>>The biggest difference I see between the current situation and the Cold War is the fact that ultimately the Soviets did fear retaliation, the Soviet leadership didn't want a huge segment of their population to be killed and the Soviets were willing to communicate with us. The jihadists place no value on life, they could care less how many Muslims would be killed (themselves included) and they are not inclined to negotiate on anything.<<
Good points. I never thought I would wish we were fighting communists but at they were atheists and expected no reward in the afterlife...
Except for a period of a few days surrounding the death of a Soviet leader and the Cuban Missile Crisis and Khrushchev's ouster we always knew who was in charge, we knew where they were and we knew how to contact them and there was a huge benefit to that. We don't have that with the jihadists.
Looking back at the history of the Cold War it seems fairly clear that, beginning with Korea and continuing until the collapse of the USSR, both Washington and Moscow "understood" without even really knowing it that a direct confrontation needed to be avoided at any cost. We were both prepared to wage "proxy" wars, but we never wanted direct engagement.