I would argue that technology is changing wars such that the models of the past are irrelevant. We are entering the age of ultra-precision where making a weapon twice as accurate only requires 1⁄8 the destructive force to maintain the same lethality.
In the future, the expanded use of things like drones coupled with facial recognition and other advanced sensors, will make war more personal but overall, less destructive. The goals of modern warfare are more about capitulation than killing. Killing is the result of forcing your will upon an adversary but it isn’t the end goal and neither is the total destruction of an adversaries country.
Nukes have never been used because there has never been a compelling use case while the reasons not to use them exist in abundance. For over 70 years, nukes as a deterrence has prevented another world scale war.
What this chart suggests is that currently, the world overall, is in the most peaceful extended period seen in over 600 years. Global warfare changed forever in 1945.
The pre nuclear modern warfare trend line is an expression of the industrialization of killing. In a nuclear free world, we would have made killing more and more efficient making the horrors of the battlefield truly unbelievable.
Yet that is not quite as chilling as the prospect of nuclear war. Conventional wars would have likely occurred on the global scale at least once since the end of WW2. The use of chemical weapons and bio weapons would have likely been in the mix. The use of such weapons is muted today as such large-scale use would warrant a nuclear response. Without nukes there is no such direct threat discouraging their use.
Another rich source of data to consider is here https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
I would argue that technology is changing wars such that the models of the past are irrelevant. We are entering the age of ultra-precision where making a weapon twice as accurate only requires 1⁄8 the destructive force to maintain the same lethality.
In the future, the expanded use of things like drones coupled with facial recognition and other advanced sensors, will make war more personal but overall, less destructive. The goals of modern warfare are more about capitulation than killing. Killing is the result of forcing your will upon an adversary but it isn’t the end goal and neither is the total destruction of an adversaries country.
Nukes have never been used because there has never been a compelling use case while the reasons not to use them exist in abundance. For over 70 years, nukes as a deterrence has prevented another world scale war.
What this chart suggests is that currently, the world overall, is in the most peaceful extended period seen in over 600 years. Global warfare changed forever in 1945.
The pre nuclear modern warfare trend line is an expression of the industrialization of killing. In a nuclear free world, we would have made killing more and more efficient making the horrors of the battlefield truly unbelievable.
Yet that is not quite as chilling as the prospect of nuclear war. Conventional wars would have likely occurred on the global scale at least once since the end of WW2. The use of chemical weapons and bio weapons would have likely been in the mix. The use of such weapons is muted today as such large-scale use would warrant a nuclear response. Without nukes there is no such direct threat discouraging their use.