How We Avoided World War III

Bloomberg

2 hours ago

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima 80 years ago this week is something to commemorate but not celebrate. It was also the beginning of a new era: the Atomic Age. Growing up in the latter stages of the Cold War, my generation didn't live with the sense of menace and the Bert the Turtle duck-and-cover drills baby boomers endured. But both cohorts were blessed by the absence of a large-scale war, conventional or nuclear, between the US and the Soviet Union.
Which brings up an 80-year-old question: Did the development of atomic weapons keep the peace during the Cold War? And if so, what accounts for this paradoxical result? The simple answer is the unsatisfying one: It's complicated.