The nuclear threat functions to protect the forces perpetuating that danger

Evidence

Does not the threat of an atomic catastrophe which could wipe out the human race also serve to protect the very forces which perpetuate this danger? The efforts to prevent such a catastrophe overshadow the search for its potential causes in contemporary industrial society. These causes remain unidentified, unexposed, unattacked by the public because they recede before the all too obvious threat from without—to the West from the East, to the East from the West. Equally obvious is the need for being prepared, for living on the brink, for facing the challenge. We submit to the peaceful production of the means of destruction, to the perfection of waste, to being educated for a defense which deforms the defenders and that which they defend. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 82

Categorization

• XREF: Direct precursor to the manufactured-enemy dynamics in later security-state critiques and to the attention economy’s manufactured crises. — connects to: Normalized risk of nuclear destruction ties people to the system producing it — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 342; Nuclear threat persists because destructive knowledge is ineliminable and mistrust feeds itself; A deterrence threat often hurts the threatener as much as the threatened — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 32
• ADDENDUM: Parallels the dynamic of a stabilizing threat used to justify a repressive order — resonant with sacrificial stabilization arguments in the sacrifice article.

Broader Connections

• Normalized risk of nuclear destruction ties people to the system producing it #corroborates (0.95) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 342
• A deterrence threat often hurts the threatener as much as the threatened #complicates (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 32
• Nuclear threat persists because destructive knowledge is ineliminable and mistrust feeds itself #qualifies (0.70)