The last time I touched the subject, we left the Korean War and Communists in Russia and China determined to cleanse themselves by bringing their countries close to ruin. So what we want to examine is the Cold War mentality and why it never turned hot.
Global politics turned into a giant game of 11-dimensional chess:
-The Chinese had learned their lesson about American air superiority and now hoped to bait other communist countries into drawing out the Americans so that they or the Soviets would destroy the air threat for them. This strategy persists to this day, hence Chinese support for regimes like North Korea, Serbia, Iraq, and Iran – they have little in common in terms of goals or politics, but the Chinese are encouraged when the Serbs shoot down a F-117A Stealth Fighter and not so happy when the US destroys Iraq’s tank army in 52 hours. China wants the US to bleed itself to death fighting everyone but them.
-The Americans had also learned some hard lessons from Korea and took MacArthur’s parting advice to avoid land wars in Asia. The US decided that its best doctrine was the nuclear one, a message to say “it’s okay if we lose everything, we’ll just nuke the enemy so they lose too”. It gave total initiative to the US to operate with impunity around the world, knowing that nobody else could win against us. The USSR or China would never dare invade Japan or Europe knowing the US wasn’t afraid to nuke Beijing, Moscow, or even Tokyo and Berlin, but the US could gamble on invading Soviet and Chinese satellites because they wouldn’t launch for fear of total reprisal. Of course, notice that this also creates the dangerous flaw that the US could never afford an invasion of the mainland. Nuking Tokyo and Berlin is one thing, nuking San Francisco or New York an entirely different one.
-Stalin and the USSR watched the Korean War with some consternation. The United States was not nearly as weak as its indecisive politics showed. Despite the fact that the war was unpopular, the US had castrated itself after WWII, and Truman unceremoniously threw out one of his best generals, the US had still managed to slaughter two million Chinese and North Korean soldiers. The nuclear threat was also considerable and the Soviets decided to copy the doctrine, but with a twist. Rather than threaten to nuke allies if he lost, Stalin made it clear he wasn’t afraid to nuke anybody, even Russians. Oh, he would destroy the US no matter what, but he wasn’t afraid to eliminate US forces by nuking them wherever they were. Rather than the arbitrage of US doctrine, it’s the madness of total speculation. Would Stalin really nuke Berlin with Russians still there just to kill American soldiers, crossing the line that America dare not cross?
Two events turned these strategies on their head: the 1961 Berlin crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both events made political leaders (Khrushchev and JFK) realize that their real battles were with their own militaries and not with each other. The Soviet and US armies had generals that wanted to fight without realizing the full ramifications of what that meant. JFK was not going to say “hey we just lost Cuba, nuke it” and Khrushchev was not going to nuke Russia’s borders to kill a million Russians and three CIA agents. So what emerges is a de facto peace as both powers play the power game with minor countries and doing everything to avoid a direct confrontation, although the CIA and KGB certainly flirted with the idea. From 1963 onwards, the Cold War was going to stay frozen as long as both sides just jostled over spheres of influence, swallowing 7% of US GDP and 20% of USSR GDP per year in military spending.
Both sides settled into a rather darkly humorous bet that the other would grow more like it. The US believed Soviet citizens would grow weary of purges and overthrow their leaders in fits of democracy, and was encouraged by countries like Yugoslavia and the Philippines. The USSR believed that American and allied workers would see the folly and greed of their capitalist overlords and throw them out in the true communist revolution, and was encouraged by the growth of the European welfare state and US discontent in the 60s.