Power, Violence and the Strange Calm of Catastrophic Weapons

If you look at the last hundred years, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that power and violence have come unstuck from the meanings they used to have. The first half of the twentieth century seemed to confirm every dark prophecy about revolution and war. World wars, anti-colonial struggles, fascism, Stalinism – all of it looked like a brutal confirmation of Lenin’s belief that power would ultimately be settled by force in its most literal, armed form.

Then something strange happened. As weapons became unimaginably destructive, their actual usability began to shrink. Nuclear weapons, precision missiles and now autonomous systems sit at the centre of international politics, but precisely because they are so destructive, they are politically almost impossible to use in full (Powell 2003; Early 2018). In practice, major powers lean more on deterrence, signalling and limited, deniable forms of violence than on open, total war (Glaser 2024).

The weapons themselves have turned into a permanent background risk, like a loaded gun on the table that no one wants to fire. Politics starts to revolve around the possibility of their use rather than their use itself. Nuclear deterrence, debates about “limited” nuclear strikes, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and AI-enabled weapons all grow out of this reality (Freedman 2003; Glaser 2024; Johnson 2024).

At the same time, the old connection between violence and political power has been shaken. On one side stand movements and regimes that openly glorify violence as the origin of power, from Mao’s “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” to contemporary jihadist groups. On the other side is Hannah Arendt’s very different claim that power grows out of people acting together and that violence is, in the end, a confession that power has failed (Arendt 1970; Arendt 2023).

If our most destructive tools are increasingly unusable, if non-state actors can punch far above their weight, and if power can be exercised without any visible violence at all, then all the lazy clichés about “might makes right” start to look very outdated.

Weapons that are too powerful to use

The twentieth century reads like a manual of escalating destruction: Verdun, Hiroshima, the fire-bombing of cities, industrial genocide. For a long time, military strength meant the ability to mobilise huge forces and inflict overwhelming damage. Nuclear weapons broke something in that logic.

By the late Cold War, strategists were already arguing that once both sides had secure second-strike capability, large-scale war between nuclear powers became irrational. The “nuclear revolution” literature described a world where Mutually Assured Destruction meant any attempt at total victory would trigger suicide (Jervis 1989; Powell 2003). A tense “long peace” between great powers was bought with the constant possibility of annihilation (Gaddis 1986).

More recent work complicates the story. Analysts like Charles Glaser ask whether Cold War deterrence theory still holds when there are several nuclear centres rather than two, and when new technologies such as missile defence and hypersonic missiles destabilise old assumptions (Glaser 2024; Glaser, Acton, and Fetter 2023). Some argue the old logic still restrains all-out war. Others point to the rise of “limited” nuclear options and theatre-level strike plans as proof that states are again thinking about nuclear use as something that can be controlled and managed (Avey 2023).

Either way, the paradox is there in front of us: the more destructive the weapons, the more their political value lies in not using them, in being able to threaten rather than act. Conventional war has certainly not disappeared – the Russian invasion of Ukraine is proof enough – but even there, nuclear shadow-play shapes what is considered possible, from NATO’s restraint to Moscow’s red lines (Early 2018; Johnson 2024).

Uncertainty under the nuclear umbrella

Deterrence is often presented as a neat equilibrium in which everyone understands the risks and no one crosses the line. In reality, the nuclear age has always depended on something far more fragile: restraint, luck and limited information (Freedman 2003; Powell 2003).

The classic “stability–instability paradox” captures this tension. Nuclear weapons may reduce the chance of all-out war between great powers, while creating more room for proxy wars, border clashes and covert operations beneath the nuclear threshold, precisely because each side believes the other will avoid ultimate escalation (Kapur 2017; Early 2018; Johnson 2024).

Added to this is the increasingly messy landscape of cyber operations and AI-enabled systems. Cyberattacks on power grids, pipelines or financial systems can cause major disruption without a single shot being fired. Stuxnet, widely seen as the first mature example of offensive cyber sabotage, quietly damaged Iranian nuclear centrifuges without triggering a conventional war (Waxman 2011; Aanonsen 2025). Legal and strategic debates now treat cyber operations as an integral part of military planning rather than an exotic extra (Yoo 2014; Mansour 2024).

