Are you American? Because if you are from the country that dominated the world since WWII it feels different than being from the rest of the world.

Bretton Woods gave the Americans an "exorbitant privilege" that basically meant the US could live extracting wealth continuously from the rest of the world.

Then later the petrodollar system was established. People needed oil, the US would protect the Arabs with its immense army (financed with the dollar system) and in return the oil had to be sold in dollars, so all the world needed dollars if they wanted energy.

The US could just print dollars, and the rest of the world would suffer inflation.

That was great for the US for sure. Why not continue? Because the rest of the world do not want to continue supporting the US system.

The US was ok with Sadam using chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians until he decided to change the currency for paying the oil to euros.

The US does not want to de-escalate if that means the world stops buying US bonds and suddenly they are bankrupt and can not pay its debts exporting inflation to the rest of the world.

If Americans suddenly lose 50 to 70% of purchasing power then there will be war inside the US, not outside.

Globalization offered the model for this. When the economy is globally linked there is more pressure for stability than conflict. I think that theory still holds. The fallout of the last 10 years is that the distribution of the wealth created in that system has not been even at all, and we are seeing huge wealth gaps. Jobs were redistributed to poorer nations and lost in a lot of wealthier markets.

If nations can solve wealth and job distribution under globalization then I think we return back to peaceful times. The current problems stem from people getting left out and then voting in leaders who do not understand diplomacy or the global market at all.

>Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peaceful scenarios?

Because nature is filled with examples.

Look at the plants around you. They are nice and peaceful, right? No wars with other plants, no battles for life and death and resources... Well if you don't know anything about plants that's exactly what you'd think.

And I'm not really talking about animals and insects that are trying to consume them, plants themselves, rooted into the ground are in a constant war. Some breed very quickly to compete, making millions of seeds or growing at insane speeds. Some plants poison the soil around them with horrifically toxic substances so only they can grow. Some plants grow broad leaves flat against the ground strangling anything that tries to grow. Other plants make vast canopies creating a world of darkness below them to snuff competitors. Some plants have symbiotic relationships with bacteria to fix nitrogen so they grow faster than other plants. Some plants have relationships with ants and the ants keep competition away.

War and peace are simply game theories in real life. Take your statement

>Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peaceful scenarios?

Anything that doesn't involve you smashing someone's head in and instead doing anything that is even slightly cooperative is a peaceful scenario. Pretty much everything you do every day is just that.

Furthermore you need to dream up every possible conflict idea that you possibly can if you want to defend against it. The difficult part there is not using it against others. This is why you see people worry about things like advance AI. Because while it could come up with all kinds of peaceful ideas, even just a few good conflict ideas could make mankind go extinct.

>The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people.

The fallacy in the line of thinking that "why don't we all just shake hands, say something nice, and get along with each other" comes from the erroneous belief that everyone in the world just wants peace and material prosperity for themselves and their people. This isn't the case, for countless reasons.

Peace is what you and I want, because we're living in highly privileged lives where maintaining the peaceful status quo (one in which we're on top) for as long as we live is the best outcome for us, and because we have a fairly rational view of life and the world (e.g. we are not convinced that killing a certain people is the only key to an eternity in "heaven", or have bought into some myth of ethnoracial/cultural exceptionalism that needs to be defended by any means). We also aren't emburdened by some great injustice for which we have a burning itch for vengeance (e.g. no one has bombed your whole family).

This just isn't the case for everyone in the world.

That could work if the actors were rational. Unfortunately, they are largely ideological.

I think the reason we can imagine conflict easier than peace is pretty structural. Wars usually happen because of disequilibrium, and we're sitting right in the middle of a big one.

The world order we know was built by and for the US when it was the uncontested superpower. Thats just not the case anymore. Countries that spent decades being the West's cheap labor pool have risen up, industrialized, built real militaries, and they are not going back to where they were. But the West isnt going to voluntarily get poorer to make room for them either. Both sides have real competing interests, this isnt some misunderstanding that better diplomacy can fix. Its a genuine redistribution problem.

Thats why peaceful outcomes are so hard to picture. They require everyone to accept losses and nobody is lining up for that.

> Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peaceful scenarios?

Sadly, war is often a driver of economic growth. WWII pulled the US economy out the Great Depression and transformed it into one of the most prosperous in human history. I'd argue that the proxy wars the US has been waging largely exist to satiate a military industrial complex that is focused on growth. Hard to grow when your business is war if there are no wars to fight.

And I'll wade into political waters. The US government has no problem waging war because it's not unpopular enough of an issue to threaten an administration. We're spending $1B a day now to fight Iran but we somehow can't find the political courage to improve healthcare or hunger here at home.

The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined.

When all you have is a hammer…

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