Who knows if it would have been better or worse if we preemptively nuked the USSR and all nations attempting to develop nuclear weapons? We might have entered a millenia of absolute peace enforced by imperial rule of a benevolent despot. We might have destroyed the world and eradicated the human race. This type of what-if is unknowable with our current simulation abilities.
We might not have ever had to even use the nukes if we merely made the true threat that we would nuke any country attempting to develop nuclear weapons or caught spying on American nuclear secrets. Japan was willing to take any deal short of absolute surrender to merely avoid fire-bombing. One can imagine that other countries with considerably less Bushido would fold to lesser demands such as “don’t develop your own nukes or spy on America.”
We have never seen a world in which one country had absolute technological and military superiority over all the others. I don’t think with our current level of technology we can tell with a high degree of certainty if the world under US Total Domination would be a better or worse place. I would bet that if the US was more purely despotic and less benevolent it’d at least be better for the average US citizen. Instead of worrying about debt and global trade, the US could have merely demanded other countries export their goods for free to America and focus domestic production mainly on the construction of nukes and nuke delivery systems.
Who knows if it would have been better or worse if we preemptively nuked the USSR and all nations attempting to develop nuclear weapons? We might have entered a millenia of absolute peace enforced by imperial rule of a benevolent despot. We might have destroyed the world and eradicated the human race. This type of what-if is unknowable with our current simulation abilities.
We might not have ever had to even use the nukes if we merely made the true threat that we would nuke any country attempting to develop nuclear weapons or caught spying on American nuclear secrets. Japan was willing to take any deal short of absolute surrender to merely avoid fire-bombing. One can imagine that other countries with considerably less Bushido would fold to lesser demands such as “don’t develop your own nukes or spy on America.”
We have never seen a world in which one country had absolute technological and military superiority over all the others. I don’t think with our current level of technology we can tell with a high degree of certainty if the world under US Total Domination would be a better or worse place. I would bet that if the US was more purely despotic and less benevolent it’d at least be better for the average US citizen. Instead of worrying about debt and global trade, the US could have merely demanded other countries export their goods for free to America and focus domestic production mainly on the construction of nukes and nuke delivery systems.