If there were a bunch of Putin-style people in charge of the world that doesn’t seem like a ‘safe’ world either. It seems like a world where these states engage in continuous brinksmanship that, if this kind of mindset is common, leads to a 10% chance of Armageddon as often or more often than the current one.
We may have very different models of what happens if we let the USSR take over, but yeah I think that world has destroyed most of its value assuming it didn’t go negative. And I don’t think you eliminate the risks—you have a bunch of repressive communist governments everywhere in a world where conditions are getting worse (because communism doesn’t work) and they start fighting over resources slash have nuclear civil wars.
If the model is ‘Putin escalates to nuclear war sometimes and maybe he miscalculates’ then ‘fold to him’ is letting him conquer the world, literally, because no he wouldn’t stop with Russia’s old borders if we let him get Warsaw and Helsinki. Why would he? Otherwise, folding more makes him escalate until the nukes fly.
And I don’t think you eliminate the risks—you have a bunch of repressive communist governments everywhere in a world where conditions are getting worse (because communism doesn’t work) and they start fighting over resources slash have nuclear civil wars.
I’m assuming that the USSR would not have let other communist governments develop their own nuclear weapons.
It seems like the only world which doesn’t face repeated 10% chances of Armageddon is one in which some state has a nuclear monopoly and enforces it by threatening to attack any other state that tries to develop nuclear weapons (escalating to nuclear attack if necessary). Ideally, this would have been the US, but failing that, maybe the USSR having a nuclear monopoly would be preferable to the current situation.
Also, communist governments don’t always get worse over time, monotonically. Sometimes they get better instead. It’s pretty unclear to me what would have happened to the USSR in the long run, in this alternate world in which they achieved a nuclear monopoly.
If there were a bunch of Putin-style people in charge of the world that doesn’t seem like a ‘safe’ world either. It seems like a world where these states engage in continuous brinksmanship that, if this kind of mindset is common, leads to a 10% chance of Armageddon as often or more often than the current one.
We may have very different models of what happens if we let the USSR take over, but yeah I think that world has destroyed most of its value assuming it didn’t go negative. And I don’t think you eliminate the risks—you have a bunch of repressive communist governments everywhere in a world where conditions are getting worse (because communism doesn’t work) and they start fighting over resources slash have nuclear civil wars.
If the model is ‘Putin escalates to nuclear war sometimes and maybe he miscalculates’ then ‘fold to him’ is letting him conquer the world, literally, because no he wouldn’t stop with Russia’s old borders if we let him get Warsaw and Helsinki. Why would he? Otherwise, folding more makes him escalate until the nukes fly.
I’m assuming that the USSR would not have let other communist governments develop their own nuclear weapons.
It seems like the only world which doesn’t face repeated 10% chances of Armageddon is one in which some state has a nuclear monopoly and enforces it by threatening to attack any other state that tries to develop nuclear weapons (escalating to nuclear attack if necessary). Ideally, this would have been the US, but failing that, maybe the USSR having a nuclear monopoly would be preferable to the current situation.
Also, communist governments don’t always get worse over time, monotonically. Sometimes they get better instead. It’s pretty unclear to me what would have happened to the USSR in the long run, in this alternate world in which they achieved a nuclear monopoly.