Proliferating nuclear weapons increase the risk of accidental world-ending war

Evidence

Today’s world is a quagmire of rivalries and factions, ethnic disputes, and religious wars, and the last thing we need is for large and unknowable numbers of these players to be armed with weapons of mass destruction. Even when the safety of the world lay in the hands of just two governments—each a superpower acutely aware of the destructive consequences of their deadliest weapons, and each having layers of safeguards in place to prevent a misfire—we still almost escalated to nuclear war in at least two instances. Now, decisions of catastrophic life and death lie in the hands of many more governments and, in some cases, even in the hands of rogue individuals. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 610

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the general argument about arms races escalating with more players — connects to the book’s core thesis that the logic of battle changes when weapons cross a destructive threshold. — connects to: Cheapening nuclear weapons is eroding the precondition for deterrence; Leadership uncertainty magnified crisis risk during the 1983 nuclear standoff — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 584; Nuclear weapons grew cheaper as they proliferated, undermining deterrence — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 602 (+7 more)

Related

• Nuclear weapons make war as an instrument of policy obsolete (similarity 0.83)
• Modern nuclear and biological weapons are destructively unprecedented in history (similarity 0.82)
• Nuclear weapons grew cheaper as they proliferated, undermining deterrence (similarity 0.82)
• Cheapening nuclear weapons is eroding the precondition for deterrence (similarity 0.82)
• Evenly matched rival states with WMDs pose civilization-scale escalation risk (similarity 0.82)
• Cold War arsenals grew to planetary overkill capacity (similarity 0.81)
• Cold War arsenals could destroy all civilization thousands of times over (similarity 0.79)
• Bases surrounding a rival power provoke dangerous escalation (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Overseas bases ease the waging of foreign wars and make war likelier #expands (0.50)
• Claimed precision paradoxically expands global killing rather than limiting it #expands (0.45)
• Overseas bases can increase global danger rather than security #expands (0.40)