Is Today’s World Really A Safer Place Than During The Cold War ?

I grew up during the seventies and eighties in a world dominated by the Cold War, it was a scary time. We all knew if it kicked off between the superpowers it would be curtains for all of us.

Did this worry me? Well no, of all the things that did worry me nuclear war wasn’t one of them. To me I entertained the thoughts that despite all the political finger pointing, both sides would rather live than die so I doubted anyone would push that button. Mutually Assured Destruction actually gave the world a level of stability and in many ways made it an intrinsically safer world than it seems to be today.

Rose Tinted Spectacles

Was the Cold War era, on the whole, a safer era or do we look at it against today’s world through rose tinted spectacles ? In truth it may have been safer but the flashpoints were bigger.

However tricky our relationships with Putin's Russia and President Hu Jintao's China are nowadays, the prospect of our entering a massive and mutually cataclysmic conflict with either nation are vastly reduced.

We seem to have forgotten that the Americans argued passionately for "nuking" communist China during the Korean War and again during the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1954. We also have apparently forgotten how close we came to a nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Similarly, we've forgotten the shock of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which prompted the then German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt to ask, "Is this the new Sarajevo?" (a reference to the outbreak of World War I). A serious of events around 1983 almost triggered a nuclear war, they started with Ronald Reagan referring to the Soviet Union as “This Evil Empire” and culminated in a NATO computer based military exercise being misinterpreted by the Soviets as an actual invasion, triggering them going to a full war status minutes away from attack, before they realised their error.

Those were really scary times, and potentially much more dangerous than our present circumstances because the possible damage that could be inflicted during an East-West conflagration was far, far greater than anything that Al Qaeda can do to us now. No one has the exact totals, but we probably had 20,000 missiles pointed at each other, often on high alert. And the threat of an accidental discharge was high.

Nobody under 25 years old today lived through the Cold War and find it hard to understand.

To recapture that periods danger these days, you need to watch Cold War movies such as; "The Manchurian Candidate," "Fail Safe," "Dr. Strangelove," "The Hunt for Red October," "Five Days in May," "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." Kids today look rather dumbfounded when told that we came close, on several occasions, to World War III. A new series coming up on BBC2 intends to explore the history of the Cold War and should be interesting.

Many Cold War “What If?” questions still abound. Examples include - What if, Josef Stalin had prevented American and British supply aircraft from flying into Berlin in 1948-49? Those years from 1945 to 1990 weren’t a bed of roses on other accounts too. China's Mao Tse Tung's ‘Great Leap Forward’ led to as many as 30 million deaths, the greatest loss of life since the Black Death. The Soviet Union was incarcerating tens of thousands of its own citizens in the gulags, as were most of the other members of the Warsaw Pact. The Indo-Pakistan wars, and the repeated Arab/Israeli conflicts produced enormous casualties, but nothing like the numbers that were being slaughtered in Angola, Nigeria, the Congo, Vietnam and Cambodia.

It is hard to explain to a younger generation that such delightful countries where they now holiday such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and Czechoslovakia (to name only a few) were run in those days by fascist generals, avowed racists or one-party totalitarian regimes. I am ancient enough to remember the long list of countries you wouldn’t dare visit for your summer holidays.

So maybe we shouldn’t get too nostalgic about the good old days of the Cold War. Today's global challenges, from Iraq, Syria and Egypt, through to radicalism, energy costs and the unproven climate change issue are indeed grave and cry out for solutions.

Overall though, mankind as a whole is a lot more prosperous these days, we’re a great deal more free and democratic and a considerable way further from nuclear obliteration than we were in Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev’s time.

More Unpredictable

The world may no longer be facing a global confrontation between two confrontational super powers with competing ideologies. The current world, however, is a lot more unpredictable. Religious extremism and intolerance is the biggest problems that are creating instability. I also think that in the future, multi- faceted trade disagreements are going to escalate into conflicts between countries.

During the Cold War you knew who your enemy was and into which camps people were falling, nowadays your enemy could easily be found within.

