Why the Cold War could look peaceful from Western Europe

Was the Cold War really peaceful?

No. It looked peaceful from parts of Western Europe, where local experience concealed wars elsewhere.

The Cold War was not globally peaceful. People in France, West Germany and Italy could regard it as peaceful because their own region was at peace. That experience does not establish that the rest of the world had stopped fighting. Arguments that armies had become unnecessary since World War II therefore rested on too narrow a reading of events.