Beautiful thing about a centralized power structure like in a communist state is that, if you hit the head (Moscow), the entire structure falls apart.
So a limited nuclear war would have worked to defang the Soviets -— and thus we would not be dealing with the Islamist or 1/2 of the crap that occurred in Africa or South/Central America that still reverberates today.
Difficult how to know how it would have turned out. The Russians were in pretty bad shape after WWII and probably vulnerable. The Germans had hurt them pretty badly. At the same time our economy was doing okay.
Then again, it was another war “over there.” Could we have sustained another war — economically and politically?
Also, we have learned in recent years that defeating the enemy is the easier part and rebuilding is the difficult part. Although Germany and Japan have done very well since the war.