The Cold War never went nuclear, and most people credit deterrence - the idea that both sides knew a first strike would bring annihilation in return. But that logic only works if both sides can actually see the missiles coming. George Friedman argues that this is the part of the story that gets overlooked: the satellites that made mutually assured destruction possible in the first place.
As "Hvylya" reports, Friedman, chairman of Geopolitical Futures, explored this history in a new episode of Talking Geopolitics. "The reason there was never a nuclear war is that both sides had radar systems far enough away from the attack that they would have at least ten, fifteen, twenty minutes of warning," Friedman said. "In that period of time you could launch your own missiles."
But radar had limitations. It could be jammed, and radar installations were vulnerable to attack. So both superpowers turned to space. Friedman noted a striking coincidence: "The first Russian satellite and the first American satellite were launched within a few weeks of each other." He added: "I have always wondered whether there was a collaboration to keep mutually assured destruction in place."
Once satellites could detect missile launches from orbit, the guarantee of retaliation became much harder to undermine. "Now you could sense a launch from space. You could see them. You could give that information to Cheyenne Mountain in the United States, which is the base we do have, and launch a counterattack," Friedman explained. The result was a system where neither side could hope to strike first without being destroyed in return.
"It is a terrible thing to say - that the ability of both sides to destroy each other kept us from doing it," Friedman acknowledged. Yet that is precisely what happened. The United States and the Soviet Union fought proxy wars across the globe - in Vietnam, the Congo, and elsewhere - but never engaged each other directly.
The satellites that made this possible are still in orbit, and their modern successors now serve a much broader function: guiding the drones and precision weapons that define every active conflict from Ukraine to the Persian Gulf.
"Hvylya" earlier examined why no single nuclear arms deal can satisfy the United States, Russia, and China simultaneously.