One of the most robust statistical findings in political science is the fact that modern liberal democracies never make war on each other. Per Yale Professor Bruce Russet, in every war fought between 1815 and 1986, not a single one involved a liberal democracy fighting another liberal democracy. University of Chicago Professor Charles Lipson sums up the research on this phenomenon: “Democracies almost never fight wars against each other. This simple observation is one of the most powerful findings in international politics and one of the most thoroughly tested . . . .”

Among the most significant implications of those statistics is this fact: all modern wars involve one or more authoritarian/dictatorial regimes – and absent those types of regimes, such wars may well never have happened. Hence the principal risk of war in modern times comes from authoritarian/dictatorial regimes.

Unfortunately, this long-standing distinction between war-averse democracies and war-prone dictatorships is about to become more pronounced and therefore more dangerous. As documented below, two sets of changes drive this worsening risk calculus: (1) technology is about to make dictatorships even more war-prone, while (2) the prosperous modern democracies have become less capable of maintaining robust deterrence. Thus, as also discussed below, the free world needs to step up its deterrence posture in order to meet this emerging challenge.

Dictatorships Are About to Become More War-Prone

To understand the coming rise in dictatorships’ war-making propensity, one must begin with the question: What, if anything, restrains dictatorial regimes from making wars? Unlike democracies, dictators need not persuade a representative assembly and hence a voting citizenry to support their wars. Internal restraints on warmaking are significantly weaker in dictatorships than in democracies.

Still, external deterrence furnishes one highly impactful restraint upon dictators’ warmaking, namely, the presence of one or more other countries that (a) possess superior force, and (b) convey resolute willingness to deploy that force against other countries’ aggressive designs. Notably, external deterrence appears to be universally effective, that is, it works against both democracies and dictatorships.

This invites the further question: In the absence of effective deterrence, what factors if any serve to restrain dictators from making wars? Two obvious restraints are: (a) material capacity to fight wars, and (b) perceived capacity to prevail in war. Lacking either of those actual or perceived capacities, a dictatorship is far less likely to launch a war, or to take risks deemed likely to trigger a war.

So, the question then comes down to this: For well-armed dictatorships capable of prevailing in war, are there any factors other than external deterrence that will nonetheless restrain their propensity for war? Here the difference between dictatorships and democracies is stark. As noted, in democracies the legislature can stay the hand of a leader who seeks to launch or prolong a war: it can refuse to appropriate the funds, conscripts, and resources needed to effectively wage war. Hence in democracies, popular opposition to war can have immediate and strong effects in restraining leaders’ belligerence.

Dictatorships lack that immediate conduit between popular opposition and the decision whether to wage war. But this difference is not absolute. At some point, popular opposition even in non-democratic states rises to such a level that the leadership can no longer ignore public sentiment. And this is especially so when the war is going badly, and all too many young conscripts are coming home with disabling wounds or in body bags.

This phenomenon has actually been given a name, “the body bag effect.” It accords with the rather obvious logic that “the death of soldiers in a war impacts the public’s opinion on the war . . . generally reducing support as deaths increase.” A statistical study of declining public support for America’s second Iraq War found robust evidence of this effect:

Analysis of time series data from the first six years of the war suggests that cumulative casualties are a key force behind support for the war: the higher the number of cumulative deaths, the lower the level of support for the war.

Another statistical study of dozens of wars across the 19th and 20th centuries corroborates the body bag effect, in its findings that wars often elevate the risk of regime replacement, and that this risk is commonly driven “by defeat and high costs from war . . . .” The study also found that this phenomenon impacts “all types of leaders,” that is, both democratic and dictatorial regimes.

Especially compelling evidence that dictatorships do experience the body bag effect was presented by a study of the Soviet Union’s unsuccessful war in Afghanistan. That war involved “nearly one million Soviet soldiers, killing and injuring some tens of thousands of them.” As “the number of Soviet casualties mounted, the number of disabled soldiers seen in Soviet cities grew substantially, . . . [and] the war veterans (Afgantsy) increasingly became part of the Soviet urban landscape.” Among the broader populace the army came to be discredited, the war became less popular, and regime opposition grew. The study’s authors concluded that “the Afghanistan war was a significant factor leading to the breakdown of the Soviet Union,” in fact, that it was “critical in [its] collapse . . . .”

