The Cold War from an Ends-Based Perspective

It is easy to look at the Cold War from both an ends-based and a rule-based perspective. However, I feel that looking at the war from an ends-based theory is what can really explain why the Cold War didn’t turn into a ‘hot’ war. 

The real reason that the Cold War didn’t escalate in to a whole blown war was the idea of  Mutually Assured Destruction – or MAD.  If the Soviet Union fired a nuclear weapon at the United States – the United States was going to fire one right back at the Soviets.  This would turn into the ultimate shootout leading to the complete destruction both the US and the USSR (and probably the rest of the world too).  It was generally accepted by the American people that the entire population dying would be a bad thing.  And maybe I’m speaking for the Russians when I say this – but I’m pretty sure they though the idea of being annihilated with nuclear weapons was interpreted as bad thing too.  Consequentialism’s goal is to ‘maximize the good’ and maximizing the good is generally pretty tough when everyone’s dead.

So it was the consequences that kept us from giving into the temptation of using our nuclear arsenal.  The consequences of nuclear war were a form of deterrence.  In this case, the only way to maximize the good (aka – live) was to not shoot the enemy.  Nuclear deterrence was the only way to bring about greater good and lesser evil simultaneously.  The US and the USSR simply used the threat of war in order to prevent the consequences from becoming a reality.  The use of nuclear weapons had the most extreme consequences the world had ever known – apocalypse.  And in the end, that is what saved us in the Cold War.  Consequenialist decision-making is what kept the Cold War from heating up.