>>>Third, the "lack of a contingency plan" is essentially part of the Prisoner's dilemma which the arms race during the Cold War was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma#Internati... But that doesn't render the argument moot:

If no one can produce a tangible, actionable, PLAN that gets us from "nukes in the hands of sociopaths with itchy trigger fingers" to "no nukes", then yes, the argument is rendered moot. A bunch of plebs signing petitions amounts to nothing but hot air if there is no realistic way to convince a head of state to throw hundreds (or thousands, in US/Russia's case) of the world's most powerful weapons into the dumpster.

>>> But rationally, that's not possible as you end up in a situation where owning nuclear weapons while everyone doesn't is the better option from the perspective of a single nation.

So you identify right here the crux of the matter: a rational nationstate will retain its nuclear arsenal.

The rest of your post is a bad case of shifting the goalposts.

>>>First, history of the past 80 years casts doubts on your claims:
>>>The USSR-Afghanistan left an estimated 2 million dead. Nigerian Civil War between 1 and 3 million. France-Algeria War about 1 million. Korean War between 1.5 and 4.5 million dead. Vietnam between 1.3 and 4.5 million.

Let's take the maximal estimates for all of those: 15 million dead. That's a selection of some of the deadliest conflicts post-WW2.......which doesn't even match the casualties of the Eastern Front alone: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II) ), which lasted for a mere ~4 years during WW2. Whether viewed in absolute terms of lives lost or per-capita losses over time (as a % of global human population), the data supports my assertion, not yours.

>>>In fact, after 1945, European integration was considered as an antidote against extreme nationalism in Europe and was heavily advocated for by Churchill.

The Brits have always played one (or more) continental powers against whoever was strongest. When Napoleon ran France, the UK allied with Russia and the Prussians. When Germany was ascendant, they allied with the French and the Russians. After WW2, with the Soviet Union dominating the Eurasian landmass, the only way to counter the Warsaw Pact was to coagulate the devastated West European democracies into a super-state. This was business as usual for the Brits.

>>>Second, "global casualties from warfare being in decline" doesn't imply that no casualties of war, or atrocities, have been committed since 1945.

Nor has anyone in this thread ever made such an assertion (that casualties = 0). Conflict casualties will never fall to 0, for the same reasons homicides will never fall to 0:

1. Human beings exist on a spectrum of morality.

2. Human beings exist on a spectrum of willingness to commit violence.

When opposing value sets overlap with violent inclinations, people die. We can significantly tamper the violence via material abundance, but First World-levels of wealth are climatologically unsustainable for a population of ~8 billion...

>>>The main reason why MAD has become a thing is because a chunk of humanity just wants to see the rest of the world burn.

I'd argue just the opposite. If anyone in a leadership position wanted to see the world burn....it would happen, because they only need to pass orders to one of the three legs of the nuclear triad (silos/strategic bombers/SSBNs) to trigger a response.

There are almost never "absolute mad men" running entire countries (Idi Amin was perhaps the closest IMO). It's just vapid propaganda. It is why it is so important to understand the adversary's problem set, and to place their actions within the correct context of what they are trying to achieve. Lunatics are exceedingly rare, and we still plan for those edge cases with Counter-WMD Quick-Reaction Forces from SOCOM, to mitigate risks of nuke employment:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37923/the-army-is-trai...

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/14535/this-obscure-dc-...