So far we have been extremely lucky. Human beings invented nuclear weapons 77 years ago, but did not use them to kill each other after Nagasaki. We created long-range missiles, as Vladimir Putin reminded us again last week when he introduced his Satan II Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles, but we avoided using them to destroy our rival cities. We are playing with genetic engineering, space travel, AI, and even increasing the virulence of some pathogens, but we have not yet deliberately used any of these technologies for mass warfare.
With luck comes arrogance and complacency: the chances of another major global conflict – and at worst, another world war – are much higher than we imagine, and continue to increase. No one knows the exact probability, but even a 10 percent chance of a global catastrophe this century would be appalling and should justify an urgent, renewed focus in every Western country on ensuring that Armageddon can be avoided through strong deterrence, new alliances, huge investment in defense weapons and urgent diplomatic engagements.
Why such pessimism? It’s partly a numbers game. The proliferation of advanced technology, including the idiotic mistake of proliferating nuclear weapons, suggests that more countries have the ability to do enormous damage; and geopolitics becomes increasingly complex with the end of American hegemony, increasing the chance of a fatal misunderstanding or local conflict in Africa, Latin America, or Asia spiraling out of control. Why the hell can’t the Biden administration see that allowing Iran to go nuclear will almost guarantee at least a regional war?
The Cold War was a simple conflict, but we survived it only by luck. The Kennedys did not save the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The real hero was Vasily Arkhipov, the second commander of a Russian submarine, who in October 1962 obeyed his captain’s order, confused by the lack of contact with Moscow, to fire a nuclear torpedo at America. In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, another Russian officer, ignored the early warning system, which showed that the United States had just launched a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
There were other similar almost omissions, including when the Russians confused Able Archer, a NATO exercise, with a real plan, as dramatized in the TV series Deutschland 83. In today’s far more complex world and with paranoid dictatorships like North Korea that can now inflict a huge massacre, it will be even easier for the countries to embark on a total war.
The fact that Russia has performed so poorly on the Ukrainian battlefield is good news, but it should not put us to sleep with a false sense of security. With the exception of Germany, the West has performed well, supporting Ukraine in a strong but sensible way, but other nations such as India, Pakistan and China have ignored these efforts. Many emerging powers would like to retain the opportunity to invade one of their neighbors – Taiwan is the obvious hotspot – and are no longer ready to deviate from the West. The consensus dried up after 1945, as did most of the institutions that allowed rival states to manage half of their disputes, not least the old UN. Imperialism is returning, as is the civilized state. India and Pakistan are armed to the teeth and are at odds with many things.
The world is becoming more than less dangerous: there are many others who want Putin, and they are better prepared to sow death and destruction. Bioterrorism is a growing concern: why is “increasing function” research still tolerated? A major cyber attack or attack on transatlantic cables can be so devastating to an Internet-based economy that it can be seen as a declaration of war.
During the Cold War, the United States believed that it had successfully stopped Soviet use of nuclear weapons thanks to its doctrine of mutually guaranteed destruction, but historians who have read declassified Moscow documents realize this is a fallacy. The Soviet Union planned to use nuclear weapons tactically at the beginning of any conflict with NATO. Does such thinking continue in Moscow today or in any other nuclear power? How would we respond to the “accidental” conventional bombing of a target in Poland? Or the tactical use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine?
Our pseudo-rational West continues to misunderstand how despotic leaders calculate what is in their best interest, why high-stakes betting can make sense to them, and how the West itself is misinterpreted by others. We are too influenced by low-quality game theory and continue to dismiss the possibility of another world war as “unthinkable.”
The classic example, as described by Keith Payne in his seminal “Misconceptions about Cold War deterrence and a new direction,” is when Dean Acheson told Roosevelt in August 1941, four months before Pearl Harbor, that “no rational Japanese he could not believe an attack on him could lead to anything but a catastrophe for his country. ” Acheson was right that this would end terribly for Tokyo, but he was fatally mistaken, not realizing that the Japanese establishment was convinced that he was in fact “doomed” if he did not attack. He believed he had no choice – Putin, the head of an evil, declining gangster state, may have had similar thoughts.
Despite all our modern communications, people have not yet learned to understand each other. We remain unable to enter the minds of our enemies, to truly understand their thinking, their fears (however wrong), their assumptions and their values (however disgusting). We are too abstract, not focused enough on personalities, and too morally arrogant if we accept that Russia or China have an excellent understanding of our policies, our knowledge, our values, and our response functions.
We do not understand the reasoning or impulses that are outside our framework, our ethical system. In this way, we continue to fail to predict how fraudulent countries will behave. We do not understand their perceived compromises. The problem, as Payne argues, is that we confuse rationality with reason or what we consider reasonable.
A fundamental rift is in our eyes: science and technology continue to improve, making war increasingly dangerous, destructive and easy, but Western statehood has atrophied, along with our political institutions, our understanding of history, our diplomacy and our ability. to think clearly about risk. Unless Britain, America and others increase their game dramatically, the prospects for world peace look bleak.
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