Is nuclear war inevitable?

I do not claim any particular wisdom regarding conflict between humans, but I have ninety years of being exposed to personal conflicts and thirty years of being exposed to various international conflicts, sometimes up close and very personal.   I have inevitably developed some theories.  I remember, vaguely, conflicts that developed on and around the schoolyard, in which I learned the hard way that I needed to stand up for myself when confronted by bullies.  Not to do so, resulted in unacceptable relationships. I also well remember my father’s futile efforts to educate me about the realities of the street.  It was not until he forced me to act, that I learned anything valuable.  When I finally stood up for myself physically, I remember being surprised at how easy it was to dominate another human being. It was a lesson that I saw reinforced over and over again in international affairs.

All of that has been a good and proper foundation for foreign policy since humans first stood up on two legs.  I argue that the invention of nuclear weapons has changed things.  I am not a storied warrior, but I have been involved in person-to-person conflict, country-to-country conflict, and I have even tried to moderate, if not resolve, international conflict.  My expectation is that, although there are no guarantees, Trump will manage to reduce open conflict in both Europe and the Middle East, but he will not do the things necessary to avoid the threat of nuclear obliteration arising again in the not too distant future.  A leader, no matter how wise, can not do more than lead a population where it wants to go, and the American public is uninterested in helping the rest of the world live a better life.  What that means is that conflict will continue to bubble up and eventually some idiot is going trigger the exchange of nuclear weapons.  After the combatants that live through the mindless firestorm that results decide who won, they will face the challenge of growing food in poisoned earth and coping with the aftereffects of radiation poisoning in the people who were not blown away in the nuclear firestorm.

I see the nuclear warfare solution to the gross over population of the finite earth to be a less attractive solution than helping one’s neighbor live a better life and I do not see space exploration as being a viable solution, let alone timely enough, to offer any hope.  I argue that we are left with only one choice and that is to be nice to one another.  Apparently something that humans in the aggregate are either unable or unwilling to do.