> The Cold War didn’t become a Nuclear War because both powers realized in some capacity that an arms race spurred by this very assumption that the other is cre

> The Cold War didn’t become a Nuclear War because both powers realized in some capacity that an arms race spurred by this very assumption that the other is creating ever more advanced technology which could threaten one’s power would ultimately just result in each country annihilating the other in the name of self defense/preserving power/stability/“peace”. I think the Cold War stayed cold because the potential downside of using weapons outweighed the potential benefits—-the use of a single nuke could only bring marginal benefits, but at the risk of Armageddon. > To argue that dangerous/unethical/X research must be done just because a potential adversary is also doing that research is what armed the world with the nuclear option in the first place. What was the alternative? To bury our heads in the sand and hope that the Nazis, Japanese, and Soviets were too scrupulous to pursue a strategic advantage? C’mon. Unilateral disarmament isn’t moral. It’s naive and dangerous.