Autonomous and AI-enabled weapons are moving in the same direction. Ukraine and Russia are already using increasingly autonomous drones, experimenting with swarm tactics and machine-guided targeting in real conditions (Guardian 2025; Reuters 2025). The UN General Assembly has opened the way to negotiations on lethal autonomous weapons systems, while a growing coalition of states and NGOs pushes for a binding treaty to set limits or ban them outright (UNGA 2024; Human Rights Watch 2025; Spijkerboer 2025).

The old picture of deterrence as a cold, stable balance starts to look naïve. Miscalculation, technical error, mis-attribution of a cyberattack or an autonomous system behaving in an unexpected way can flip abstract risk into immediate catastrophe. The more complex the tools, the more everything still quietly depends on fallible human judgment.

Violence that escapes the battlefield

While nuclear risk dominates the upper levels of the system, violence on the ground has taken on different shapes. Mary Kaldor’s “new wars” thesis describes many contemporary conflicts as mixes of state and non-state actors, identity politics and privatised violence financed through criminal or predatory economic networks, not classic state taxation (Kaldor 2012; Kaldor 2013).

Here, violence is less about regular armies facing one another across clear frontlines and more about militias, warlords, private security companies and armed groups fighting over populations, trade routes, checkpoints and oil fields. This pattern can be seen in parts of the Sahel, in civil wars where state authority fragments, and in urban battles where civilian and military spaces are entangled (Holland 2014; Mot’ková 2002).

Scholars argue about how “new” these wars really are, but the debate forces a change in perspective. Violence today is often networked, local and partially privatised, even when it is linked to larger geopolitical rivalries (Kaldor 2012; Kaldor 2013).

At the same time, terrorism and violent extremist movements have turned spectacular, symbolic violence into a central political technique. Beheadings filmed for a global audience, suicide bombings in everyday civilian spaces, attacks designed to communicate fear as much as to cause physical damage – all of this is central to the strategies of groups such as ISIS, which combined a very old grammar of cruelty with modern media and recruitment tools (Gerges 2016; Cronin 2015).

Nuclear weapons discourage direct clashes between great powers at the top. Violence itself has not disappeared; it has flowed sideways into forms that are dispersed, deniable and often directed at civilians rather than soldiers.

Screens, data and the new organisation of violence

There is also a generational angle. People who grew up under the threat of mushroom clouds and civil-defence drills often embraced non-violence or institutional politics with desperate seriousness (Arendt 1970). Later generations, raised with permanent connectivity and rolling crisis, inhabit a different relationship to risk and violence.

Social media became both a tool and a battlefield. In the Arab uprisings, networks were used to coordinate protests, circulate evidence of repression and build solidarity across borders (Howard and Hussain 2013). Today the same platforms host disinformation campaigns, harassment, incitement and troll armies. The weaponisation of information – deepfakes, bots, astroturf campaigns – has become part of the infrastructure of conflict, blurring the line between propaganda and attack (Yoo 2014; Mansour 2024).

Cyber operations extend this logic. Stuxnet, repeated attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and the steady stream of data breaches show how digital tools can threaten whole societies without tanks crossing borders (Waxman 2011; Aanonsen 2025). There may be no immediate bloodshed, but hospitals, food systems or elections can be quietly undermined. It becomes harder to say where non-violent pressure ends and actual violence begins.

Underneath all this sits a diffuse sense that the system itself may be suicidal. Nuclear winter, climate collapse, runaway AI, pandemic risks: younger generations don’t just fear injustice but wonder whether the future is physically liveable at all (Klein 2014; Wallace-Wells 2019). That anxiety shows up as burnout, radical climate activism, and sometimes apocalyptic politics.

Violence as a method, not just an outcome

Revolutions and anti-colonial struggles have long defended violence as a necessary path to liberation: storming the Bastille, guerrilla campaigns, armed resistance against occupation (Hobsbawm 1996). Even in Marxist traditions, however, violence was meant to sit alongside organisation, class politics and seizure of the state, not replace them.

Maoism pushed this much further, turning violence itself into a central source of political legitimacy and identity. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” became a slogan that travelled far beyond China (Mao 1967). A similar logic can be seen in some contemporary extremist movements, where brutal acts are performed not only for strategic gain but to demonstrate authenticity, purity and commitment (Gerges 2016; Roy 2017).

