"Nuclear Weapons have made the world more peaceful"; Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?
...Because countries are less willing to fight wars due to the possibility of escalating into a nuclear war.
This is a common thing I see repeated throughout the internet. I wonder what's Lemmy's opinion on this.
I don't. Personally I think it has led to more proxy wars, as the stability-instability paradox suggests. I think the amount of actual aggression went down after WWII, but has since recovered and surpassed pre-WWII levels. But now everyone is afraid of declaring war on nuclear powers, so they'll let the nuclear country get away with genocide or other atrocities instead. Look at Israel and Russia right now for easy examples. Seems like the winning strategy now is to convince your adversaries that you're crazy enough to launch your nukes and then you can do whatever you want without other countries taking a strong enough stance to stop you. That's not peace, that's nuclear intimidation. I don't even see a peaceful way out of it.
Holding everyone hostage sure feels like peace! Peace also somehow includes funding genocides and bombing countries in the middle east.
“ holding everyone hostage” is a huge hyperbole, your rights aren’t being infringed because other countries have nukes those big countries just stopped directly attacking each other which is a good thing.
Proxy wars have existed for a long time and will continue for a long time the entire American revolution only succeeded because France was funding the U.S. and Britain was too busy fighting France to devote enough resources to fight the U.S.
Could you imagine how many more deaths there would be if NATO directly fought against the Warsaw pact
Nuclear weapons are the single biggest mistake humanity has ever made next to the Industrial revolution.
We still fight horribly bloody wars even with the threat of nuclear annihilation. It is obvious that nuclear weapons do nothing but make everything worse, and the materials used to create them would be better used for energy generation.
If we were smart we would decommission every weapon on the planet and ensure no group or person can make another one, and put the materials to a better use.
But that's the frustrating thing, isn't it? The only winning move is not to play... but no one wants to move their pieces from the board.
For as destructive and infuriatingly powerful as they are, these weapons have not been used after 1945. While it may happen within our lifetimes, it is unlikely that they will be used. They are the proverbial gun to our heads that forces us to the bargaining table, rather than the trenches (at least for the world powers).
I don't think it realistic that nuclear weapons will be decommissioned. If anything, I believe the opposite may be true - nuclear weapons shall serve as a guarantee to all nations who possess them against being absorbed by war, or imperialism.
The next interesting quandary will be when every state who wishes the nuclear guarantee possesses it. Then who knows what will happen. If everyone is "safe", would no one be in reality?
Will we be set to fight wars with sticks and stones after the blast?
Hard to say. But I'm pessimistic about disarmament. Self-interests and nuclear security are far greater draws than the vision of world peace. At least for our leaders.
It's quite depressing.
We seem to be drowning in peace.
I mean, you can argue some semantics about "peaceful".
What it is undeniable is that it prevented global powers from going directly to total war, resulting in a much diminished number of casualties (both soldiers and civilians) compared to the World Wars. Nothing since then, even if we summed up all the wars going on around the world at any given moment, rival the unthinkable numbers of dead who piled up those conflicts, nor - if I can speculate a bit - would they have rivaled another worldwide industrialized conflict.
But.
Does that actually mean the world is "more peaceful"?
One can argue that the undeniable reality that you are much less likely to be killed in a war between nations today means "Yes." One can also argue that peace should not be measured by cold mathematics: That the continued existence of smaller-scale conflicts around the world, internal conflicts within countries, or deaths from non-national conflicts such as the ongoing gun violence epidemic in the US or deaths caused by polluting megacorporations mean it has not gotten "more peaceful"; the risks have just changed.
I suppose it depends on how you are analyzing all of this, in the end.
There's no clear border-line that would trigger nuclear escalation. It's kind of meaningless.
We saw many proxy wars between the US and UDSSR. We recently saw how putin used nuclear threats as a tool rather than genuine or with anything happening after.
We saw a long stretch of peace in Europe after WW2 - especially when compared to before. This is due to positive relations, strong democratic systems, and economic development.
More mobility and communication technology allowed for people and states to become closer. Efforts to connect and establish systems with mutual gain. Ultimately establishing the European Union, Shengen Raum, Euro currency. Supporting social and cultural exchange and connection.
Strong social systems like constitutions, parliaments, separate judicative and executive, market regulation, anti-corruption agencies. Establishing a social economy with strong worker rights and gains (which have been eroding more recently).
The European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan) did a lot to initiate a strong western Europe economy. Economic success in combination with the aforementioned strong worker rights and representation meant gains and stability for the broad of society.
In other parts of the world we have seen many wars and proxy wars. During the cold war nuclear deterrents could well be argued to be the reason for investment in proxy wars, making them better funded resulting in more casualties or tragedies or extending them.
The nuclear deterrent may be a thing between nations with nuclear arsenal. It certainly didn't prevent nations with nuclear arsenal from initiating wars. We have seen it most recently with Russia and Israel.
Would we see less wars if every nation had nuclear deterrents? How much would it increase risk of mishandling or accidents? How come we still wars but (mostly) no longer use chemical weapons and nerve agents?
Nuclear may be another case of capability so outrageous, so inhumane, that even countries in war evade them and wave war within it's context, probing how far they can go without them and implementing war and conflicts despite them.
It's not true. Wars aren't waged as much anymore because they're too expensive compared to the benefit a state could get. See the Vietnam war in which the U.S. enslaved and killed a bunch of young men and still lost the war.
Can't say for sure it's nukes. But we've not had any world wars for a while.
Yes, on the whole nuclear weapons have made the world more peaceful. Large nations rarely go to war with each-other, something which used to happen relatively frequently.
Of course the world isn't peaceful, but it would be worse without MAD.
I get the feeling though that MAD is wearing off. Countries are rightfully terrified of using nuclear weapons to the point that they are testing attacks against each other through thinly-veiled proxies.
Two years ago NATO was scared of allowing Ukraine to attack Russia, for fear of defensive nuclear strikes. Today we know that Russia will not even use nuclear weapons in self-defence.