Empire of Deterrence reveals how nuclear strategy, once framed as a tool for security, has become an invisible but ever-present law – shaping the very foundations of political authority, economic order, and cultural imagination in the Anglosphere. Rather than merely deterring conflict, nuclear logic now smothers dissent, flattens alternatives, and enforces a regime of stasis masquerading as stability. Drawing on a vast range of Cold War-era thought and culture – from the strategic philosophy of Paul Virilio to the haunting dramas of Stephen Poliakoff, the aesthetics of Folk Horror, and the metaphysical critiques of the Kyoto School – this book traces how deterrence became hardwired into governance, ideology, and the feedback loops of Western managerial culture. At once theoretical and urgent, Empire of Deterrence asks- How did nuclear logic come to rule us? Can we break its psychic grip? And is it still possible to think and act beyond the empire it sustains?
