Now before you start writing up a post deriding me for advocating for war, I would like to point out two things:
- The Cold War was, importantly, more or less "cold". Yes, there were all sorts of proxy wars, but not once in the entire span of the war did the USA and USSR ever enter into open conflict, since both sides knew that to do so would have been catastrophic to everyone.
- The Cold War resulted in a great deal of scientific and technological advances - the space race alone resulted in incredible advances in a great number of fields.
The second point, I feel, is very, very important. Pretty much all of us are quite familiar with how much good NASA has resulted in, despite their budget being slashed over and over again in recent years. The Cold War provided a justification to increase their budget. Of course, I would hope that NASA would be considered important enough to fund anyway, but as it stands that sadly does not appear to be the case among the public. And NASA isn't the only technological advance to come out of the Cold War - that the Cold War resulted in an emphasis on advancing research rather than overwhelming production for military development meant that a great many projects that would not have seen even a cent today were all but showered in money, from supersonic aviation to ARPANET.
Of course, the Cold War had a great number of downsides, to put it lightly. Socially, there was a constant atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and worry which I'm sure that very few of us would want to see make a return. Politically, the era gave rise to the term "McCarthyism", which is pretty much all that needs to be said on that front. Internationally, a lot of the problems in the middle east can be attributed to proxy wars that were part of the Cold War. In a lot of ways, it really was a really bad time.
Now, I am much too young to be able to remember the Cold War, so my perspective no doubt differs very significantly from those of you who actually lived it. But from where I stand, looking back, I cannot conclude anything but that it was an absolutely massive net gain for the world. Despite how much awfulness came of it and is still coming of it (again, a lot of the problems in the middle east today can be traced back to Cold War maneuvering between the USA and USSR), the scientific and technological developments that came of it were arguably even greater in scale.
There is, of course, the question of whether these things would apply to a new Cold War. I'm pretty sure they would - the reason there was so much emphasis on research rather than production was that both sides were roughly equal in production, and therefore in an actual conflict the edge would go to whoever had the more advanced technology, and a new Cold War would necessarily feature such a thing.
Finally, I would like to emphasize that I am not advocating for a 1984-eque state of constant war. Rather, I am saying that, in specific, certain ways, the Cold War was a net good, and that it is likely that the same would apply to a future one. But enough of this particular wall of text, NSG, as now I have gotten to the questions that this post is intended to ask you all: Was the good that came out of the Cold War significant enough to make it a net good, or was it just the silver lining of a massive and ominous cloud? And is a second Cold War something to fear, or something to cautiously accept?