Notably, the fall of the Soviet Union echoes the fall of Russia’s Tsarist regime seven decades earlier. At that time, Russia’s catastrophic losses in World War I triggered the popular opposition that eventually brought down the autocratic regime – and which tragically opened the door to the Bolshevik seizure of power.

These studies and examples illustrate the fact that, absent effective external deterrence, one of the principal factors restraining well-armed dictatorships from making war is the calculus of mounting casualties. Namely, in dictatorships, young men coming home in large numbers either maimed or in body bags can become a powerful driver of robust internal opposition pressure.

But it is precisely here where modern technology threatens to upend that risk calculus, by eliminating this powerful disincentive for making war. The coming change – already well underway – consists of non-human, autonomous instruments of warfare. As reported in Small Wars Journal,

The emergence of unmanned, autonomous technologies has fundamentally transformed modern warfare . . . . [This includes] unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), autonomous land vehicles, and unmanned maritime systems [which] have transitioned from experimental concepts to essential tools of warfare.

But drones and driverless vehicles are just the beginning. Autonomous war instruments will soon include robot soldiers – and will do so within larger, hyper-lethal networks of autonomous actors. Also per Small Wars Journal:

The proliferation of drones has led to even more alarming possibilities: integrated autonomous systems. These systems combine drones, robotics, and AI to execute complex, coordinated operations. Robotic kits . . . can be weaponized with relative ease, while British companies have provided Ukraine with robot dogs capable of reconnaissance and booby-trap detection. Russian and Chinese forces, along with the U.S. Marine Corps, have experimented with arming these robots with sniper rifles and rocket launchers.

As of 2024, analysts valued the military robotics market worldwide at over $19 billion, with high growth expected going forward. The headline of a June 2025 market analysis declared, “U.S., Russia, and China Lead in Advancing Military Robotic and Autonomous Systems.” China already has developed four-legged robot wolves that carry rifles and rocket launchers, and that can navigate difficult terrain.

Autonomous war instruments bring unprecedented advantages to the battlefield. Former Army intelligence officer and West Point history Professor Antonio Salinas explains:

Fatigue and stress, which have always impacted human armies, will be mitigated by autonomous weapons. . . . Autonomous “warbots” will not need time to rest away from the vortex of combat. Their endurance will not be limited by a body that requires rest or therapy. Instead, they will only be limited by the availability of fuel and by the wear of their hardware.

. . .

[Also, unlike] [h]uman attacks . . . autonomous units on the offense will not stop after incurring massive casualties. Instead, they will advance until their programming orders otherwise. . . . They won’t be bogged down by the whizz of incoming bullets or by casualties.

These inherently superior fighting capacities create strong incentives for countries to seek, acquire, and deploy autonomous military units. Those capacities and the resulting incentives will drive a large and rapid expansion of the military robotics market worldwide. The inevitable dissemination of those technologies will change both the efficacy and the risk calculus of warmaking. Again, from Prof. Salinas:

By limiting or altogether removing the elements of fear, fatigue, stress, and hesitation, many of our attacks and defenses will achieve our bloody objectives with cold efficiency and speed never before seen on the field of battle. Of the many things in war that we should be wary of is when killing becomes too easy. (emphasis added)

Accordingly, Prof. Salinas warns that:

Perhaps policymakers will be less cautious about employing the military instrument of national power when lives are not at risk. The proliferation of autonomous weapons may also give states more staying power, maintaining popular will with a lack of human casualties, especially during small wars. There will likely not be protests to bring “our machines” home.

Others have warned about the impact of autonomous warfare on the risk calculus of warmaking. A 2012 Human Rights Watch monograph, titled “The Case Against Killer Robots,” put the case this way:

Indeed, the gradual replacement of humans with fully autonomous weapons could make decisions to go to war easier . . .

Leaders might be less reluctant to go to war . . . if the threat to their own troops were decreased or eliminated. In that case, “states with roboticized forces might behave more aggressively…. [R]obotic weapons alter the political calculation for war.”

. . .

[Accordingly,] the prospect of fighting wars without military fatalities would remove one of the greatest deterrents to combat. (emphasis added)

Along similar lines, a former Deputy Director of Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology predicts:  “AI-enabled technologies will . . . reduc[e] military casualties. . . . And if public opinion remains positive, or even apathetic with respect to protracted missions, leaders will have fewer incentives to stop fighting until victory — whenever (or whatever) that may be.”

