The "Cold War" label may very well be an incorrect label in your mind, but it was not World War III just the same. The Cold War doesn't mean it must preclude hot wars, battles and other conflicts taking place within the Cold War. The Cold War is a proper noun, not a description of the type of battles and wars that were fought within it. Yeah, sure, the Cold War was fought all over the world, and there were real battles and real deaths involved, but that's where the similarity ends. It's not the same as the majority of the world involved in an all-out hot war all at the same time. You can call the Cold War whatever you like, but it won't change one wit what it actually was. Whether it was a joke to many in this country is irrelevant to the fact that it was The Cold War.
Now, with history books being what they are, it could be that all of the non-communist countries invaded the Soviet Union in an all-out armed attack and they didn't tell anyone about it except you. But I would think a rogue memo would have leaked out somewhere along the line alerting everyone in the world that they had fought another World War. But that didn't happen. So you, and many others apparently, can look at the Cold War as WWIII, but when you do that you're doing nothing more than applying your own definition to things, definitions that don't accurately define what happened. The Cold War was most definitely world wide, but that's not the same as the proper noun World War.
I think I'm gonna call the invasion of Grenada "WW II 1/2" because it was the first major US military operation since Viet Nam and everyone in the world had an opinion about it.
Now, with history books being what they are, it could be that all of the non-communist countries invaded the Soviet Union in an all-out armed attack and they didn't tell anyone about it except you. But I would think a rogue memo would have leaked out somewhere along the line alerting everyone in the world that they had fought another World War. But that didn't happen. So you, and many others apparently, can look at the Cold War as WWIII, but when you do that you're doing nothing more than applying your own definition to things, definitions that don't accurately define what happened. The Cold War was most definitely world wide, but that's not the same as the proper noun World War.
I think I'm gonna call the invasion of Grenada "WW II 1/2" because it was the first major US military operation since Viet Nam and everyone in the world had an opinion about it.