In addition to that, I think it's also important to understand exactly what the realistic worst-case scenarios actually are for any given situation.
For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was basically the end of the world as we know it. Either the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have been considered worse. Either way, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, die.
For counter-terrorism operations, the worst-case scenario is orders of magnitude smaller. There appears to be no credible threat of any terrorists obtaining WMD, so they're pretty much limited to casualties in the thousands.
I think that much of our current woes come down to applying cold-war thinking to terrorism. The situations just aren't comparable. We were facing a true existential threat from a powerful enemy that outclassed us in many ways. Now, we're facing a minuscule threat that can, at most, kill a small number of our citizens from time to time. There were realistic scenarios that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by the USSR", but there are none that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by al Qaeda".
> For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was
> basically the end of the world as we know it. Either
> the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization
> is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have
> been considered worse.
I personally don't find this a difficult question. A half-destroyed world controlled by the USSR would have been far better than a full-destroyed world.
The point of the entire US atomic weapons arsenal was a murder-suicide pact against International Communism. If you don't burn the planet after a Soviet victory you may as well have not built it in the first place.
MAD was/is all a mental game to avoid a first strike. But once that happens, the calcuation is moot. In the event of a surprise attack by the USSR, the better result for the planet and humanity would have been for the US not to fire its own missiles.
I find it interesting that everyone always talks about surprise attacks by the USSR - in reality the USSR spent most of the Cold War terrified of a strike by its enemies (both the West and China). Indeed, as far as I know only one side in the Cold War had military leaders who wanted to start a nuclear war - guess which one?
NB The only possible exception to this was the Able Archer 83 incident when the Soviets thought the US was going to conduct a first strike ("Evil Empire" rhetoric etc.) and they almost pre-empted this with their own strike - but that was the terror of senile geriatrics, not a deliberate plan.
> as far as I know only one side in the Cold War had military leaders who wanted to start a nuclear war - guess which one?
I'd be interested in seeing a citation for this fact.
Edit: Curtis LeMay secretly advocated preemptive strikes if it became clear the Soviets were preparing a first strike. This is different from "wanting" nuclear war.
The reference I specifically remember (although I have read others) is in "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes. LeMay ordered overflights over the USSR and commented:
"Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started."
I don't have my copy of Dark Sun handy, but there is a reference to the incident in this review:
LeMay's belief in a "preventative" war was oddly rational - he believed that a conflict between the US and the USSR was inevitable and that therefore that US should strike before the USSR posed a strategic threat to the US (which it didn't really do until the mid 60s at the earliest).
Rhodes writes about the Cuban Missile Crisis:
"If John Kennedy had followed LeMay's advice, history would have forgotten the Nazis and their terrible Holocaust. Ours would have been the historic omnicide".
LeMay was very clear that the US should have struck first with nuclear weapons before the USSR had nuclear capabilities. He was a die-hard partisan of using force when you had the edge over your opponent.
A lot of people who made their bones in the Cold War are in control of the government, so "if all you have is a hammer" becomes the plinth of US foreign policy.
They also define PTSD as a state of mind oriented around preventing something that has already happened. Perhaps in this case, the end of the Cold War.
For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was basically the end of the world as we know it. Either the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have been considered worse. Either way, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, die.
For counter-terrorism operations, the worst-case scenario is orders of magnitude smaller. There appears to be no credible threat of any terrorists obtaining WMD, so they're pretty much limited to casualties in the thousands.
I think that much of our current woes come down to applying cold-war thinking to terrorism. The situations just aren't comparable. We were facing a true existential threat from a powerful enemy that outclassed us in many ways. Now, we're facing a minuscule threat that can, at most, kill a small number of our citizens from time to time. There were realistic scenarios that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by the USSR", but there are none that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by al Qaeda".