Do Great Powers Defend Small States — or Use Their Fear?

This preprint develops a Protective Restraint Framework for small and geopolitically exposed states in periods of world-order transition and algorithmic exposure. It argues that historical fear can move in two directions: it may become a discipline of protection through institutions, diplomacy, civil defence, information sovereignty, economic resilience, and state-building; or it may become a proxy-exposure trap that places small states inside conflicts shaped by larger powers. The paper examines Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland as frontline EU/NATO states shaped by Soviet and Russian memory, and uses Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia as warning cases of the gap between moral support and enforceable protection. It also extends the framework comparatively to Taiwan, Singapore, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait to show how small states face different forms of strategic compression, alliance ambiguity, information manipulation, and exposure to great-power competition. The paper introduces and clarifies several concepts: protective restraint, proxy exposure, moral support-real protection gap, algorithmic exposure, transitional exposure, strategic compression, and small-state exposure and survival codes. It contributes to international relations theory by linking alliance theory, securitisation theory, small-state scholarship, hybrid threats, disinformation, and world-order transition.