Just saw this argument on /r/worldnews, and I wanted to see a more professional viewpoint of it. I see compelling arguments for both sides.
From what I've read about the cold war, proxy wars and spreading capitalist and communist ideas to newly decolonized states in Asia and Africa was always more important than an outright war between the two nations, especially after Stalin and Khrushchev's will for coexistence. So to me, it would look like they had no real reason to have an all out war anyway. But given the few times the USSR and America nearly went to war (Yom Kippur War, October 27 1962 incidents), it seems as if MAD played a big role in preventing these incidents become full blown wars.
But again, I'd love to see a professional's point of view here and for someone to correct me and go much more in depth, thanks!
If you don't mind, I can speak a little more toward nuclear deterrence as a theory, rather than as specifically applied to the Cold War. But of course, the Cold War was the largest standoff between nuclear powers in history, so naturally a lot of the theory is based on it.
It is generally accepted by political scientists that, when two states have nuclear weapons, those two states are less likely to go to war. Since the development of nukes, there has been a grand total of one war between nuclear powers, that being the Kargil War between India and Pakistan in 1999. And in that war, no nuclear weapons were used. So not a perfect record, but still a pretty damn good one. The evidence seems pretty clear: with nukes, there is less war among great powers than without nukes.
There is some dissent with that opinion. John Mueller argued that the real cause of no big war breaking out was that World War II had been so horrific that no one wanted to do it again, regardless of nukes.
Ultimately, we can't know exactly how much nuclear deterrence contributed to keeping the Cold War from heating up. The one thing that seems certain is that it ensured that great powers no longer think they can get away with an easy victory against another great power. So, war seems less worthwhile.
There's also the idea of the "nuclear taboo". It's the idea that, even though there's no treaty outright banning their use, no one wants to be the first to break out the nukes. This serves as a kind of self-deterrence, regardless of whether the other side could retaliate in kind. Also playing into this is the destruction that nuclear weapons bring with them - what's the sense in destroying your enemy if you only get to win some irradiated rocks?
Source: Greg Cashman, What Causes War?, 362-365.
Question: Why do you think that proxy wars were more important than an outright war? Could it not be that they were more important than an outright war BECAUSE an outright war is impossible between two nuclear armed states?