Personal Coordination Non-Viability as a Nuclear Deterrence Mechanism

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) explains nuclear restraint through rational evaluation of population-scale consequences. This analysis applies General Coordination Dynamics (GCD) and the Entropic Process Personality Model (EPPM) to identify a complementary mechanism: the decision-maker’s coordination subsystems automatically compute personal non-viability in the post-exchange environment. A world leader’s power, identity, and regulatory stability are products of institutional coupling structures that nuclear exchange destroys. The leader’s subsystems—PPM, ERM, MFS, CMA, EML—model the post-launch environment and report that the leader becomes coordinatively non-viable: powerless, uncoupled, identity-destabilized, and narratively terminated. This computation does not require rationality, empathy, or moral reasoning. It requires only that the coordination architecture performs its normal viability assessment function. The mechanism operates most strongly on precisely the leader configurations MAD handles least well—narcissistic and ideological—producing a combined deterrence structure that covers nearly all leader configurations. The analysis derives predictions about deterrence robustness, the paradoxical effect of leadership bunkers, and the concentration of residual risk in psychopathic configurations.