Should the Cold War be considered a war?

"Races" during the Cold War were tense but not warfare

Question: Should the Cold War be considered a war?
Position‹2 of 2: No, the cold war should not be considered a war
Argument1 of 6›: "Races" during the Cold War were tense but not warfare

Be it the Arms Race or Space Race, the competitiveness between the United States and the Soviet Union was only unrivaled contention, not actual warfare.

The argument

Be it the Arms Race or Space Race, the competitiveness between the United States and the Soviet Union was solely unrivaled contention, not actual warfare. Even if both nations built a deadly arsenal of atomic bombs, no war or bombing ever came to fruition, and thus no true battle ever appeared either. The Space Race itself was simply an expensive contest between the two nations to test the human boundaries of space exploration. In all, there was intense opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union, even risky accumulation of atomic bombs, but no tangible fight or war of any sort ever materialized.

Premises

[P1]The Arms Race and Space Race were contests of competition and contention, not actual warfare. [P2] Although both nations amassed atomic arsenals, no war, bombing, or battle between them ever materialised. [P3] The Space Race in particular was an expensive contest to test the limits of space exploration, not a military fight. [C] Therefore, the Cold War's tense "races" were rivalry rather than warfare, so it should not be considered a war.

Counter-arguments

The argument fixes on the Arms Race and Space Race and concludes that 'no tangible fight or war of any sort ever materialized', but that is false at the level of the wider conflict. The Cold War was fought through a long series of proxy wars — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola, and others — in which the United States and the Soviet Union armed, funded, trained and at times directly deployed forces against each other's clients, with casualties running into the millions. Selecting only the two 'races', which were indeed non-military contests, frames the whole period by its least warlike features while omitting the shooting wars that defined much of it. The term 'war' in ordinary and scholarly use covers indirect and proxy warfare, not merely direct battle between two principals, and the very label 'cold' already encodes the point being disputed — it marks the absence of direct combat between the superpowers while affirming that a real, global, deadly conflict was underway. Whether to classify the entire era as a single 'war' is partly a definitional choice, but the argument's supporting premise — that no fighting occurred — is empirically too strong, and once proxy conflicts are admitted the case for 'mere rivalry' loses much of its force.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] That no direct battle occurred between the US and USSR omits the Cold War's many proxy wars — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola — where the powers armed, funded and sometimes fought, with millions killed. [Rejecting P1] Selecting only the Arms and Space Races frames the era by its non-military contests; 'war' standardly includes indirect and proxy conflict, which this period had in abundance.