Originally Posted by
Janizary
First of all, tensions between the superpowers were much higher during the Cold War.
Well you have to remember the historical circumstances during WWI. Their was a heavy alliance system between the nations involved and Europe was CONSTANTLY at war until the 20th century. War-mongering nations with strong ties and bitter hatred for each other culminated into the first World War. Nowadays, nations are so heavily dependent on each other for a lot of things like energy, trade, money, etc. Plus, the United Nations acts as a barrier for any multinational conflict as trade, humanitarian, and financial activity to an aggressor can be frozen. AND communication between nations were exceedingly bad externally and internally. Meaning that the people within the nations were basically fed lies directly from their government to paint the opposing nations as evil and such. Externally, nations can communicate to one another in a matter of seconds through direct phone calls between the leaders of nations.
We also have a lot of of nukes which were never really set off during the Cold War (although we did come really, really, really close! during the Cuban Missile Crisis). Nukes are a big deterrent to total war for obv reasons.
tl;dr we have learned and grown from the previous wars (and cold war).