lethal demonstrations.
