Comment by vladms

> But... it's not. 160 years of straight uninterrupted time without total war out of 250 makes no-total-war the norm,

Your choose to mention arbitrarily 250 years. I see no reason for that, as there were things happening on the same soil before those 250 years.

> That's totally different than Europe

Europe is not a country, as mentioned not all Europe had the same conditions.

> that aren't relevant to the question of how often the US will continue to be the largest Western country with no threat of total war on domestic soil.

This started about "excepted from being blown to smithereens during WW2, which is the kind of opportunity that doesn't usually come around twice.". Nowadays, some countries in Europe do have nuclear weapons which reduces somehow the possibility to be the only ones blown up. If a nuclear power is hit by nukes, it will retaliate automatically hitting the complete list of enemies.

I think we both exposed our arguments and as we don't seem to be inclined to take into account each other analysis (the 250 years, Europe as a country, risks of current conflicts, etc.) will not add others comments - we can agree to disagree. I still learned various things I did not know before so it was a useful conversation.