Cold War peace cannot be reliably attributed to U.S. deterrence.

Evidence

Was the U.S. deterrence against the USSR effective? That Moscow did not attack Western Europe might have been because of the effectiveness of this U.S. deterrence. It could also be that Moscow never had any intention of launching such an attack, or that it might have been dissuaded from carrying out such an attack by its economic weakness, dissension among its leaders, concern for a challenge from China, or some other reason. Thus, one needs to guard against spurious inferences, giving credit to deterrence for keeping peace and stability when this policy does not quite deserve such credit. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 1043

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on counterfactual reasoning and spurious causal inference in international relations.