[safety1st]

I mean the operative word in "Cold War" is Cold. There was a lot of arms buildup and posturing, and some proxy wars in smaller or less developed countries, but no wars waged directly between the great powers. The Cold War was part of the long peace that HST predicted. I think you could argue that America's supremacy was never seriously contested by the USSR - sure the USSR had nukes, but the US had plenty of those as well, it had the better economy, overwhelmingly better navy etc. There were more chips on the strategic board than MAD and most of them belonged to the US.

[OkayPhysicist]

In the first half of the Cold War, the US's economic superiority was far from evidently obvious. The USSR's economy was growing extremely quickly, and S curves are hard to distinguish from exponential growth. With the benefit of hindsight you're probably right, but at the time I think the posturing / arms race was the rational move for both countries.

[sdenton4]

So Vietnam just doesn't count? It wasn't a small way by any metric that matters - it just happened to not be on the home soil of the us or ussr.

[safety1st]

Count towards what? The article refers to the "long peace" since WW2 which included the Cold War. This is a well known concept, there's lots of evidence to support it being real, it's a central concept in the field of international relations, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace

Vietnam doesn't invalidate the long peace, no. At least I'm not aware of any academic arguments to that effect, they may exist, I haven't studied this stuff since college.

[rocqua]

It counts, but it isn't enough to make the period after ww2 be less peaceful than the period before.

[sophacles]

Ignoring the strictly subjective "matters" bit - what metrics make it medium or large?