Words have to have meaning. The Cold War was a war only in an analogous sense. It was not a shooting war and was certainly not a world war because it did to command the total resources of either the Soviet Union or the United States.
A world war is not defined by a bunch of guys from Louisiana. Actually, there is no formal definition of a world war. It is a universal term commonly understood by the international community of nations.
The hell it didn't. The Soviet Union bankrupted itself trying to compete with us in military spending. The Cold War was an economic war and we won. But I know what you are saying. I say the Cold War was WWIII around here to try to make a point to some of the youths. They seem to blow off the cold war like it never happened or wasn't a big deal. They think Vietnam defined my generation when actually the Cold War was a far greater influence. The Cold War was a very big deal. World War III was alsways supposed to be a total nuclear exchange between the US and the USSR. It didn't end that way, fortunately. But there was some shooting. We lost recconaisance planes over Russia, US and Soviet submarines played tag for decades and had several collisions and possibly a few losses, and we fought proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, The Middle East, Angola, and other places. We almost had a nuclear exchange during the Cuban Missile crisis. I had neighbors with backyard bomb shelters. We did "duck and cover" drills in grade school so we would know what to do when the mushrooms started sprouting. People lived with fear about it all.
The Cold War was largely an extended period of diplomatic confrontation. Yes, both nations spent a lot of money trying to keep up with each other, but that did not take up the total economic resources of the United States. There is no question the Soviet Union spent far more on the military than it should have with the weak economy it had. In addition, there were few military confrontations between the two powers. The most serious was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the U2 incident. But the few shots that were exchanged were all one-sided, with the Soviet Union doing the shooting, which hardly justifies refering to the Cold War as World War III. But I do agree with you that some of the more youthful posters have no sense of what the cold war was about. There was far more tension in the 50's and 60's than in the 70's and 80's.
So the media is making a big deal about the current events in the Middle East and how we are in the middle of World War III. The left agrees that we are in WW3 and we have to do everything we can to end it. The right disagrees and says it is not WW3 because the French haven't surrendered yet.
