Those are some valid points; more generally I’ll admit that I might have been jumping the gun/overselling it a bit (in retrospect I think that many small-level regional exchanges may not spark a chain reaction if the world restructured the international system to avoid chain gang alliances). However, I still think it’s more likely that nuclear catastrophe would occur than not by 2020.
In part, I think it depends on how you set up this counterfactual: if we are talking about a world in which everyone goes to sleep one night in 1960, then they wake up and surprise every state now magically has a nuclear arsenal—i.e., the counterfactual status/event wasn’t brought about by the intentions of states in the counterfactual world—then I think the chances for peace are reasonable, because most states probably didn’t want that event/status in the first place. However, if the counterfactual is one where almost all the states now have nuclear weapons because they sought out the nuclear weapons and were easily able to acquire them, etc. (which is the assumption I was operating on), I would expect that coordination would be much more difficult. As it is, I think that the fact that states around the world were willing to get nuclear weapons is indicative that they don’t trust/won’t abide by “global governance” (or, more directly, that “global governance” is ineffective).
More generally, I think that people might be overestimating the ability for some 100+ states to coordinate when there are no global superpowers: who sets the rules? Who enforces the rules? Who enforces the enforcement? Collective action problems in international affairs have been hard enough even when we were in a bipolar and unipolar system; enforcing anti-terror laws and related provisions may get a lot easier with collective buy-in (even would-be state sponsors of terrorism would be extremely worried that their proxies may disobey orders or even turn on their masters), but if we are talking about verifying arms control treaties, investigating accidental (?) detonations, retaliating against first-uses, and other actions where states may have a vested interest in opposing the proceedings, rule-setting and enforcement can become very difficult tasks.
Those are some valid points; more generally I’ll admit that I might have been jumping the gun/overselling it a bit (in retrospect I think that many small-level regional exchanges may not spark a chain reaction if the world restructured the international system to avoid chain gang alliances). However, I still think it’s more likely that nuclear catastrophe would occur than not by 2020.
In part, I think it depends on how you set up this counterfactual: if we are talking about a world in which everyone goes to sleep one night in 1960, then they wake up and surprise every state now magically has a nuclear arsenal—i.e., the counterfactual status/event wasn’t brought about by the intentions of states in the counterfactual world—then I think the chances for peace are reasonable, because most states probably didn’t want that event/status in the first place. However, if the counterfactual is one where almost all the states now have nuclear weapons because they sought out the nuclear weapons and were easily able to acquire them, etc. (which is the assumption I was operating on), I would expect that coordination would be much more difficult. As it is, I think that the fact that states around the world were willing to get nuclear weapons is indicative that they don’t trust/won’t abide by “global governance” (or, more directly, that “global governance” is ineffective).
More generally, I think that people might be overestimating the ability for some 100+ states to coordinate when there are no global superpowers: who sets the rules? Who enforces the rules? Who enforces the enforcement? Collective action problems in international affairs have been hard enough even when we were in a bipolar and unipolar system; enforcing anti-terror laws and related provisions may get a lot easier with collective buy-in (even would-be state sponsors of terrorism would be extremely worried that their proxies may disobey orders or even turn on their masters), but if we are talking about verifying arms control treaties, investigating accidental (?) detonations, retaliating against first-uses, and other actions where states may have a vested interest in opposing the proceedings, rule-setting and enforcement can become very difficult tasks.