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Answer by Balaji Viswanathan, history buff:
Primarily because of nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, World War III and World War IV would have started and ended in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, or even India.
The great thing about nuclear weapons is that they give people the chills. Imagine all the people talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki even though they amounted to well less than 1 percent of all deaths in that war, as though the 99 percent of other deaths from bombs and bullets were from showering roses.
People talk so much about nuclear weapons because in their minds the conventional bombs are not that dangerous. These conventional weapons don’t scare them to death, when they actually should. Since people aren’t not scared, they don’t stop their governments from fighting silly wars.
The beauty of nuclear weapons is that they make people really worry about the consequences of war. They cannot just send their young men to war while they sip their coffee (like what the Americans are doing while fighting half a dozen wars right now). The nuclear weapons promise total destruction. Someone could bomb their homes right there in the middle of the U.S. or China or Russia or India and instantly vaporize them. They could “enjoy” the same consequence as their brave lads on the front lines that they have sent to fight (through voting).
This bone-chilling fear of personal harm keeps us from being too irrational. Not trade or prosperity. There was enormous world trade before World War I, but they didn’t have deadly weapons to scare people.
However, there will come a day when the danger of nuclear weapons will peter off. We will find a way to disable or destroy nuclear warheads in a consistent way. At that point, the public will once again lose this fear and plan of delivering vengeance. The leaders merely reflect public opinion and they might act irrationally too. That is when World War III will occur. Or there might be a party that could lose a nuclear weapon when a third party could steal it and use it against another nation. That will start a major war.
Until that time, the present nuclear arsenal provides sufficient protection against a war. Fear works.
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