Changing the Rules of the Game

What was the prerequisite for successfully threatening and intimidating a person or organization?

Some would say it was one's own overwhelming strength, because only a sufficiently hard fist could make others wary.

Others would say it was traits and behavioral patterns such as madness, cruelty, and vindictiveness.

Because sometimes, a scrawny, petty lunatic was more frightening than a mature, rational strongman.

After all, unless his bottom line was crossed, the latter would rarely start throwing punches, whereas there was no telling what the former might do when he went insane.

However, Raymond's understanding of threats and intimidation was not limited to those two traditional mainstream views. He believed that the foundation of threat and intimidation lay in making the other party believe one could truly follow through on the harsh words one had spoken.

It was like nuclear deterrence.

If a non-nuclear state suddenly declared that it would "nuke flat" some country, it would naturally be nothing less than an international joke. The threatened country would not even take it seriously.

But if it were a country that had just completed an experimental nuclear detonation, the other side would have to seriously consider that "mad claim" in light of its domestic political situation and the leader's personality.

If it were instead a country that had already developed rudimentary nuclear weapons and possessed satellites and missiles capable of launching them, then targeted diplomatic measures and defense plans would have to be formulated to ensure that it did not dare put its words into action.

And if it were taken another step further, to a nuclear superpower possessing the strategic triad of intercontinental missiles, strategic bombers, and nuclear submarines, the entire world would instantly fall into panic that the apocalypse was imminent. Governments everywhere would employ every possible means to cool the