The results are rarely pretty. Jihadist projects and warlord fiefdoms have often produced immense suffering and very short-lived political entities that crumble under their own brutality or external pressure. Urban riots and insurrections, whether against austerity policies or police violence, show how rapidly moral clarity can blur once violence escalates (Bayat 2017; Taylor 2016). Yet it would be dishonest to reduce all these movements to violence. Many are built on non-violent marches, boycotts, sit-ins and everyday forms of resistance, with violent episodes layered on top (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011).

Violence can blow open doors that looked permanently locked. It can also burn down the very political space it claims to be fighting for.

Power without bullets

Hannah Arendt’s distinction between power and violence still helps to make sense of this. Writing in the shadow of nuclear weapons and decolonisation, she argued that power comes from people acting together, building institutions and sustaining a shared world. Violence, by contrast, depends on tools and cannot by itself generate legitimacy (Arendt 1970; Arendt 2023).

From this angle, violence tends to appear where power is already in crisis. A regime that still enjoys deep loyalty and participation does not need constant naked force. Once that loyalty erodes, repression becomes a substitute. Totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union show how far that can go, with terror used not just to crush opposition but to destroy any space in which new forms of power might emerge (Arendt 1970).

The late twentieth century also provides the mirror image. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and later the uprisings in parts of the Arab world showed what happens when power evaporates from below. Once enough people stop obeying, armies and police that once seemed all-powerful can split, disobey orders or simply melt away (Beissinger 2002; Kurlantzick 2014).

The interesting question stops being how many guns a state has and becomes how deep its reservoir of power is: the everyday willingness of people to pay taxes, follow laws, turn up to work and accept that the system, however flawed, is still theirs.

Soft power and sanctions make this more obvious. Joseph Nye’s idea of soft power describes the ability of a state to shape others’ choices through attraction rather than coercion: universities, culture, diplomacy, development aid, norms (Nye 2004). Economic sanctions, meanwhile, show how pressure can travel along financial and trade networks without a single shot being fired, even if the humanitarian and political outcomes are mixed (Pape 1997; Drezner 2011).

Erosion of public services is another reminder that power is more than violence. Failing schools, overloaded hospitals and collapsing infrastructure weaken the authority and legitimacy of states. In multinational settings such as the UK or Spain, this has fed sub-national nationalisms that present themselves as alternatives to distant, failing centres (Keating 2013; Guibernau 2014). In those spaces, the temptation to reach for “shortcuts” – from street violence to separatist militias – only grows.

Living with dangerous tools

We now live alongside weapons and systems that can realistically destroy human societies, and inside political orders that still depend, at least partly, on the threat of using them. The most destructive weapons are so catastrophic that their value lies mainly in not being used. Many of the most persistent conflicts are fought with smaller and cheaper tools – assault rifles, drones, cyberattacks, militias – beneath that nuclear ceiling. Power, meanwhile, is increasingly exercised through narratives, institutions, legitimacy and everyday cooperation rather than open physical force (Arendt 1970; Nye 2004).

That does not mean we are safe. The same technologies that hold back total war can hide new risks. Autonomous weapons may reduce casualties for those who deploy them but make it politically easier to start wars if leaders think they are only sending machines (Guardian 2025; Reuters 2025; Human Rights Watch 2025). Nuclear weapons may restrain direct conflict while encouraging risk-taking in the grey zones below. Cyber operations avoid the spectacle of bombing campaigns while quietly undermining the infrastructure societies depend on (Waxman 2011; Mansour 2024).

If violence is less and less able to deliver what it promises – stable rule, lasting legitimacy, real security – then the unglamorous work of building power through consent, institutions and shared projects becomes more important, not less. Non-violent movements, fragile diplomatic regimes and slow multilateral negotiations on things like autonomous weapons look weak next to tanks and missiles, but in the long run they are often the only tools that do not destroy the ground they stand on (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011; UNGA 2024; Human Rights Watch 2025).

Understanding how power and violence have changed, and how they can come apart, is not a luxury. It is basic survival in a world that has given itself the technical means for collective suicide.

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