Interesting! For (1) how do you expect the economic superpowers to respond to smaller nations using nuclear weapons in this world? It sounds like because of MAD between the large nations, your model is that they must allow small nuclear conflicts, or alternatively pivot into your scenario 2 of increased global policing, is that correct?
Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. As I’m continuing to develop this thought (sorry for being a bit repetitive in my posts), perhaps the main things that determine where the world might fall between scenarios (1) and (2) are:
-How hard it is to establish stricter global governance: Is there an easy proliferation bottleneck that can be controlled, like ICBM technology or uranium mines? Can the leading nations get along well enough to cooperate on the shared goals of global governance? When everyone has nukes, how easy is it to boss around small countries? If the leading nations don’t have the state capacity to pull off global governance, then we’ll be stuck in a multipolar anything-goes world no matter what we think is preferable.
-The “contagiousness” of nuclear conflict helps determine the value of strict global governance: if conflicts are extremely contagious (such that something like the real-world Syrian Civil War ends up with the superpowers at DEFCON 1), then small-scale wars are still extremely dangerous, and global policing is very desirable. If nuclear conflict isn’t contagious at all and it’s easy to stay out of a dispute, then it would be a lot more acceptable for the leading nations to just let nuclear wars happen, in the same way that the modern world often lets civil wars happen without intervening too much. Just play defense by being really paranoid about your ports/borders, and threatening to first-strike anyone who develops suspicious new long-range capabilities.
I really don’t know much about the question of contagiousness. Is there something special about nuclear weapons and the “nuclear taboo” that affects contagiousness? (Maybe nations feel like they have to “use or lose” their ICBMs before they are destroyed by opponents.) Or does all war seem contagious because it naturally erupts at the center of complex knots of geopolitical tensions and alliances? (Like the rapid domino-like declarations of war that set off WW1, or the agglomeration of seemingly disparate atrocities and conflicts centered around WW2.) If nuclear attacks are specifically and specially contagious, we should be most worried about something like a nuclear Israel-Iran or India-Pakistan conflict. Aside from the horrific direct cost of an India-Pakistan exchange, how likely would it be to eventually draw in the gigantic arsenals of the USA and Russia? If it’s more about the underlying geopolitical conditions and the universal logic of escalation, we should be most worried about small direct conflicts between the biggest nuclear powers getting rapidly out of hand. Maybe the USA feels pressured to confront China early over Taiwan since China’s power is only rising over time, and the vision of having a limited-casualties, mostly-naval battle in the South China Sea ends up being wrong, with geopolitical energy fueling rapid massive escalation between the two.
Here is a sliding scale of global-policing, extending my original scenarios: 3.0 -- 100% literal single world government with totalitarian surveillance (established after a devastating WW3) 2.5 -- closely cooperative alliance of all major governments (perhaps but not necessarily established after a devastating WW3) 2.0 -- colonial/imperial system where there’s plenty of competition between empires, but no great power is deliberately supplying nukes to rebel groups, and rouge nations are reliably punished. (In 1950, Africa was still mostly colonized! Maybe Britain and France just keep it that way, the USA covers latin america, and the USSR & China exert similar nonproliferation pressure in their spheres of influence.) 1.5 -- proxy-war system where the two superpower teams are simultaneously suppressing and encouraging proliferation as they fight over declining european empires (like the coups and revolutions of the real Cold War but with lots of actual detonations) 1.0 -- multi-polar world where the superpowers play defense and the developing world is defined by regional tensions (like the India-Pakistan standoff but everywhere, between eg Turkey & Greece or South Africa & Angola) and the most damage is done by medium-scale nuclear exchanges (like a war between Iran and Iraq / Saudi Arabia) 0.5 --anarchic, hyper-fragmented world where independence movements succeed everywhere and random nukes are going off all over whenever local mexican standoffs break down (eg Maoist China collapses into multiple warring states, Northern Ireland experiences nuclear terrorism, etc)
I think the most likely (and perhaps best-case) scenario is that the world eventually makes a serious attempt at the neo-imperial system of 2.0, although this scenario only really works if the USSR and China decide to play along. It would obviously be a more totalitarian world than the real world, and it still wouldn’t stop a lot of nukes from going off. But I think in a neo-imperial system, although it world would be much more fragile than the real world, could still have a basically-normal future that is not guaranteed-doomed. Versus everything from 1.5 and down feels like it might work well for a few decades, but would slowly drift farther and farther off the rails as each nation’s capabilities advance.
