The Long Way Back to Ourselves

7.8

The World Under Deterrence

This episode challenges the name "Cold War" itself, pointing out that while the two superpowers never fought each other directly between 1945 and 1991, several million people died in proxy wars they financed and armed. You hear how historian Odd Arne Westad's 2005 account reframes this as a genuinely global conflict, not one centered on Washington and Moscow. The episode reconstructs the Cuban Missile Crisis with details usually left out, including that roughly a hundred tactical nuclear warheads were secretly present on Cuba, and that the crisis ended with both sides making concessions, only one public. It also tests whether deterrence itself can ever be proven to have worked.