As the world (including the self-styled peacemaker-in-chief in the White House) holds its breath for the announcement of this year¡¯s Nobel Peace Prize, spare a moment to ponder the growing risk of war, including world war.
Even a cursory scan of today¡¯s major military powers suggests that both their leaders and policy elites are dangerously overconfident, and could ¡ª as in 1914, say ¡ª sleepwalk into disaster out of what international-relations scholars call mutual optimism.
If you¡¯re not worried yet, consider a study, the largest and most international of its kind, that comes to exactly this conclusion. Jeffrey Friedman at Dartmouth College just published the findings of surveys he¡¯s been giving (between roughly 2016 and 2022) to about 2,000 national-security officials from more than 40 Western countries ¡ª men and women, North Americans and Europeans, civilians and service members.
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