> My parents were born well after the hydrogen bomb was developed, and they were never comfortable with it
The nuclear peace is hard to pin down. But given the history of the 20th century, I find it difficult to imagine we wouldn't have seen WWIII in Europe and Asia without the nuclear deterrent. Also, while your parents may have been uncomfortable with the hydrogen bomb, the post-90s world hasn't particularly been characterised by mass nuclear anxiety. (Possibly to a fault.)
You might have missed the cold war in your summary. Mass nuclear anxiety really characterized that era, with a number of near misses that could have ended in global annihilation (and that’s no exaggeration).
IMO, the Atoms for Peace propaganda undersells how successful globalization has been at keeping nations from destroying each other by creating codependence on complex supply chains. The new shift to protectionism may see an end to that
The supply chain argument was also made wrt European countries just before WW1. It wasn't even wrong - economically, it was as devastating as predicted for everyone involved, with no real winners - but that didn't preclude the war.
The scale of globalization post-WW2 puts it on a whole other level. The complexity of supply chains now are such that any country would grind to a halt without imports. The exception here, to some degree, is China, but so far they've been more interested in soft power over military, and that strategy has served them well. Though it seems the US are gearing up for a fight with a fully domestic manufacturing capability and natural resource pools of its own. It would require consistent protectionist policy over multiple administrations to pull something like that off, so it remains to be seen if that's truly possible.
Yeah, let's just ignore all the wars and genocides that nuclear powers engaged in and supported and all nuclear powers that are constantly at war or engaging in occupation of others since they started existing and millions of dead and affected people.
Nice "peace".
We had 100 years of such kind of peace among major europe powers before nuclear weapons. We're not even at 80 years of peace in nuclear age, this time, and nuclear armed power is already attacking from the east and from inside via new media.
I wouldn't call it done and clear, about the "nuclear age peace".
The nuclear peace is hard to pin down. But given the history of the 20th century, I find it difficult to imagine we wouldn't have seen WWIII in Europe and Asia without the nuclear deterrent. Also, while your parents may have been uncomfortable with the hydrogen bomb, the post-90s world hasn't particularly been characterised by mass nuclear anxiety. (Possibly to a fault.)