ZFBoxcar

You can't judge the world to be better or worse on what COULD have happened. Okay, thats not quite fair, since nuclear weapons are real and so have to be considered. But I'd still say MAD has been better than WWI and WWII. And there is no reason why we wouldn't have had more wars like those if there were no nukes.

Also, how would you categorize the Berlin Wall crisis or the Cuban Missile Crisis as making the world materially or morally worse? It could be that the shadow of nuclear war (not the war itself) makes the world worse (I don't agree, but its arguable), but does it make us materially worse off? And is a nation fighting a war with more powerful weapons more immoral than a nation fighting with less powerful weapons? I wouldn't say so, but I guess if you argue that some weapons are immoral, then the user of that weapon would also be immoral. So while you make a good case for the world not being perfect, I don't think it demonstrates the world being worse than 150 years ago.