Comment by Leonid Amirov (leonid-amirov) on Why I think there's a one-in-six chance of an imminent global nuclear war · 2022-10-09T19:09:47.941Z · LW · GW

Lots of interesting opinions in the comments - these days it is rare to read comments about this war without lots of emotional stuff.

However, I must point out that many of the points are based on what people think about Putin as a person. And their opinions are heavily based on what western media want them to think. 

I think in the grand scheme it is not important what Putin's personal traits are. The most important is who are the parties in this war and what are their interests. Putin is just a figure that some internal russian parties agreed on, its not like he's on his own.

As it happened before, world capitalism tries to solve a huge number of unsolved problems through the war.

Major parties(of course, just my personal view) in this war are(and when I mention country, I don't mean people, I mean capital in the first place): 

1. US. Sky-high debt and endless dollar printing finally got to the point when the internal economy is starting to crack under pressure. EU has become too much of a competition and needs to be weakened. Huge numbers of refugees from the countries devastated by US did the first step. Second step was "green energy". And third step is removing cheap russian energy. As a result - some of the european industry players have already moved factories to US, some are preparing to do the same. Does US want a nuclear conflict? No, I don't think so. There's no gain from that for them, and lots of potential losses. They have lots of interest in keeping Ukraine on fire, but that fire don't have to be nuclear.
2. EU. Decades of using cheap energy allowed european industry to thrive. But this age has finished, and there seems to be no going back from that. Large capitals are about to be moved out from Europe in different directions, mostly to the US. But while there, they're not interested in keeping the war going. And obviously, they don't have any interest in nuclear war starting out - the US have chances at least to survive it, the EU doesn't.
3. UK. They didn't have such a big dependency on energy from russia, but lots of cheap gas in Europe kept other gas sellers from raising prices. So UK is losing cheap energy too, but as far as I know, they have much more sustainable economics foundation(this doesn't mean regular people won't suffer). And they made wise move with the Brexit - first rat out of the sinking ship. Do they want nuclear war? I think not, but I also think that they don't care about it on the same level as other europe does. Unless the Island is targeted directly, they have lots of chances to survive through that - and thrive afterwards, major competitors being kicked to the stone age. But the risks are enormous and the prize is very ghostly.
4. Russia. Last 10+ years I saw increasing number of links with the western world being cut. When I speak to my friends colleagues in Europe, US and UK, it seems that they're always imagining picture somewhat like  Biff's Future from BTtF2 or something like that. But the life is going on normally - roads are getting better, houses are being built. People are going to work. People discuss the war a lot, and there's lots of different opinions. Nobody is being jailed just because of their point. Usually, it happens when expression of the point takes extreme measures - but if you do that in any "free and democratic" country - one will face the same or even worse consequences. People are getting tired of war. People are getting tired of constant lies - both by russian government and and western media. The war has been started by oligarchs and its being kept on by them. Do they want nuclear war? No, this would be the end of the world as we know it.

So, out of four major actors, not a single one, as far as I can see, will benefit from nuclear war. Almost nobody will gain nothing useful from it, and the losses are incredibly high. The "regular" war effort, however is very handy for everyone (except Ukraine). This makes me think nuclear strikes are very unlikely to happen. I wouldn't even give it 5%, not to say 30%.

If it were up to regular people to decide - the Earth would've been perished already.