[armitron]

If you examine the history of the cold war, you'll see that rather than any sort of deliberate control over the unfolding states of the system as a whole, we've simply been very very lucky. Stupendously lucky. If that doesn't reinforce what I said, nothing will.

Here's some folks who also think exactly that:

"Luck, in this context, seems to mean the exact opposite of control. It’s all that prevented bad outcomes when things could easily have gone in a different direction, no matter what anybody wanted. The historical policymakers who have invoked “luck” have included Robert S. McNamara, who was defense secretary during the Cuban missile crisis; Dean Acheson, special envoy of President John F. Kennedy at the time; ambassador Gerard C. Smith, chief U.S. delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1969; former defense secretary William Perry, former secretary of state George Shultz, former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, and former head of Strategic Air Command and Strategic Command, Gen. George Lee Butler."

From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/10/reason-we-...