Impossible to prove hypothesis: nuclear weapons prevented a world war.
Facing the facts about nuclear weapons means owning the good (probably prevented wars) and the bad (at the very least there were severe environmental and economic consequences).
This is not mathematical logic. Of course you can't prove the causality of anything in history. The only way to do that would be to invent a time machine, delete the nukes and watch things play out.
There are direct quotes from Nixon and Reagan that claims this to be true. That is enough evidence for me.
The Cold War was the best possible outcome. The alternatives (super power hot war, nuclear armageddon) did not happen. Nuclear weapon potential was a large part of that, as was direct lines of communication. Unfortunately because the later is no longer a thing, and our president declined to extend the existing agreement (a problematic pattern), we now again face proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Some people believe WW2 started many years earlier, but most historians don't put the start date at the conflicts going on before the war became intercontinental with sides working together on a global scale.
War has still been going on since 1945, much earlier if not always, so akshually WW2 never ended or is just how it's always been? (mostly in places that are not "first world" / The West)
That's been a posited theory for decades - it's not just some HN edgelord thing. There are some obvious problems with it of course and the P5 have instead taken a maximalist attitude towards keeping the genie in the bottle (notwithstanding Atoms for Peace and accommodating India/Pakistan when it became inevitable).
> Prevented
Fact: There was no world war.
Impossible to prove hypothesis: nuclear weapons prevented a world war.
Facing the facts about nuclear weapons means owning the good (probably prevented wars) and the bad (at the very least there were severe environmental and economic consequences).
This is not mathematical logic. Of course you can't prove the causality of anything in history. The only way to do that would be to invent a time machine, delete the nukes and watch things play out.
There are direct quotes from Nixon and Reagan that claims this to be true. That is enough evidence for me.
Surely we can do better than Nixon and Reagan.
In terms of politics, sure.
In terms of cold war presidents itching to start wars, no.
The Cold War was the best possible outcome. The alternatives (super power hot war, nuclear armageddon) did not happen. Nuclear weapon potential was a large part of that, as was direct lines of communication. Unfortunately because the later is no longer a thing, and our president declined to extend the existing agreement (a problematic pattern), we now again face proliferation of nuclear weapons.
> Fact: There was no world war.
Akshually there is, and WW3 has been going on since 2010. (Mostly in places that aren't Europe.)
Some people believe WW2 started many years earlier, but most historians don't put the start date at the conflicts going on before the war became intercontinental with sides working together on a global scale.
War has still been going on since 1945, much earlier if not always, so akshually WW2 never ended or is just how it's always been? (mostly in places that are not "first world" / The West)
[dead]
And if the power of nuclear warheads were democratised we'd be even safer – HN, probably.
That's been a posited theory for decades - it's not just some HN edgelord thing. There are some obvious problems with it of course and the P5 have instead taken a maximalist attitude towards keeping the genie in the bottle (notwithstanding Atoms for Peace and accommodating India/Pakistan when it became inevitable).
The 80 years thing actually happened. One can argue about MAD and the nuclear threat, but we don't have to guess at what happened.
It worked.
The problem with MAD is it's a deterministic framework. It doesn't properly account for the risk of a war caused by mistake.
If Stanislav Petrov hadn't been in the chain of command, MAD might not have worked. And it could still fail to work in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
(insert standard anthropic-principle counterargument)
- Ukrainians, definitely.