These are far from just hypothetical concerns. Some of the world’s most dangerous tripwires for potential Great Power conflict lie directly in the target sights of China and Russia, two of the world’s leaders in autonomous military development. These include China’s designs on Taiwan; Russia’s ongoing effort to swallow Ukraine; and Russia’s desire to re-absorb the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The chance to capture any of those geopolitical prizes through drone swarms, self-guided ships and tanks, and robot soldiers – and hence with the aggressor suffering minimal military casualties – removes one of the principal disincentives against launching such a war. As noted, this reality is especially salient for dictatorships, and hence as regards China and Russia.

For the Western democracies, the resulting takeaway from this should be clear, namely: credible and robust deterrence is now more important than ever. The rise of autonomous military capacity is eliminating one of the chief internal restraints against warmaking for our principal adversaries. This heightens the need for consistent and robust external deterrence.

Unfortunately, this enhanced need for deterrence comes at a time when the trend across the West has run in the opposite direction. With limited exceptions, the predominant trendline of the Western democracies has been one of declining and less consistent deterrence toward its major adversaries. The evidence of that trendline is assembled below, followed by suggestions on how to reverse that trend and restore more consistent deterrence.

Amid Prosperity and Relative Peace, the Democracies Have Reduced Their Deterrent Posture

The Western democracies’ trendline of declining deterrence is evidenced on at least four fronts: (1) reduced defense spending as a share of GDP; (2) substantial reductions in navy ships, alongside China’s rapid naval expansion; (3) a continuous pattern of American appeasement gestures (presently interrupted by the Trump administration); and (4) the growing dominance of the Democratic party’s pro-appeasement faction, which encourages adversaries to remain primed for aggression after each next election.

With respect to defense budgets, the leading Western democracies have substantially reduced their shares of GDP allocated to military spending. According to the World Bank, over the 63-year period 1960-2023, America reduced its share of GDP allocated to defense spending from 9 percent to 3.4 percent. Britain reduced its share from 7.1 to 2.3 percent, France by 5.4 to 2.1 percent, and Germany by 3.8 to 1.5 percent. Notably, the time period examined here commenced 15 years after the end of World War II, so those proportionate defense reductions cannot be accounted for by the post-World War II military drawdown.

On the other hand, some of the reductions can be attributed to the end of the subsequent Cold War vis-a-vis the Soviet Bloc. But Russia’s military share of GDP spending over that same period showed no decrease; rather, it increased from 4.4 percent to 5.9 percent. As for China, while the World Bank lists its defense share for that period as having declined from 2.4 to 1.7 percent of GDP, a Heritage Foundation report questioned as substantially understated, China’s official figures (relied on by the World Bank’s data source, namely, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI). Heritage cited more realistic China dollar amounts that translate to a contemporary GDP share for defense as falling in a range between 2 and 4.28 percent – that is, more likely having significantly increased.

Similarly revealing are the more recent year’s changes in raw dollar amounts allocated to defense. A 2024 report by SIPRI listed national defense spending changes over the recent decade of 2015 to 2024 (with figures corrected for inflation). Of the leading democratic allies, America’s defense spending increased by a ten-year total of 19 percent; Britain’s by 23 percent; and France’s by 21 percent. Only Germany saw a more robust rise, of 89 percent. As for the leading dictatorships over that same period, China’s defense spending total rose by 59 percent, and Russia’s by 100 percent.

Especially significant is the ongoing reversal in naval supremacy between America and China. America’s Navy has been consistently shrinking over the past half century. A 2025 American Legion report documented America’s warship numbers declining from 859 in 1964, to 594 in 1987, and 359 in 1997. America still had clear naval dominance as late as 2005, fielding 300 ships as against 200 deployed by China.

But that dominance has now ended. A 2024 Congressional Research Service report cited a Defense Department finding that China’s navy now “is the largest navy in the world with a battle force of over 370 platforms [i.e., ships],” as against America’s 296 naval ships. Worse, the Navy’s estimates for 2030 project China having 435 ships as against America fielding just 294 ships. In sum, as reported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2024, “China now possesses the world’s largest maritime fighting force” – and China’s maritime advantage is projected to increase, absent a major American building program.

