Hypotheticals are always tricky.
I do, however, think that much of the late 20th C concern over nuclear war lost sight of just how horrific “conventional” war can be. Is dying in an atomic blast really that much worse than watching your children succumb to dysentery because the sewage works caught a Hellfire missile?
The only reason why Hitler didn’t immediately annihilate London was that he lacked the ability to do so. Ditto for Bomber Harris and Berlin.
We don’t have those limitations now. Even if you remove the nukes from the equation, a full-throttle hot war between major 21st century industrialised powers would be utterly apocalyptic. A handful of Daisy Cutters would level any city just as thoroughly as a nuke would.
Humanity has become too proficient at warfare to be able to survive large-scale conflict. We cannot allow ourselves to do it again.
Unfortunately, we’re yet to come up with an effective way of preventing that catastrophe that doesn’t involve putting a gun to the head of all people everywhere.
