ABSTRACT
Union over the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 prompted it to accelerate its missile capabilities,
and it reached what was widely believed to be nuclear parity with the USA by the mid-1970s.
Principal Critique: People’s War Doctrines as a Basis for Resistance to Incorporation into
Cold War Proxy Wars
One of the core rules of Cold War power balancing was the avoidance of direct military engage-
ment between the two superpowers. While John Gaddis characterized the period as the ‘long
peace’, it was not peaceful for much of the world, since the Cold War was fought on the battle-
fields of the third world. Although it was not the only critique of the Cold War power balancing
system, one of the most powerful alternative security doctrines emerged from the peripheries of
world power, from the territories of those contending with either the USA or the Soviet Union.
The doctrine of people’s war emerged as a reaction to the policies of extended deterrence on both
sides of the global struggle. The origins of people’s war doctrines can be found in colonial resist-
ance movements, just as the doctrines of counter-insurgency that were developed to counter
them were first developed from British and French practices in Malaya and Algeria.