This reversal of naval dominance translates into a decisive decline in the Western alliance’s deterrence posture. It endangers the West’s capacity for distant force projection, and it undermines the West’s ability to block essential supply chains needed by China and its military allies.

The overall decline in the democracies’ relative military power has been compounded by several unforced foreign policy errors by the United States over the past 16 years – specifically, during the eight years of the Obama administration (2009-2016) and the four years of the Biden administration (2021-2024). That plenitude of errors has signaled weakness and irresolution to America’s adversaries, and hence further eroded Western deterrence. Those errors include, among others:

  • In 2010 in Iraq, President Obama’s refusal to support the ecumenical coalition that won the 2010 national election, when the incumbent Prime Minister who lost – an Iran-backed sectarian Shiite – refused to relinquish power, hence handing a geopolitical victory to Iran. Then Obama withdrew all U.S. forces precisely when they were most needed to stop the sectarian Prime Minister’s crackdown on Iraq’s Sunni Muslims, which triggered a brutal civil war between Iran-backed Shia radicals and ISIS-backed Sunni militias.
  • In 2012-2013, Obama’s declaration and then abandonment of a “red line” against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s further use of chemical weapons against his own citizens – which abandonment, per national defense expert Marc Thiessen, “sent a message of weakness across the world – a message heard from Damascus to Moscow, Tehran, Beijing and Pyongyang . . . .”
  • In 2014, after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea and its major naval base, Obama’s refusal to provide Ukraine with any defensive weapons – a virtual permission slip for Russia’s aggression (in stark contrast to President Trump’s 2017 decision to arm Ukraine, including with Javelin anti-tank missiles).
  • In 2015, Obama’s entering the ineffectual JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran, which: (1) contained no viable enforcement mechanism (it barred no-notice inspections, and allowed Iran to declare all ‘military sites’ off-limits to inspectors); (2) allowed Iran to produce nuclear weapons after ten years; and (3) lifted sanctions, giving Iran access to tens of billions in previously unavailable revenue to finance its several terror-proxies across the Middle East.
  • President Biden’s unilateral decisions from 2021 and after, not to enforce existing sanctions on several Iranian economic sectors, which yielded tens of billions in hitherto unavailable revenue to Iran’s Russia-allied, mass-terror-sponsoring regime – and which allowed Iran to send hundreds of millions to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Mideast terror proxies.
  • Biden’s April 2021 decision – against the advice and warnings of his top generals – to fully withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which effectively handed the country back to the Taliban, who seized power by mid-August – an enormous public setback for America’s counterterror efforts, and an all-too-visible signal of American weakness.
  • Biden’s May 2021 decision – over bipartisan objections – to waive sanctions against the Russia-linked company building Russia’s Nord Stream II gas pipeline, which would enhance Russia’s access to the European gas market, increasing Europe’s dependence on Russian gas – both a geopolitical and financial win for Russia.
  • Biden’s January 2022 declaration, as Russia massed troops on the Ukraine border, that the West would not counter with a strong response “if it’s a minor incursion” – followed one month later by Russia’s invasion and launch of the still ongoing Ukraine war.
  • Biden’s repeated public admonitions to Israel to forgo military actions needed to eliminate the Hamas terror organization from Gaza, including threats of partial weapons embargos – signaling yet more American irresolution against global terror threats like Hamas, and hence also as regards Hamas’s Iranian sponsor.

Against these several concerns, one might argue that the American-led Western alliance system still reflects an aggregate military superiority over the anti-democratic alliance led by Russia-China-Iran; and one might point out that the current Trump administration has already taken several steps to rectify the Obama-Biden errors and hence reestablish robust deterrence. But neither of those realities, nor both of them considered together, are sufficient to remedy the core problem, which consists of the democracies’ long-term trendline of an eroding deterrent posture.

Regarding that first reality, the present superiority of the West’s aggregate military strength does nothing to address the broader trend of slower Western military growth versus China’s massive military buildup. This past summer an AEI defense expert explained the challenge in an article titled, “China’s ‘Breakneck Speed’ Military Modernization Is a Threat to America”:

While the U.S. has let defense budget growth sink below inflation in recent years, China has grown their pile by [about] 6% annually for well over a decade. China has fully caught up with America in defense spending and likely exceeds ours given their regional focus. . . .

