I don't know about that; I could see everyone drifting into a conflict no one wants, WW1 style.

Recent events also are incentivizing small countries to go nuclear, which will increase the risk of nuclear war. I expect South Korea, Japan, and maybe even the Philippines and Vietnam to acquire nuclear weapons at some point. Japan already has a capability to acquire nuclear weapons quickly, with their separated reactor-grade Pu stockpile.

Acquiring nuclear weapons is not the same as using them.

Nuclear weapons aren’t a combat armament. They are an insurance policy. They are a way to get adversaries to leave you alone or bring you to the negotiating table.

I believe it was Kim Jong Il or Un or maybe both who directly stated this to insiders in their regime. They weren’t ever intended to be used, and those leaders were fully aware that any real conflict would result in their regime’s annihilation.

Their #1 goal was preservation of their family monarchy. Nuclear war is the opposite of that.

Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9169656/

The argument "war won't occur, it's irrational" isn't a good one. Both WW1 and WW2 were irrational, but they happened anyway. If actors were perfectly rational no wars would occur.

The risk of global thermonuclear war is low since it would require one of the major powers to go suicidally mad.

The risk of local or regional nuclear conflict as part of a larger scale war is high.

We all work in complex systems and see first hand how fragile and error prone they are. Yet you think the risk of nuclear war is low even though the programs rely on similar types of systems?

Human-driven systems, embedded in the real world, are still inefficient enough[0] that they are much more resilient than the kind of systems we work with. At the very least, each part of the system has the ability to independently evaluate the process they're a part of, and stop it in its tracks if they think a fatal mistake is about to happen. See e.g. Stanislav Petrov and be thankful his job wasn't automated, or we'd not be here to talk about it.

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[0] - Which, in this context, is a good thing.

You’re pretty much alone in that

Putin is backed in a corner.

You are praying their arsenal isn't launch capable anymore.

I'd put a higher risk number of nuke throwing starting between smaller countries, like Pakistan, or Iran. Putin strikes me as more like a coward than suicide bomber.

Putin is quite old and will die soon. My concern is the chaos which follows, as Putin has killed all strong contenders for power.

It shows how little he cares, for the best thing a leader can do for a nation is to ensure a strong successor. The resulting civil war in Russia is where the nukes may appear.

Anyhow,

Honestly I wonder if a lookalike will simply continue on. I know it's conspiratorial but Putin has looked a lot healthier.