Deterrence and events that never happen

Absence from a written record does not prove absence of influence. The problem is compared with battles that were never fought and with the survivorship-bias error of studying damage only on aircraft that returned. The analogy redirects attention toward missing cases: aircraft that did not survive and confrontations that deterrence prevented. A ship's arrival, a well-judged reception, or words placed in the right ear may avert a crisis, but the resulting non-event is unlikely to generate the documentation produced by a battle.