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- Yes, the cold war should be considered a war
This 13-day political and military gridlock between the United States and the Soviet Union was the closest the Cold War got to having atomic warfare. As the U.S. enacted a naval blockade around Cuba once it was discovered that the Soviet Union had missiles on Cuba, the tense conflict between the two nations skated on thin ice. Even though no actual warfare broke out due to this crisis, it was an important event during the Cold War that contributed to the ongoing nuclear arms race all the more.
The argument
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 is, for proponents of this position, the clearest proof that the Cold War was a genuine war and not merely a diplomatic rivalry. For thirteen days, the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of direct nuclear conflict after American reconnaissance discovered Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba, within striking distance of the US mainland. President Kennedy imposed a naval blockade, US forces were raised to a heightened state of alert, and the two superpowers confronted each other with the real and immediate possibility that the standoff would escalate into a nuclear exchange capable of killing tens of millions. Proponents argue that this was warfare in every meaningful sense except the firing of the weapons. Armed forces were fully mobilised and deployed, military commanders prepared for combat, and the confrontation was a direct trial of strength between the two powers in which each was prepared to use force. That the crisis was resolved through negotiation rather than launch does not make it less of a military confrontation; it makes it a war that came within hours of turning catastrophic. The participants experienced it as such — the world genuinely believed it might be witnessing the start of a Third World War. A conflict in which two nations mobilise their militaries, threaten one another with annihilation, and bring the planet to the edge of nuclear destruction is, on this argument, plainly a war, even if the decisive shots were never fired. The Cuban Missile Crisis shows that the hostility between the superpowers was not abstract rivalry but armed confrontation with the highest possible stakes. Because the Cold War produced the Cuban Missile Crisis, this argument holds, it should be considered a war.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Those who hold the Cold War was not, strictly, a war reply that the defining feature of war is sustained armed combat between belligerents, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is notable precisely because no shots were fired — it was a confrontation resolved by diplomacy and deterrence, that is, by the avoidance of war. A thirteen-day standoff, however dangerous, is a crisis short of war, not war itself; by the argument's logic any tense armed standoff that ends without fighting would count as a 'war,' draining the term of meaning. They add that 'cold war' is the conventional label exactly because the superpowers never fought each other directly, channelling their rivalry into proxy conflicts, arms races and diplomacy rather than mutual combat.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Standing on the brink of conflict is the opposite of engaging in it; the crisis is remembered as war narrowly avoided, not war conducted. [Rejecting P2] Mobilising forces in a standoff that ends without combat is deterrence and brinkmanship, not warfare; treating every armed standoff resolved peacefully as a 'war' empties the term of meaning. [Rejecting P3] That it was resolved by negotiation rather than launch is exactly why it counts as a crisis short of war rather than an instance of war.