Abstract
Writing from a Swiss Alps monastery, we reconstruct how our world was turned into a radioactive ruin and consider whether some alternative was possible that might have avoided the nuclear war that devastated our planet. Drawing on the twentieth and twenty-first century scholarship on nuclear weapons, and the idea known as the “multiverse,” we seek to explain why the nuclear war happened and ask what other outcomes were possible. We present three scenarios that are based on different combinations of technological and political developments that would have been feasible starting from 100 years ago. Scenario A corresponds to the current situation and outlines the origins of the nuclear war that largely destroyed human civilization. Scenario B presents an alternative that might have resulted in stability despite a modest expansion in the number of states with nuclear weapons. Scenario C discusses a path that might have led to the abolition of nuclear weapons. In each scenario, we use theoretically informed lenses to explain the conditions and triggering events that could have led to these alternative earth histories.
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Notes
- 1.
Our setting is remarkably similar to that in Miller Jr., 1979. The monastic library contained a copy of that book, with handwritten notes left there by a certain Steven Pifer that made us aware of the uncanny parallelism between our circumstances and those described in a best-selling work of twentieth century post-apocalyptic science fiction.
- 2.
See, for example, Siegel and “Starts with A Bang”, 2019; Howell (2018).
- 3.
Some literature made a distinction between horizontal proliferation, referring to the spread of the bomb to new countries, and vertical proliferation, referring to arms buildups among countries that already had a nuclear arsenal. Most scholarly studies that focused on proliferation used the term in the former sense, while so-called vertical proliferation was more typically described as an arms race and addressed in the literature on nuclear deterrence. For an overview, see the Journal of Conflict Resolution “Special Issue: Nuclear Posture, Nonproliferation Policy, and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons” (Gartzke and Kroenig 2013).
- 4.
York (1970).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Socolow and Glaser (2009).
- 8.
- 9.
Sagan (1996).
- 10.
Debs and Monteiro (2016).
- 11.
Solingen (2009).
- 12.
Way and Weeks (2015).
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
Hymans (2006).
- 16.
Kaplow (Ψ 2023).
- 17.
Gartzke and San (Ψ 2025).
- 18.
Harrington and Knopf (2019).
- 19.
For a critique of this interpretation, see Knopf (2022).
- 20.
Rabinowitz (Ψ 2027).
- 21.
Abubakar et al. (Ψ 2031).
- 22.
Schelling (1958).
- 23.
Kahn (1960).
- 24.
Wilson (2013).
- 25.
- 26.
Lewis and Sagan (Ψ 2026).
- 27.
Narang (Ψ 2030).
- 28.
Schneider et al. (Ψ 2023).
- 29.
Wunderlich (Ψ 2028).
- 30.
Ritchie (2019).
- 31.
- 32.
- 33.
- 34.
Knopf (2013).
- 35.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2021.
- 36.
Zwald (2013).
- 37.
See Lewis (2018), for a fictional account of how a North Korean nuclear strike on the United States could have come about.
- 38.
Holloway (1994).
- 39.
For a proposal to do this, see Lowther and McGiffin (2019).
- 40.
Builds on Mills et al. (2014).
- 41.
For a paradigmatic treatment of this issue, see Sagan and Waltz (2003).
- 42.
Narang (2014).
- 43.
- 44.
Waltz (1981).
- 45.
- 46.
- 47.
Lieber and Press (2017).
- 48.
Lin-Greenberg (Ψ 2026).
- 49.
Snyder (1961).
- 50.
Gerson (2010).
- 51.
Lavoy (2009).
- 52.
Williams and Drew (2020).
- 53.
- 54.
- 55.
Miller (2018).
- 56.
We discuss this conflict more in depth in Scenario C.
- 57.
Kmentt (2021).
- 58.
- 59.
Van Horn and Wang (Ψ 2032).
- 60.
Paul (2009).
- 61.
Tannenwald (2002).
- 62.
Sagan and Weiner (2021).
- 63.
Perkovich and Acton (2009).
- 64.
Evangelista et al. (Ψ 2027).
- 65.
See a similar assessment in Schlapak and Johnson (2016).
- 66.
- 67.
- 68.
- 69.
Tertrais (2019).
- 70.
For more on the institutional arrangements that would support a world without nuclear weapons, see Müller (2020).
- 71.
Onderco (2021).
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Onderco, M., Knopf, J.W. (2023). Nuclear Weapons in 2122: Disaster, Stability, or Disarmament?. In: Horn, L., Mert, A., Müller, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13722-8_7
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