Why didn't the Cold War get bloody?

[GUBU]

I am neither brown nor yellow.

A kind of off-pink?

[polymath257]

Legitimacy isn't an issue when it comes to war. At least, not if you win.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I am neither brown nor yellow.

A kind of off-pink?

23andMe says I'm 99.9% Irish, so yeah.

---

Legitimacy isn't an issue when it comes to war. At least, not if you win.

Or if you wish to win. I used technology vastly superior to the enemy's because it was available. USN, USAF, whatever I could kill them with was legit at the time. Still is IMNSHO.

[Anomalocaris]

WWI was virtually inevitable.  

There had been 99 years of general peace.   At the end of a war, the biggest victor establishes a world order that is both advantageous to itself, and if it is enlightened, advantageous to other powers that matters.   Gradually, the relative strength of powers change, and with it their interests.  Gradually the propnderance of military and economic power of the biggest victor is overtaken by other rising powers.   The new power resent the structural advantage the old victor had built into the new system.  Without major war there is no real chance that the world order could be reformed and than imposed anew.   Hence incentives for war gradually increases, as war seems increasingly less bad as alternative to the existing state of affairs.

The real thing that precipitated WWI was the German perception of 2 things: that it had surpassed Britain as an industrial and economic power, and therefore it had an opportunity to reform the world order in its own favor, and 2: the window of opportunity is fleeting because sheer size of Russia and the rate t which Russia is industrializing means by 1920, Russia will become too strong and the window of opportunity for Germany will close.

I agree MAD was instrumental in preventing acute crisis from turning into general war. But I think there was also a deeper reason that prevented acute crisis from occurring more often, and the rival powers taking mor econfrontational approaches. The reasons
Cold War never turned hot because the Soviet Union never really caught up to the US both in global military power and economic power.   Mutually assured destruction helped.  But there is deeper reason why both side preferred short term stability.   Even without MAD, the side that in theory would gain by destroying the established order does not see itself strong enough to topple the world order.   Cold War turning hot was less likely.

I think in the next 50 years, the average chance of a Great War between major powers will rise above the average chance seen during the Cold War.   The reason is the US is being eclipsed in global economic power.  The sheer size of china and India makes it inevitable they will supplant the US to become the dominant economic powers of the world.   Furthermore China has demonstrated much more flexibility than the Soviet Union ever did in eschewing ideology, and in calculating the practical interests of the other countries and leveraging those to weaken alliances against herself and strength shared interests with critical players at strategic points.

With trump savaging the system of alliances that enabled the US to remain the premier great power Long after its economic power had declined to a level below that needed to support such a role, the rise of China and India will coincide with accelerated decline of thE US, and the weakening of the US imposed world order that formed the lynchpin of world stability since 1945.

So China probably see next 50 years as its window of opportunity. Right now China is far ahead of India, Chinese strength will rise nd surpass those of the US in the next 20 years or so. This gives China an ability to reorder the world in its own favor. Cin another 15 years or so, china’s Demographic crisis will come to a head. At the same time China will reach full development while India will catch up. China’s window as the premier power with ability to shape the world order will close.

[vorlon13]

There were quite a few accidents on both sides involving radioactive materials that caused injuries and deaths. And above ground testing of nuclear weapons increased the background radiation the world over.

[Anomalocaris]

The Cold War is driven strongly by an ideological contest.  So the total casualty of the Cold War should include fatalities resulting from civil wars or strifes inspired by the confrontational ideological conflict regardless of the magnitude of direct participation by the superpowers,  or diseasterous mismanagement ultimately traceable to ideological conflict and unmitigated because of ideological conflict.

In this case, we should add the death toll from Cambodia’s pol pot regime, the famine resulting from civil war in Ethiopia, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

Viewed this way, then the toll of the Cold War over 45 years is probably balloon to 30-40 million at least.

[shadow]

WWI was virtually inevitable.  

There had been 99 years of general peace.   At the end of a war, the biggest victor establishes a world order that is both advantageous to itself, and if it is enlightened, advantageous to other powers that matters.   Gradually, the relative strength of powers change, and with it their interests.  Gradually the propnderance of military and economic power of the biggest victor is overtaken by other rising powers.   The new power resent the structural advantage the old victor had built into the new system.  Without major war there is no real chance that the world order could be reformed and than imposed anew.   Hence incentives for war gradually increases, as war seems increasingly less bad as alternative to the existing state of affairs.

The real thing that precipitated WWI was the German perception of 2 things: that it had surpassed Britain as an industrial and economic power, and therefore it had an opportunity to reform the world order in its own favor, and 2: the window of opportunity is fleeting because sheer size of Russia and the rate t which Russia is industrializing means by 1920, Russia will become too strong and the window of opportunity for Germany will close.

I agree MAD was instrumental in preventing acute crisis from turning into general war.  But I think there was also a deeper reason that prevented acute crisis from occurring more often, and the rival powers taking mor econfrontational approaches.  The reasons
Cold War never turned hot because the Soviet Union never really caught up to the US both in global military power and economic power.   Mutually assured destruction helped.  But there is deeper reason why both side preferred short term stability.   Even without MAD, the side that in theory would gain by destroying the established order does not see itself strong enough to topple the world order.   Cold War turning hot was less likely.

