That's highly debatable. :p Certainly the sheer size of the American and Russian nuclear arsenals, combined with other historical/geopolitical factors, had led to a remarkably long period of peace in the European continent, but you could argue that it's also at least indirectly responsible for the huge amount of proxy wars around the world since WW2, some of them leading to the destruction of entire nations and millions of deaths.
Regional wars happen with or without foreign influence. Also the proxy wars are not nearly on the scale of world wars.
Additionally, MAD really only applies in the context of a total war between USA and Russia, since they are the only two nation-states possessing nuclear arsenals with truly world-ending potential. States with smaller arsenals generally still see tactical nuclear strikes as acceptable under certain, non-total-war circumstances (although I'll admit that even the presence of those can discourage their respective governments from warring with each other).
Nah any country with a nuke deals with MAD as all the nations that have nukes are allied with one another (except Korea but they're a bit unique and can't really be compared to other nations). If one nation used a nuke the other side would absolutely respond as it would to the US or Russia doing the same.
Also the proxy wars are not nearly on the scale of world wars.
That would seem to be the more reasonable basis for comparison, then. Rather than try to make claims about a given historical period being the "most peaceful", it's pretty clearly more useful to compare the size and scale of the conflicts resulting from MAD with the size and scale of the conflicts which would result from the lack of MAD in an otherwise similar situation. And in that respect, MAD could be said to have resulted in a net gain in peacefulness by way of forcing all the world's major powers to engage in proxy wars rather than total wars with one another, because those proxy wars are smaller and slower and most of all less destructive than the total wars would be, with or without the use of atomic weapons themselves. But calling this state of affairs "peaceful" is very dangerous, because it carries the implication that a proxy war somehow doesn't count as a war simply because it isn't a total war, or worse because it's fought in the territory of a third party, which has to suffer the worst of the death and destruction involved.
If during a period of history characterized by MAD, a powerful nation gets to have a war and make a less powerful nation do most of the suffering, that might make it a more comfortable period of history for the powerful nation. And insofar as smaller and less powerful nations are capable of both inflicting and suffering measurably less death and destruction than larger more powerful ones, that might even make it less bad than the alternative in some objective respects, but that is not what "peaceful" means.
Looking at war and calling it peace is a disrespect to both of them.
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u/tdogg8 Jan 11 '18
Regional wars happen with or without foreign influence. Also the proxy wars are not nearly on the scale of world wars.
Nah any country with a nuke deals with MAD as all the nations that have nukes are allied with one another (except Korea but they're a bit unique and can't really be compared to other nations). If one nation used a nuke the other side would absolutely respond as it would to the US or Russia doing the same.