War is a constant.
It was in the past.
It is a constant today.
And it will be in the future.
All nations are, at heart, "evil" in this regard. Essentially, nations are just scaled up street gangs with more destructive weapons.
The only proven method of keeping these street gangs from getting too far out of hand, of keeping all our war at the level of low intensity conflict, is MAD. Nations behave only at the barrel of a gun. To argue that America is "evil" is as irrelevant as it is to argue that America is "good".
For instance, I know that all nations can be said to be "evil" at root, and "good" at root. Here's the thing though, do you think it matters to me if China is "evil" and "good"? Of course not, they're just a different street gang. The US has a responsibility to humanity to keep them in line. Should it matter to China that the US street gang is "evil" and "good"? No. They have a responsibility to humanity to keep the US in line.
In the age of weapons of mass destruction, only mutually assured destruction has ensured these street gangs don't come into conflict. Relying on sunshine and rainbows and unicorns that crap out skittles is nonsense. This is not a children's game of "good guys-bad guys". There are no good guys or bad guys. Only nations, (street gangs), pursuing interests. They are kept in line only at the barrel of a gun. Take that gun away and they will run rampant.
The best way, in my mind to minimize conflict is through a global monopoly on violence, one street gang to rule them all
This is what the last 30 years have been
Only they haven't.
The reason the US and Russia haven't run rampant the last 30 years is because the US and Russia can blow each other away. So Russia satisfies itself with Georgia and now Ukraine. And the US satisfies itself with those nations in the MidEast region. Remove Russia, and the US would have been all over the yard. Remove the US, and Russia would have been all over the yard.
And now with the rise of China, mankind is even safer. Not only that, but more of mankind have begun to enjoy the benefits of safety. The US and Russia were perfectly willing to fight a proxy war in Korea 70 years ago. They wouldn't dare do that today. Why? The Chinese presence in any MAD calculations.
Today Africa is much safer, it is developing much faster. A large part of the reason for that is the presence of China. Now instead of proxy wars, the great powers compete to see who can deliver Africa the most undersea bandwidth for instance. This is a much better situation for Africans than the situation that existed when only the US and Russia were superpowers. And this situation exists because of MAD. It proves that an armed society is a polite society.
The US, China and Russia are all fulfilling their responsibility to keep the peace by maintaining lethal arsenals of weapons of mass destruction so that they are each confident in their own ability to destroy the others. And that is good for all of us "little people" in the world. Whether we are American, Chinese or Russian. (And even good for us if we are Korean, African, or from South America.)
North Korea is insane in its own way, but hereditary personality cults do have a history of acting in the interest of self-preservation.
Basically, betting that there were scenarios where the US wouldn't risk escalation to nuclear war in response to a calibrated Russian tactical nuclear strike in a third party country, thus allowing Russian nuclear effects to nullify superior western precision weapons without consequence.
https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/russian-military-doctrine-ca...
At this point there is no support for the idea that US weapons have superior precision. The Russian campaign is showing the opposite.
Here’s a good video showing the difference.
https://mobile.twitter.com/revishvilig/status/15402647613292...
A) NATO's air campaign in the Kosovo War (1999) certainly scared the shit out of Russia.
B) That Russia is currently bombarding Ukrainian cities with repurposed surface to air missiles doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in their ability to produce sufficient quantities of precision missiles for even a moderate scale conflict.
C) The majority of Ukrainian platforms at this point still aren't Western, and thus incapable of firing NATO precision ordinance.