The quasi war is more lethal than the direct US-Soviet Cold War confrontation

Evidence

To date, each side has, apart from the Gulf War, kept the intensity of the violence at reasonably low levels and refrained from labeling violent acts as acts of war requiring an all-out response. “If Libya ordered one of its submarines to sink an American liner,” The Economist observed, “the United States would treat it as an act of war by a government, not seek the extradition of the submarine commander. In principle, the bombing of an airliner by Libya’s secret service is no different.” Yet the participants in this war employ much more violent tactics against each other than the United States and Soviet Union directly employed against each other in the Cold War. With rare exceptions neither superpower purposefully killed civilians or even military belonging to the other. This, however, repeatedly happens in the quasi war. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 584

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the contrast drawn elsewhere between civilizational war and the Cold War’s carefully bounded superpower standoff.