More Insane

At least during the Cold War our adversaries were fairly sane. They were predictable. Mutually Assured Destruction made sense. Nuclear weapons were in the hands of a relative few. There was even a mutual respect for each other's spies, cultural exchanges and sporting competitions. In other words, there was some sense of order and standards that lead to some sanity and predictability.

Today however, we deal with insanity. We now have enemies who make it quite clear that whilst we value life, they value death. They hold, in many cases, an apocalyptic view of how history unfolds.

Radical Islam is now at the core of the vast majority of world conflicts. The history of Islam has been one of growth through spreading by the sword. A good question to consider is whether Al Qaida is as dangerous as the old Soviet Union? They’re certainly not as potentially dangerous. The Soviets had the power to wipe us off the face of the earth. However, at moments of truth the Soviets always backed off. Why? Because they believed in a future for their kids, their nation and their world.

Do Al Qaida really care about all of the this? Just look at the indiscriminate killing they are carrying out against their fellow Muslims, let alone what they perceive as infidels. Any group of people who have teenagers wearing explosive belts in order to commit a suicide bombing is far more dangerous than the Soviets.

The Soviet Union didn’t want to sacrifice itself. The Taliban however, seems to gladly want to if it will promote their cause. As such, the Soviets could be dealt with. But just how do you deal with the Taliban ?

So is it or isn’t it a safer place ?

I think that there are many reasons to say Yes, but probably more to say no.

In the ‘Yes’ camp, we’re certainly no longer staring down the gun-barrel of megaton bombs "keeping the peace" and all that implies. Remember, we were ready for nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Soviets and a pretty psychopathic attitude toward their capabilities. Global trade has now taken over with major nations unlikely to go to war with each other anymore for fear of loss of valuable trade.

In the ‘No’ camp, we can’t ignore the fact that extremist religious terrorists have taken the place of the superpowers. At least during the cold war, global security was so concerned about "the cold war" that minor spats and extremism were clamped down on by one of the respective superpowers.

 The emergence of radical extremism means we’re not safer now, if anything it’s more dangerous. We now have a multi-polar civilization, meaning that we have many who have differing agendas. Examples include, the new liberation movements in Africa or the Jihad movements of militant Islam. While some are more radical that others, there are always factions in each that will go to any length to further their aims, maybe to the point of nuclear holocaust. Besides that, China, Russia, and even some independent (formerly USSR) states still have the capacity to launch nuclear missiles. Add to that India and Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, and/or any of the radical Muslim states, all it takes is one stray bomb and lots of accusations to set off a global war that could still annihilate the human civilization. Don't be fooled by this period of peace, there are still many dangers.

It's less predictable, which could be worse in the long run. In the Cold War, we knew the enemy and there was (except for a few periods) constant negotiation. In today’s multi-polar world, no one quite knows the "rules," and there is much less predictability. In the long run, I think that's more likely to prove problematic.

Different threats, But They’re Still Just As Deadly

Most of us no longer have to worry about mushroom clouds suddenly appearing out of no-where anymore. We’re probably safer from total nuclear annihilation, but the hazards from religious extremism, terrorism, global warming, and from rogue states holding nuclear weapons is greater.

The world is safer from nuclear war, however as 911 and 711 has shown us, we are still vulnerable to terrorists attacks. During the Cold War we knew who had nuclear and chemical weapons. With the break up of the Soviet Union, there is far less accountability and control over who can obtain a nuclear device. We may not have to worry about a global nuclear war, but the threat of a suitcase nuclear bomb being detonated on Western soil is very real.

Before, when you had two powers, they would fight proxy wars against each other, but never with each other because it would lead to nuclear war. Now with only one superpower, and with weapons that now go on sale that anyone can buy, it’s made the world much less safe. Religious extremist want to make a point. They want to create the most damage possible. This is what we face today, a terrorist attack, a plague or a cyber attack on our banking system. We face this now. All of our weapons, tanks, and planes can’t protect us from this either. 

Through the acts of success governments, we have evolved to where we now are as a nation. Unless we take steps to reverse some of those acts, we can expect more of these insecurities. Maybe it is just a result of increasing world population, maybe technology advances or ease of transportation. Without a concerted effort to change it, I don't think the future looks very rosy. And I don't think the world is safer today than it was during the Cold War. It’s a very different world but no safer.