How convincing is deterrence theory for explaining the absence of nuclear conflict during the Cold War?

[Påsan]

How convincing is deterrence theory for explaining the absence of nuclear conflict during the Cold War?

Especially during these dark times where rouge states threaten to become nuclear powers I want to review the debate on how important the mutually destruction theory is in avoiding war. Was it the main reason for the absence of OPEN armed conflict with the USSR? And can the same conditions be applied to today’s rouge states of North Korea and Iran? (Remember that while none of the states have capabilities the size of the USSR, they can cause a total unacceptable cost in human lives and value in both Israel and Seoul if we assume nukes are applied)

[Sphere]

You cannot lump all the periods of the Cold War together and say that MAD was the key to preventing open conflict through all of them. I would argue that post-Cuban Missile crises and pre-Gorbochov that yes, you have to accept that nuclear deterrence was the main reason the Warsaw Pact and NATO never came into direct conflict.

But in the period between the end of the war and roughly Kennedy's first term this was not exactly the case. Certainly in the few years of American nuclear monopoly this argument has no merit for obvious reasons, but even in the period after the USSR's first test the notion that a nuclear holocaust destroying both nations would be inevitable if war arrived just wasn't a prevailing view. Amongst the General staffs of both sides nuclear weapons were still being seen as practical tactical weapons, and were still planning how to conduct "limited" nuclear war.

It is the later 1950's when the idea of MAD started to formulate. The development of thermo-nuclear weapons and substantial ICMB arsenals by both sides changed drastically the calculus of what war would mean. Also, the leadership and military of both sides started to slowly but surely reject the idea of limited tactical nuclear war (in the US the poignant moment was Trumans rebuff of MacArthurs plan to strike the Chinese Army, in the USSR it was much later in the Cuban Missile crisis when Gorbochav abandoned the idea of using tactical nukes to threaten a US invasion force of Cuba).

So this means you have to come up with a different explanation for why war did not break in this period, though it must be said this was perhaps the period in which the cold war got the "hottest" in Korea, Berlin and Cuban. This explanation must include things like war-weariness, the Red Army in Eastern Europe, the development of the UN, Stalin's ideological views that international communist revolution was inevitable etc. But that is almost a whole book in itself so I won't muddle through them here.