There is no reason to call the Cold War a war

The argument

This argument holds that, once the question is examined squarely, there is simply no reason to call the Cold War a war: none of the criteria by which anything else is classified as a war applies to it, and the only thing pulling in the other direction is a nickname. Consider what ordinarily makes a conflict a war. The armed forces of the parties fight each other; there is a declaration or at least an acknowledged state of hostilities; territory is contested by violence; casualties are inflicted by one side on the other. The Cold War, across its entire forty-five-year span, satisfies none of these. American and Soviet forces never met in sustained battle; neither state declared war; no front line ever existed between them. What the period actually contained was rivalry — an ideological, economic, technological and diplomatic competition, conducted through alliances, propaganda, espionage, and contests of prestige from the space race to the Olympics. Rivalry, however intense, is a different category of thing from war, and every other intense rivalry in history is named accordingly. The sole basis for the label, proponents argue, is the metaphor coined for the standoff — a memorable phrase, but a figure of speech. 'Cold war' was striking precisely because it described something that was not a war behaving almost as tensely as one. To promote the metaphor into a classification is to mistake rhetoric for analysis. The burden of proof lies with those who would call it a war, and the defining features they would need to point to never occurred. From this standpoint, the case dissolves on inspection. Because there is no reason to call the Cold War a war, this argument holds, the Cold War should not be considered one.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The criteria are selected so as to settle the question before it is asked. If war requires that the principals' own forces meet in sustained battle, that hostilities be declared, and that a front line exist, then the Cold War is excluded by definition — but that definition is exactly what the debate is about, and it excludes a great deal else that is conventionally called war. Most twentieth-century conflicts were fought without declarations; proxy wars, undeclared wars and interventions are classed as wars throughout the historical literature. A test that would also disqualify those is not a neutral instrument. The factual claim is too strong as well. American and Soviet personnel did engage one another: Soviet pilots flew combat missions against United States aircraft over Korea, an involvement concealed at the time and documented since. Beyond that, both states armed, funded, trained and directed forces that fought each other's clients — and sometimes each other's servicemen — in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Angola and elsewhere. Millions died in conflicts conducted as part of the superpower contest. To say no casualties were inflicted between the parties requires reading the proxy wars out of the Cold War, which is a substantive historical claim rather than an application of a definition. The treatment of the name also gets things the wrong way round. 'Cold war' was adopted not as ornament but to mark a form of sustained hostility that existing vocabulary did not capture — a relationship organised around the expectation of war, with mobilised forces, war plans, nuclear alert postures and a permanent war economy on both sides. The real question is whether classification should track the means employed or the political relationship between the parties. This argument assumes the first, and its conclusion follows from that assumption rather than from any evidence.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The claim that no casualties were inflicted between the parties is too strong: Soviet pilots flew combat missions against United States aircraft over Korea, and both states armed and directed forces that killed the other's clients and at times its personnel in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Angola. [Rejecting P2] The distinction between rivalry and war is drawn by a definition requiring the principals' own forces to meet, which excludes by stipulation the proxy and undeclared conflicts conventionally classed as wars. The definition is the point at issue, not a neutral test. [Rejecting P3] The term was adopted to name a novel form of sustained hostility organised around the expectation of war — mobilised forces, war plans, nuclear alert postures, permanent war economies — rather than as a figure of speech. Whether classification should track means or the political relationship is the question, which the premise assumes rather than argues.