If the cold war was to start and USSR and US fought, who would have won it, and what would have bean next?

Answer 1

The cold war was fought. A cold war is one with out fighting basically it a war of words, sanctions, spying and have a bigger better arsenal.

Vet-USAF / Cold war Veteran have the certificate on the wall.

Answer 2

During the cold war I was a B52 pilot. I knew the intellegence, the risks and the outcome. I would be assigned an airplane loaded with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out half of the USSR and that was my plane only. I spent a week a month living at barracks withing running distance of my plane. We had bombers, missiles, submarines, and nuclear attack weapons in various places all over the world. The USSR had bascally the same amount of nuclear weapons as we did. Ours were a little more accurate. But when dealing with nukes anywhere is the same country is close enough. We and the USSR each had enough nuclear weapons to kill the entire planet at least ten times over.

That is why the cold war was fought. MAD or Mutual Assured Destruction is the reason in the history of man only two nuclear weapons have been dropped in anger. There was a lot of strutting and puffing during the cold war but no one was going to start it because no one would be there to end it. What scares me today is some little nothing country with one or two nukes who decides it is time to show the world what they have got and accually use the damn thing. When that happens who knows what the end result will be.

I flew bombers for many years, the last thing I ever wanted was to use my airplane as it was designed to be used. I believe that by doing my job as best as I could helped end the cold war long before it became a hot war.

Answer 3

Ewwww. Scary question. I think what you really mean is what would have happened if the Cold War turned into an actual shooting war.

If you are thinking of the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, America had much, much more firepower and better technology than the Soviets. American B-52's would have scrambled and the Russians would definitely have been toast.

Later on, however, there were SO MANY nukes on both sides that even if a fraction of them were launched, both countries might pretty well be destroyed. The only exception I believe would perhaps be rural areas that managed to avoid most of the fallout. Then a nuclear winter might have ensued with people dying all over the world.

Perhaps the Chinese would have rolled through and taken over the whole mess?

Just glad it didn't happen!!

Answer 4

Agree, the cold war was fought and won by the US primarily through military spending, diplomacy and to a small point the many proxy wars that was cause by it.

I'm assuming what you were really wanting is that what would happen if the cold war went HOT. If that would happen then no one would win because each time we got close to that points (Cuban missile crisis and South Korean flight shot down in 1983) both sides admitted to readying their nuclear missiles for launch. The Nuclear blast and winter that would of ensued after the exchange would kill 99% of the population. We would be effecticly ended as a civilation.

Answer 5

At one point the USSR out classed us on the Titan class stealth subs that were virtually undetectable. They were cruising very close to our shorelines and we did not even know it.

I think during this particular time the Soviets would have had the upper hand due to the fact we were cutting back in military expenditures and they were putting so much or their GNP into military build-up. But in a nuclear war with multiple warheads per missile, who really wins?--the fall out would have covered the entire world for so many years.

Today, one-on-one, I think we should have the upper hand but they are sneaky on what they actually have, and our intel isn't what it should be. Lord help us if China and the USSR unite. Great Britain and the U.S. would not be enough.

Answer 6

We almost found out in October of 1962. We didn't learn until much later (circa 1993) that the ranking Soviet Commander in Cuba during the Missile Crisis had unilateral launch authority. That meant he could launch the intermediate range nuclear missiles aimed at targets on the U.S. mainland and the tactical nuclear "Frog" missiles at American troops attempting a landing in Cuba proper.
We were about seven minutes away from a nuclear exchange which would have extinguished most life on the planet as we knew it. And the Soviets soon realized what peril they had almost dragged the entire world into. Two years later they removed Nikita Sergevich Kruschev from his position as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Answer 7

Upthcrk is right. The cold war was fought, and we (the U. S.) won . . . well, so did USSR in a way. They have freedoms they haven't seen in far too long.

Answer 8

I doubt whether the cold war ever really ended. The hot war between the Russians and the US is the one that you need to worry about. Hey, the USSR is now Russia.....remember they imploded in 1991 or so?

Answer 9

It was fought. A cold war refers to a war in which both sides fight each other somwhere else or through proxies, such as happened in Vietnam and Korea. If it had blossomed into a full blown war then we probably wouldn't be around right now.

Answer 10

Despite comments by other users on here, Russia would have won.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I am a blue-blooded American and proud military veteran, but let's be realistic.
The Russians not only had more nuclear weapons but had other countries working EFFECTIVELY for them to keep us in check, such as Cuba and the Viet Cong.
Plus, there nukes were bigger and their agents had infiltrated many levels of American Society before the CIA even got their pants on.
If we would have went to war, though, it would have been nuclear, and the world would have been full of disease and famine due to the nuclear winter.
Thank God it never came to that.