Response to Charlie about Cold war

In response to Charlie's post about the simulation of the cold war we did in class, I felt that the simulation was in many ways pointless because in many ways the cold war was pointless.  When each side has the ability to completely and utterly destroy the opponent, it takes the fun out of trying to figure out how to approach the world from a militaristic stand point.  That combined with the fact that the way to "win" was to not kill the enemy was something I felt was silly, which is of course directly related to the fact that each side has tons of nukes.  I agree with Charlie on his point that there was a "realistic" (I put this in parentheses because Charlie has not idea how the Cold War actually, and nor do I, but nevertheless) aspect to the game in the fact that it was hard to predict what the other side was going to do for their turn.  I think that the game would have been better had there been a prize at the end, or something to truly egg on each side to victory.

But back to my point about how the cold war was pointless.  It's true that the expansionist Communists were something to fear for Americans, who saw that spread of communism as the inevitable fall of capitalism and liberty as they knew it.  But, the Communists power was waning well before the end of the cold war because of the weakness of their party in Russia, and all American's actions, which I agree with Charlie were more aggressive, were taken under the impression that the Russians were going to perpetrate havoc across the land.  It was as if the Americans were preparing to fight and enemy that had ceased to exist by the time they felt they were going to make a difference, making all of it pointless.