, Columnist
Hubris at the Top Could Start a Major War
No room for cognitive bias.
Photographer: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
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 — as in 1914, say — sleepwalk into disaster out of what international-relations scholars call mutual optimism.