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That's pretty overstated (there are many different types of wars, prevented by many different means), but a decent case can be made that nuclear weapons reduce

That's pretty overstated (there are many different types of wars, prevented by many different means), but a decent case can be made that nuclear weapons reduce the chance of some conventional wars between nuclear armed States. However, nuclear war between the US & USSR was not prevented by the existence of nuclear weapons. Even ignoring the logical absurdity this would require, the simple fact is that nuclear war nearly happened on many occasions as a result of various misadventures, and it was a matter of pure dumb luck that it didn't. It literally is just an accident of fortune that we didn't have a world-encircling cataclysm. Your and my existence hinges merely on happenstance. Huge amounts of documentation attest to this. The best single-volume account is probably Eric Schlosser's Command and Control. Nuclear weapons don't prevent war. They reduce the frequency of some types of conventional war, at the cost of making cataclysm absolutely inevitable. They will be used at some point, whether by malign choice or accident. It is only a matter of time. There are a whole bunch of other questions discussed by military historians which complicate the matter further, arguing (for example) that nuclear weapons increase the number and length of proxy wars. But even that's all a detail in the face of the manifest fact that if nuclear weapons continue to be deployed, we will have a nuclear war one day. So perhaps we should be working on some less risky peace-building efforts, while there's still time?

alexasmyths 9y ago
" Even ignoring the logical absurdity this would require, the simple fact is that nuclear war nearly happened on many occasions as a result of various misadventures, and it was a matter of pure dumb luck that it didn't." No - this is false. It was the existential and immense nature of the consequences of war that enabled the parties to 'back down'. Without nukes - the US and USSR would have likely started a bunch of scuffles here and there. There's a great chance that US/USSR navies duked it out over Cuba - because the consequences would have been likely very limited - unless they escalated of course. Yes, we were lucky that it didn't go down as well, but nukes have been a huge factor in keeping the war basically cold.. "some less risky peace-building efforts" - there is really no such thing. 'Balancing Power' is what creates peace for the most part.
- nkozyra 9y ago
  > Without nukes - the US and USSR would have likely started a bunch of scuffles here and there. They did.
  - MichaelMoser123 9y ago
    but the scuffles were not direct confrontations between the armed forces of the superpowers (the nukes held them back, they were afraid of a possible escalation); the wars were always in far-off places between proxies (or that the other side was a proxy)
    - freeflight 9y ago
      I don't consider proxy wars to be "better wars", I'd consider them even worse than conventional warfare because it's people, sometimes whole nations, dying for somebodies else cause.
      - alexasmyths 9y ago
        " dying for somebodies else cause." False. 'Proxy wars' is a misleading title. The Korean war was not a 'proxy war' it was a real war, that happened to also be a proxy for other powers. Country A does not fight random country B for no reason. They are generally real conflicts where their actions may happen to have geostragetic alignment with other powers.
        freeflight 9y ago
        > Country A does not fight random country B for no reason. No, they usually don't. But countries, nations, and people often have very long lasting disagreements. Instrumentalizing those, for another "bigger" cause isn't really that hard of a task for the far more influential and powerful countries C and D. C and D end up supplying A and B with money, weapons, training and sometimes even direct manpower. The result is usually a conflict that escalates much more quickly in scope and severity than it would have without the involvement of C and D.

alexasmyths 9y ago

" Even ignoring the logical absurdity this would require, the simple fact is that nuclear war nearly happened on many occasions as a result of various misadventures, and it was a matter of pure dumb luck that it didn't." No - this is false. It was the existential and immense nature of the consequences of war that enabled the parties to 'back down'. Without nukes - the US and USSR would have likely started a bunch of scuffles here and there. There's a great chance that US/USSR navies duked it out over Cuba - because the consequences would have been likely very limited - unless they escalated of course. Yes, we were lucky that it didn't go down as well, but nukes have been a huge factor in keeping the war basically cold.. "some less risky peace-building efforts" - there is really no such thing. 'Balancing Power' is what creates peace for the most part.

nkozyra 9y ago
> Without nukes - the US and USSR would have likely started a bunch of scuffles here and there. They did.
- MichaelMoser123 9y ago
  but the scuffles were not direct confrontations between the armed forces of the superpowers (the nukes held them back, they were afraid of a possible escalation); the wars were always in far-off places between proxies (or that the other side was a proxy)
  - freeflight 9y ago
    I don't consider proxy wars to be "better wars", I'd consider them even worse than conventional warfare because it's people, sometimes whole nations, dying for somebodies else cause.
    - alexasmyths 9y ago
      " dying for somebodies else cause." False. 'Proxy wars' is a misleading title. The Korean war was not a 'proxy war' it was a real war, that happened to also be a proxy for other powers. Country A does not fight random country B for no reason. They are generally real conflicts where their actions may happen to have geostragetic alignment with other powers.
      - freeflight 9y ago
        > Country A does not fight random country B for no reason. No, they usually don't. But countries, nations, and people often have very long lasting disagreements. Instrumentalizing those, for another "bigger" cause isn't really that hard of a task for the far more influential and powerful countries C and D. C and D end up supplying A and B with money, weapons, training and sometimes even direct manpower. The result is usually a conflict that escalates much more quickly in scope and severity than it would have without the involvement of C and D.