The Cold War was the best possible outcome. The alternatives (super power hot war, nuclear armageddon) did not happen. Nuclear weapon potential was a large part of that, as was direct lines of communication. Unfortunately because the later is no longer a thing, and our president declined to extend the existing agreement (a problematic pattern), we now again face proliferation of nuclear weapons.

This is not mathematical logic. Of course you can't prove the causality of anything in history. The only way to do that would be to invent a time machine, delete the nukes and watch things play out.

There are direct quotes from Nixon and Reagan that claims this to be true. That is enough evidence for me.

> Fact: There was no world war.

Akshually there is, and WW3 has been going on since 2010. (Mostly in places that aren't Europe.)

That's been a posited theory for decades - it's not just some HN edgelord thing. There are some obvious problems with it of course and the P5 have instead taken a maximalist attitude towards keeping the genie in the bottle (notwithstanding Atoms for Peace and accommodating India/Pakistan when it became inevitable).

The 80 years thing actually happened. One can argue about MAD and the nuclear threat, but we don't have to guess at what happened.

It worked.

- Ukrainians, definitely.