I think in the next 50 years, the average chance of a Great War between major powers will rise above the average chance seen during the Cold War.   The reason is the US is being eclipsed in global economic power.  The sheer size of china and India makes it inevitable they will supplant the US to become the dominant economic powers of the world.   Furthermore China has demonstrated much more flexibility than the Soviet Union ever did in eschewing ideology, and in calculating the practical interests of the other countries and leveraging those to weaken alliances against herself and strength shared interests with critical players at strategic points.

With trump savaging the system of alliances that enabled the US to remain the premier great power Long after its economic power had declined to a level below that needed to support such a role, the rise of China and India will coincide with accelerated decline of thE US, and the weakening of the US imposed world order that formed the lynchpin of world stability since 1945.

So China probably see next 50 years as its window of opportunity.  Right now China is far ahead of India, Chinese strength will rise nd surpass those of the US in the next 20 years or so.  This gives China an ability to reorder the world in its own favor. Cin another 15 years or so, china’s Demographic crisis will come to a head.  At the same time China will reach full development while India will catch up. China’s window as the premier power with ability to shape the world order will close.

This is a very good post, and is an answer to my question that makes a lot of sense but I hadn't yet put together.

WRT this:

Cold War never turned hot because the Soviet Union never really caught up to the US both in global military power and economic power.   Mutually assured destruction helped.  But there is deeper reason why both side preferred short term stability.   Even without MAD, the side that in theory would gain by destroying the established order does not see itself strong enough to topple the world order.   Cold War turning hot was less likely.

Why do you then think that America would engage in fighting proxy wars with smaller communist countries, if there was really no need for them to engage in this conflict to, as you put it, 'topple the world order'?

[Anomalocaris]

Cold War never turned hot because the Soviet Union never really caught up to the US both in global military power and economic power.   Mutually assured destruction helped.  But there is deeper reason why both side preferred short term stability.   Even without MAD, the side that in theory would gain by destroying the established order does not see itself strong enough to topple the world order.   Cold War turning hot was less likely.

Why do you then think that America would engage in fighting proxy wars with smaller communist countries, if there was really no need for them to engage in this conflict to, as you put it, 'topple the world order'?

Ideologically the Soviets had a need to topple the world order.  But practically the Soviet Union wasn’t strong enough to do so.  So the Soviets chose the middle way, which was to stoke minor wars that gnaws away at the fringe of the post war order, and prevent countries that just emerged onto the regional scene from joining the order, but without truly confronting the US outside the immediate periphery of the Soviet Union.

Whether there was a need for the US to confront each of these soviet efforts is debatable.  Certainly the US indulged in exaggerating the Soviet threat at times because it usually pays politically in a democratic society to indulge in histrionics about the magnitude of threat and exhibit theatrical resolution in dealing aggressively with them.  Who needs facts when one has “moral clarity” and “right” on one’s side.   There were certainly times when the Americans hardline attitude and aggressive reactions actually unified a communist block by forcing each domestic communist movement that would otherwise have been suspicious of USSR and Russia it to look to the Soviet Union.  Both Cuba and China were examples where the US could have fractured the communist movements and weakened the Soviet hold by embracing native communistic movements that were suspicious of the USSR, but instead chose to adapt a hardline attitude that drive both into the arms of the USSR.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There were quite a few accidents on both sides involving radioactive materials that caused injuries and deaths.  And above ground testing of nuclear weapons increased the background radiation the world over.

As I understand it we've found the hydrogen bomb we dropped on Charleston, South Carolina. One less worry. We were fast with the one we dropped on Spain. I think.

[Anomalocaris]

There were quite a few accidents on both sides involving radioactive materials that caused injuries and deaths.  And above ground testing of nuclear weapons increased the background radiation the world over.

As I understand it we've found the hydrogen bomb we dropped on Charleston, South Carolina. One less worry. We were fast with the one we dropped on Spain. I think.

There are still at least 16 soviet nuclear 1.0 MT warheads sitting on the sea floor about 1000NM off the coast of Georgia and Carolina from the 1986 sinking of Yankee I class SSBN K-219.

One missile blew up in the tube while the sub was near the surface, the warhead was ejected and is now sitting somewhere by itself on the sea floor.  Subsequently the sub sank after being towed a significant distance, taking the other 15 missiles with her to a different spot on the sea floor.

Later survey is said to show the submarine is largely intact, but the hatches to several missile tubes were  open and their missiles with warhead were missing.  Where those warheads are is unknown, if they were somehow ejected by the sub during the process of sinking then presumably they are scattered around the wreck of the sub.

At least one other soviet sub is known to have sunk in international waters with nuclear tipped torpedos still onboard.   Subsequent survey is said to have found the door of one of the tubes containing a live nuclear torpedo open, the survey sub used manipulator arm to close it.  But no word on whether the torpedo was still inside.