Dani Rodrik: prediction

Transcript context

…And when will Turkey have nuclear weapons? Want to discuss that? [laughter] You’re really pushing me to my areas of incompetency. I have no idea for that question. I have no inside knowledge of that to share. I think the question you were asking is extending the notion that more crosscutting cleavages imply greater political stability and tolerance and moderation. Can we take that idea to the international sphere, in particular apply it to nuclear proliferation? If more states have nuclear weapons, would that make the world safer? I’m not quite sure about the analogy, the way that you’ve taken that idea and extended it to the global sphere because the notion of crosscutting cleavages has to do with when you’re operating not in a state of anarchy, so to speak, but when you’re operating in a well-ordered polity. I’m not sure that that analogy carries to what is effectively the state of anarchy at the global level, where there is no global government so the nature of competition is very different. The idea of nuclear proliferation globally greatly worries me. Not because I think that the marginal country is going to be less responsible than the countries that already have nuclear weapons, but just because the more countries that have them, the greater the chance that at least one of them will be irresponsible rises. I think just probabilistically that makes me very, very nervous. The analogy, I don’t think really quite applies. That’s fair.…

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