Multipolar Civilisation Depends on Maintaining an Attacker’s Dilemma

A particular pattern of argument keeps appearing in security-focused circles: National security, cybersecurity, arms control/nonproliferation, global AI governance, sanctions enforcement and smuggling, or combating election fraud.The argument is that more often than not, attackers have the strategic advantage over defenders, and that in a world of actors who can choose to either cooperate or defect, this creates a game-theoretic structure with only defect-defect equilibria. Or in simpler terms: Offense is the best defense, so the right move for people, institutions, nations etc. is to attack their rivals first, rather than hoping that others act in good faith.Yet locally, civilisation and positive-sum games can evidently remain stable for extended periods of time, via law enforcement, or reputational, financial or other consequences for defectors. One explanation for why rule-of-law works nationally but often fails internationally is the presence of an autocratic enforcer: Rules are enforced top-down, by a more powerful entity with information asymmetry and hard power. This interpretation explains coordination failures (particularly on the global stage) via a lack of one over-ruling entity, and failures of rule-of-law through the hegemon's lack of informational advantage or lack of hard power.Top-down chains of command and power are one way to keep (lower-ranking) harmful actors in check, but I do not need—or want—to write an essay about the legitimacy, accountability, trust, incentive and representation problems of autocracy (or power concentration in general).Instead, I want to circle back to the underlying assumption of the worldview that explains civilisation exclusively via top-down exercise of offensive power: Offense-dominance. Decentralised, multipolar power could be stable in a defense-dominant world, where offense is contrary to the self-interest of individual actors. In this post, I want to examine what fundamentally makes the difference between the “defe