the.com/deterrence

means The strategy of preventing an attack by making the cost of attacking so severe that no rational actor would try it.

from From Latin 'deterrere' — 'de-' (away) plus 'terrere' (to frighten) — the same root that gives us 'terror' and 'terrible.' So deterrence is literally the business of frightening someone away from a path, a sense the word has carried largely unchanged since it entered English in the 17th century, long before it became Cold War shorthand for mutually assured destruction.