Editing Total war (section)

===Post-World War II===
{{See also|Proxy war|Coercive diplomacy|Deterrence theory}}
Since the end of World War II, no industrial nation has fought such a large, decisive war.<ref name="GWUniversityWWII">{{cite web|title=World War II (1939–1945)|url=https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/world-war-2.cfm|website=The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project|publisher=George Washington University|access-date=19 January 2017}}</ref> This is likely due to the availability of nuclear weapons, whose destructive power and quick deployment render a full mobilisation of a country's resources such as in World War II logistically impractical and strategically irrelevant.{{sfn|Baylis|Wirtz|Gray|2012|p=55}}

By the end of the 1950s, the [[ideology|ideological]] stand-off of the [[Cold War]] between the [[Western world]] and the [[Soviet Union]] had resulted in thousands of nuclear weapons being aimed by each side at the other. Strategically, the equal balance of destructive power possessed by each side manifests in the doctrine of [[Mutual assured destruction|mutually assured destruction]] (MAD), which determines that a nuclear attack by one superpower would result in a nuclear counter-strike by the other.<ref name="BBCMAD">{{cite news|last1=Castella|first1=Tom de|title=How did we forget about mutually assured destruction?|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17026538|access-date=19 January 2017|work=BBC News|date=15 February 2012|language=en}}</ref> This would result in hundreds of millions of deaths in a world where, in words widely attributed to [[Nikita Khrushchev]], "The living will envy the dead".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/73/1257.html|title=1257. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (1894–1971). Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989|access-date=5 August 2015}}</ref>
[[File:Mariupol Drama Theatre Destroyed 2 (3to4).jpg|thumb|[[Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater]] (Mariupol) after [[Mariupol theatre airstrike|Russian bombing]] during the [[Russian invasion of Ukraine|2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine]]]]
During the Cold War, the two [[superpower]]s sought to avoid open conflict between their respective forces, as both sides recognised that such a clash could very easily escalate, and quickly involve nuclear weapons. Instead, the superpowers fought each other through their involvement in [[Proxy war|proxy wars]], military buildups, and diplomatic standoffs.

In the case of proxy wars, each superpower supported its respective allies in conflicts with forces aligned with the other superpower, such as in the [[Vietnam War]] and the [[Soviet invasion of Afghanistan]].