Why do we go to war? This is a question unlikely to be answered in it's entirety. Most people would likely agree that at least one belligerent party seeks to gain something from war, whether it be gold, land, oil, slaves,water, the spread of a system of beliefs or religion, or a woman, most wars are fought with some goal in mind, and when that goal is reached, one side will be declared victorious. This concept of going to war to gain something as a nation has become obsolete with the advent of nuclear weapons (Rauchhaus, 2009) .
The perfect example of this was the Cold War (1945-1991) in which the United States and Soviet Union had a political conflict yet avoided direct military conflict. During the Cold War the US and USSR never actually engaged in all out warfare because of nuclear deterrence. The US knew that if it launched its warheads on the USSR, the USSR would retaliate with it's arsenal and both sides (likely along with most of humanity due to nuclear fallout) would be wiped from the face of the Earth. This promise of mutually assured destruction (MAD) seems to have generated a tense, forced peace that has lasted for over six decades.
Why have nuclear weapons brought with them a mutually assured government stability (immunity from outside influences), and an almost 100% guarantee of immunity from direct military conflict with outside nations? No nation with nuclear powers has been directly confronted by another nation (superpower or not),ever. This fact makes you wonder if the United States would have toppled the Afghan and Iraqi regimes if either of those nations had been nuclear powers. The short answer, probably not. A war with Afghanistan and Iraq likely would not have gone through if the United States were forced to risk destruction in it's entirety for vengeance of the deaths of a few thousand. Most nations do not get involved with wars that they do not think they can win, if there is no possibility of victory it is unlikely that a country will go to war. Once a country becomes a nuclear power, it makes the prospect of victory nonexistent and by doing so it becomes immune to direct military conflict with other nuclear states and other non-nuclear states. This immunity is assured because (no matter how insane of a leader you are) the prospect of being incinerated by a second strike does not come off as beneficial to any country. Therefore nuclear power seems like it has made the concept of traditional warfare obsolete.
What is the result of conflict among nuclear powers? Obviously nuclear powers are unwilling the press their little red buttons and unleash Armageddon upon each other. So what do we do when our policies are at odds and our personalities are clashing? We fight proxy wars such as the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Angola, Korea, Vietnam, and the middle east. What generally happens during these proxy wars is that a nuclear power will lend backing and tradition military support to one side of a third world country and it's rival nuclear power will do the same with the other side. This way these nuclear powers can say they care about the concerns of the third world countries to which they are lending support, use these concerns to fight against other nuclear powers. Since neither of the power's territories or forms of government are directly threatened by the conflict, there is little reason for either side to launch a nuclear weapon.
These Proxy Wars seem to almost resemble games, since no matter how much either side accomplishes by playing around in the third world, neither side will be able to directly affect the other without risking destruction via nuclear warheads. If super powers are going to use games (albeit costly games) like proxy wars to decide their pecking order, why not just admit that traditional warfare where one trained army defeats another trained army in armed combat and exacts wealth and territory from the defeated is an obsolete concept and switch our form of competition to non-life threatening games such as the Olympics for example.
Bibliography:
Rauchhaus, R.(2009).Evaluating the Nuclear Peace Hypothesis: A Quantitative Approach. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 53(2), 258-277.
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