And while we continue to spend our increasingly limited treasure on maintaining and upgrading decades old airframes as new programs fail to deliver mass, the PLA has grown its fleets of fighters, bombers, and drones. Late last year, China was flying sixth-generation fighter jet prototypes while the U.S. waffled on our next generation air dominance fighter program yet to launch. . . . [T]hey are fielding increasing numbers of fourth and fifth gen fighters, making for a total fighter fleet larger than the U.S. Air Force.

Nor is the gap between America’s and China’s rates of military expansion likely to close. On the contrary, with an economic growth rate more than double that of America, and with about four times the population, China’s is expanding its tax base available for increased military spending at a vastly greater rate than that of America.

As for the second reality, while the Trump administration has both signaled and demonstrated its commitment to robust deterrence, that necessary message is significantly undermined by the plainly visible lack of a bipartisan American consensus on deterrence. We have drifted very far from the post-World War II arena in which, as then-Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg put it, “Politics stops at the water’s edge.”

To the contrary, on some of the most critical actions needed to reestablish Western deterrence, leading Democrats have been not just AWOL, but actively in opposition. After American B2 bombers struck Iran’s underground nuclear production facilities, Democrats issued a slew of denunciations. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Vice-Presidential nominee, claimed that President Trump acted against public sentiment and “displayed ‘horrible judgment.’” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – regarded among the favorites for the 2028 Presidential nomination – denounced Trump’s “disastrous decision to bomb Iran” as “a grave violation of the Constitution” and “clearly grounds for impeachment.” Other Democrats voiced similar sentiments.

Leading Democrats have similarly denounced Israel for its highly effective war to eliminate the genocidal terror group Hamas. Several, including former Biden national security advisor Jake Sullivan, have been urging a full-on U.S. arms embargo against Israel.

These castigations of vital deterrent actions are not just a couple of Democrat one-offs. Five years ago, when the Trump administration successfully targeted and killed Qasem Soleimani, the general in charge of Iran’s global terror network (which had killed dozens of Americans, among many others), a slew of Democratic Presidential candidates denounced the action, including then-former Vice President Joe Biden (Trump “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox”), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (“Trump’s dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East . . . .”), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Trump’s “reckless move escalates the situation . . . and increases the likelihood of more deaths . . . .”), and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (“We have a president who has had really a failure in his Iranian policy . . . and has made that region less stable and less safe.”).

Meanwhile, the Democratic frontrunner to become the next Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has pledged that as Mayor he would order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he ever set foot in the city – another signal to our adversaries of American irresolution regarding critical allies confronting existential threats. To be clear, this is  the same Prime Minister under whose leadership Israel has done more than any other country on the planet to degrade and deter Iran, which the U.S. State Department has for years identified as “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

In other words, no matter how effectively the Trump administration acts to restore Western deterrence, the public statements of all too many Democratic leaders’ broadcasts to our adversaries the opposite message, loud and clear, that American weakness and appeasement may be just one election away from returning.

How to Restore Robust Western Deterrence

To recap, the rise of autonomous military forces is eliminating one of the principal restraints upon well-armed dictators’ propensity to launch and persist in wars. This elevated risk heightens the need for the democracies to consistently maintain a strong deterrent posture to the world at large. A fourth century Roman general well summed up this timeless wisdom: “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” that is, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

The following five recommendations lay out the kinds of reforms needed to counter the threats posed by ever more bellicose dictatorships. These would go a long way toward not only restoring the free world’s deterrent posture but also inoculating the free world against its tendency to forget and neglect the existential need for such deterrence.

First, the democracies must upgrade their defense commitments. The NATO countries’ recent commitment to increase defense spending to five percent of GDP by 2035 is a good start, but holding each country to that target may well require persistent and firm diplomatic pressure. At the center of that restored commitment must be both a naval build-out to overmatch that of the China-Russia alliance system, and autonomous/AI warfighting systems capable of countering the opposing alliance’s fast-growing autonomous/AI capacities.

Second, wherever possible, America and its allies must in-shore industries and supply sources across the sectors essential to national security (e.g., critical/rare earth minerals). These include not just military hardware, but such areas as advanced computing/AI capacity and essential pharmaceuticals – vulnerability as to the latter having been made all too clear by China during the COVID pandemic.