Interesting! For (1) how do you expect the economic superpowers to respond to smaller nations using nuclear weapons in this world? It sounds like because of MAD between the large nations, your model is that they must allow small nuclear conflicts, or alternatively pivot into your scenario 2 of increased global policing, is that correct?
Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. As I’m continuing to develop this thought (sorry for being a bit repetitive in my posts), perhaps the main things that determine where the world might fall between scenarios (1) and (2) are:
-How hard it is to establish stricter global governance: Is there an easy proliferation bottleneck that can be controlled, like ICBM technology or uranium mines? Can the leading nations get along well enough to cooperate on the shared goals of global governance? When everyone has nukes, how easy is it to boss around small countries? If the leading nations don’t have the state capacity to pull off global governance, then we’ll be stuck in a multipolar anything-goes world no matter what we think is preferable.
-The “contagiousness” of nuclear conflict helps determine the value of strict global governance: if conflicts are extremely contagious (such that something like the real-world Syrian Civil War ends up with the superpowers at DEFCON 1), then small-scale wars are still extremely dangerous, and global policing is very desirable. If nuclear conflict isn’t contagious at all and it’s easy to stay out of a dispute, then it would be a lot more acceptable for the leading nations to just let nuclear wars happen, in the same way that the modern world often lets civil wars happen without intervening too much. Just play defense by being really paranoid about your ports/borders, and threatening to first-strike anyone who develops suspicious new long-range capabilities.
I really don’t know much about the question of contagiousness. Is there something special about nuclear weapons and the “nuclear taboo” that affects contagiousness? (Maybe nations feel like they have to “use or lose” their ICBMs before they are destroyed by opponents.) Or does all war seem contagious because it naturally erupts at the center of complex knots of geopolitical tensions and alliances? (Like the rapid domino-like declarations of war that set off WW1, or the agglomeration of seemingly disparate atrocities and conflicts centered around WW2.)
If nuclear attacks are specifically and specially contagious, we should be most worried about something like a nuclear Israel-Iran or India-Pakistan conflict. Aside from the horrific direct cost of an India-Pakistan exchange, how likely would it be to eventually draw in the gigantic arsenals of the USA and Russia?
If it’s more about the underlying geopolitical conditions and the universal logic of escalation, we should be most worried about small direct conflicts between the biggest nuclear powers getting rapidly out of hand. Maybe the USA feels pressured to confront China early over Taiwan since China’s power is only rising over time, and the vision of having a limited-casualties, mostly-naval battle in the South China Sea ends up being wrong, with geopolitical energy fueling rapid massive escalation between the two.
Here is a sliding scale of global-policing, extending my original scenarios:
3.0 -- 100% literal single world government with totalitarian surveillance (established after a devastating WW3)
2.5 -- closely cooperative alliance of all major governments (perhaps but not necessarily established after a devastating WW3)
2.0 -- colonial/imperial system where there’s plenty of competition between empires, but no great power is deliberately supplying nukes to rebel groups, and rouge nations are reliably punished. (In 1950, Africa was still mostly colonized! Maybe Britain and France just keep it that way, the USA covers latin america, and the USSR & China exert similar nonproliferation pressure in their spheres of influence.)
1.5 -- proxy-war system where the two superpower teams are simultaneously suppressing and encouraging proliferation as they fight over declining european empires (like the coups and revolutions of the real Cold War but with lots of actual detonations)
1.0 -- multi-polar world where the superpowers play defense and the developing world is defined by regional tensions (like the India-Pakistan standoff but everywhere, between eg Turkey & Greece or South Africa & Angola) and the most damage is done by medium-scale nuclear exchanges (like a war between Iran and Iraq / Saudi Arabia)
0.5 --anarchic, hyper-fragmented world where independence movements succeed everywhere and random nukes are going off all over whenever local mexican standoffs break down (eg Maoist China collapses into multiple warring states, Northern Ireland experiences nuclear terrorism, etc)
I think the most likely (and perhaps best-case) scenario is that the world eventually makes a serious attempt at the neo-imperial system of 2.0, although this scenario only really works if the USSR and China decide to play along. It would obviously be a more totalitarian world than the real world, and it still wouldn’t stop a lot of nukes from going off. But I think in a neo-imperial system, although it world would be much more fragile than the real world, could still have a basically-normal future that is not guaranteed-doomed. Versus everything from 1.5 and down feels like it might work well for a few decades, but would slowly drift farther and farther off the rails as each nation’s capabilities advance.