Rationality During The Cold War

During the war, every soldier must put themselves in their enemy’s shoes. One must truly understand their enemy's motives, fear, ticks etc. in order to empathize with them. From this, one can understand their enemy’s situation from their point of view. Then, the soldiers can predict how their enemies will react to different military attacks. This allows the military to plan attacks and to already understand how their enemies will react to different situations. Overall, empathizing with your enemy will allow soldiers to understand their enemies to help them be informed about what they are fighting against.

Rationality will not save us

Robert S. McNamara says that being rational will not stop two countries from going to war. During the cold war, all of the leaders were rational but they still came very close to war. He repeatedly says that ‘it was luck that we did not go to war’ showing, that even being rational could not stop a war. Today, nuclear warfare still exists and is still a possibility. The main message from the Cuban Missile Crisis that the nuclear weapons combined with human error will result in a major catastrophe and could destroy countries. Today, we must learn from the Cold war to be rational however, rationality will not always prevent war. …show more content…
He wonders if the two atomic bombs were necessary because the cities were already partly destroyed from the firebombings. As a result, he thinks that he was behaving like a war criminal because his actions were immoral. However, he thinks that these actions would only be seen as immoral if they lost the war but moral if they won. I believe that this lesson displays that everything must be done in proportion and that wars would be more civilized if both sides agree to this. I also think that if they lost the war, then they would have been war criminals for using excessive force, but they won so, no consequences were