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Comment by learc83 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know. Our economy was almost completely decoupled from the Soviet Union and that never turned into a shooting war. What’s different this time that is going to overcome MAD and allow for a conventional war?

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The cold war was a massive cost to the economies of both the Soviets and the west; and a also had a series of proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam etc.) that cost millions of people their lives. Plus we were dangerously close to tipping into a full on nuclear confrontation a multiple points.

A country avoids nuclear exchanges because retaliation will also devastate it. An integrated economy isn’t going be any more of a deterrent in this respect. If a country is willing to deal with nuclear devastation they are certainly willing to deal with economically damaging themselves.

As far as proxy wars go is trade going to stop those? History has examples of proxy wars fought between countries that engaged in trade.

Even at its peak, USSR economy was only almost as big as the US (half the size, irrc). China is almost certainly going to surpass the US in term of total economy.

China is at or near its 21st century peak (getting old before it gets rich), and the US has a massive number of strong friends and allies, including a European Union increasingly wary of China.

It's a different Cold War from the USSR, but democracy may still again prevail against a totalitarianism.

The EU is also increasingly wary of the US.

The EU was always wary of the US. But when it comes to picking between China and the US, there’s no chance they pick China without some kind of massive currently unpredicted Chinese reforms.

Chinese GDP growth has slowed dramatically, and it’s GDP per capita is still at the level of Mexico. It’s population is projected to decline dramatically, and it has a very unfavorable age distribution.

It probably won’t get more than some small multiple larger than the US economy and it may never approach the US in GDP per capita.

My point is that the the imbalance is unlikely to get large enough that they US keep fielding a credible nuclear threat.

So again what has changed that makes conventional war between nuclear powers likely or possible.

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