Third, consideration should be given to the late Sen. John McCain’s 2007 proposal for the world’s free nations to either supplement or wholly replace their participation in the UN, by establishing a League of Democracies. As thoroughly exposed in a recent Tablet Magazine report by Seth Barron, the UN is at best irrelevant to, and often an active obstacle toward, the security and flourishing of the free world. In sum, the UN has devolved into an institution characterized by rank incompetence, deep-seated corruption, rampant Israel hatred, and wholesale cooptation by the world’s leading dictatorships and human rights violators. A League of Democracies, by contrast, could help the free world coordinate, strengthen, and more effectively focus its collective defense against the ever more potent threats emerging from the world’s dangerous mix of high-tech dictatorships and chaotic failed states.

Fourth, on the domestic political front, leaders and influencers in both major parties must push back against the isolationist/appeasement trends emerging from both ends of the political spectrum. On the isolationist right, influencers like Tucker Carlson denounce essential actions like the bombing of Iran’s nuclear development sites and promote fringe historians like Darryl Cooper, who claims that Churchill was the instigator and Hitler the victim of World War II. To its credit, the Trump administration has called out and denounced Carlson’s ill-informed isolationism. Unfortunately, leftist isolationism presents a far more formidable problem, insofar as: (1) Leftist calls for appeasement of existential adversaries like Iran are far more broadly entrenched, having captured major parts of academia, media, and the Democratic party; and (2) in contrast to the Republican party, Democratic leaders and influencers have been far less willing to call out and denounce this mindset within their ranks.

Fifth and last, the almost wholesale disappearance of military history and geopolitics courses from college curricula outside the military academies must be reversed, so that subsequent generations of leaders can acquire the critically important knowledge to comprehend and manage global risks, and to frame effective strategies of deterrence.

Unlike the first four recommendations, the beneficial impact of that last proposal lies far off in the future, as it can be brought about only by future graduates of such revitalized curricula, and only after those graduates have risen to positions of influence in their professions. Nonetheless, it may be the most deeply significant of the changes needing to be made.

The reason for that significance derives from a maladaptive yet all too common feature of societies accustomed to peace and prosperity. This feature was described six centuries ago by the Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun, from his observations of a frequently recurring geopolitical sequence across the Middle East, namely: prosperous empires were attacked and conquered by hardened desert warriors, who then settled into lives of comfort and prosperity; then within a few generations those settled conquerors were themselves attacked and defeated by a subsequent wave of desert warriors. The scholar of Islam Robert Irwin sums up Ibn Khaldun’s model as follows:

[G]roup solidarity, together with the tribesmen’s hardihood and courage gave the tribes who possessed it a military advantage. . . . So it was that the wild and sometimes fanatically religious tribesmen were able to defeat and conquer empires . . . .

But within a few generations, perhaps three, maybe four, these conquering tribesmen lost their [group solidarity] and became civilized. They succumbed to luxury, extravagance, and leisure. Soft urban life led to degeneracy. The ruler became vulnerable . . . [and] [h]is regime would fall to the next wave of puritanical tribesmen from the desert.

If this sounds familiar, it should: it is consistent with the above discussion of how the Western democracies reduced their deterrent posture over several decades amid prosperity and relative peace. In 2004, public affairs author Lee Harris cited this phenomenon in a book about the 9/11 attacks, which specifically referenced Ibn Khaldun and described the liberal democracies as blinded by “forgetfulness,” namely, “the collective and cultural amnesia that overcomes any group of human beings who have long benefited from the inestimable blessings of civilization.”

Catastrophes like the 9/11 attacks, and on a much larger scale, World War II, terribly illustrate the cost of forgetting the lessons of history and letting one’s guard down against ruthless adversaries. They remind us that the present-day costs of resolute deterrence are vastly less than the eventual costs of neglecting deterrence. Fortunately, as regards this newly emerging age of roboticized, autonomous warfare, we are able to foresee the outlines of what is coming. Accordingly, we still have time to plan for, mobilize against, and deter the malevolent designs of increasingly bellicose dictators.

But this leaves open the question whether, having the benefit of this foreknowledge, we will actually do what it tells us must be done.

This monthly series is presented by George Violin

Henry Kopel is a former U.S. federal prosecutor and the author of the book War on Hate: How to Stop Genocide, Fight Terrorism, and Defend Freedom. Kopel is an honors graduate of Brandeis University, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and is an annual guest lecturer on prosecuting hate crimes at the University of Connecticut Law School. He serves on the global advisory board for the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.