There won't ever be an "all out war" of nuclear states with each other. Only via proxies.

Of course there can be - likely with a gentleman's understanding that neither would use them, and each side careful to not back the other into a corner where they'd have nothing left to lose.

It's just going to be your typical meatgrinder and attrition warfare.

They called World War I “the Great War” because they couldn’t conceive of a sequel.

Never say never.

You could fight conventionally over logistics chokepoints. China’s not going to lob nukes just because their oil’s dried up.

Until there is.

We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb. But the reality is that throughout history most leaders have been irrational.

My country (America) is behaving increasingly irrationally. I've been hearing fringe conservatives calling for nuking the middle east since the early 2000s, but the rot has spread and became deeply religious.

Now I hear talk of the end times from the most powerful people in the country, actively building bunkers. Groups of Republicans openly talking about the US being allowed to take whatever we want from anyone we want through war (Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada).

Almost all of our leadership has been replaced in every branch of government. SCOTUS is clearly compromised and bought. The legislative may as well be dead. Almost all executive agencies have been purged, what remains have had their heads swapped with sycophants. Something like half of the military generals have been turned over. The DoD was renamed to the DoW with cheers, as an alcoholic prison guard was put in charge and has started touting hypermacho religious warrior catchphrases and openly advocating for war crimes.

The other day we testimony from judges before legislature who refused to say if Presidents can run for three terms or that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Under oath, just simply refused.

And that's before getting into how the President of the United States started a war to distract from his involvement in the highest profile sex trafficking ring in human history, and has continued to use his position to perform insider trading on oil prices repeatedly for weeks.

If you said any of this would be happening in 2005, I would have laughed at how "that would never happen in the US". And now it's just... reality. Like Russia. And it seems to have no end in sight. So what actually happens if Trump gets so deranged he hits the red button? And if not him, who will the loonies pick tomorrow - someone who actually believes in "the cause", who doesn't understand it's a grift?

And what are the external long term consequences of Trump's actions in countries like Iran and Venezuela and Ukraine? The US is not to be trusted anymore, every country has a clear signal to build their own nuclear arsenal ASAP. We have a river of blood behind us, so are we just expecting to get lucky that no one in Iran, for instance, who gets to a position of power leverages an irrational hate for the US and just... Does it in a religious or hate-driven Armageddon?