my big working theory: governments of the world have known since the 50's that they can't actually start a nuclear war, because the aliens won't let them

Shutting down our nukes is completely trivial for them. Their constant presence around nuclear sites is no coincidence. But the world's governments keep this information hidden, basically holding the world hostage to a false threat. Objectively they would lose power admitting this, so they just don't, and meanwhile the ET are content wait and observe. We can imagine the ET civilization having philosophical debates about this type of interference. Should a whole population be held hostage by i...