Why did NATO never attack Warsaw Pact? Were they afraid

I think they were afraid of nuclear hellfire.

>>3063149
Dark fire
NOW GYPSY IT'S YOUR TURN

>>3063145
Mutually assured destruction is probably the best guess and that both the Soviets and NATO weren't run by a bunch of lunatics. Also for the fact that if the war didn't go nuclear until a few weeks later, expect hundreds of thousands of NATO/Soviet and Warpact casualties.

>>3063152
THAT BURNING
DESIRE

NATO doctrine assumed that the USSR would go on the offensive in West Germany, attacking through the Fulda Gap and over the North German Plain. NATO would have used nukes if the Soviets reached the Rhine.

>>3063145
because of something called nuclear deterrence. a conventional war would lead to hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more casualties in the highly lethal battlefield of 1977-1987. Neither side's population would have a stomach for such carnage by that period of time, and it would end in stalemate with Europe and East Asia in ruins for a third time, and NATO wargames showed time and time again that if either side got tired of slogging it out and vaporized an armored division with a tactical nuclear device in the hopes of making the other side back down or give a negotiated peace, in every scenario this was tried it would lead to at the very least a proportionate nuclear response, which would almost inevitably escalate into strategic nuclear war and the destruction of the northern hemisphere, possibly a lot more.

we don't fight the Russians because even though we have an advantage in retaliatory nuclear attacks and missile defenses, that's still like saying Russia is a man up to his chest in a basement with 7 matches and America is a man in the same basement with ten matches, but the basement is filled chest-high with gasoline. nobody wins

>>3063555
I'd agree with your assessment, but your analogy at the end is...interesting

File: warsaw pact.png (40KB, 220x220px) Image search: [Google]

40KB, 220x220px

>>3063334
BE MINE OR WE'LL ALL BUUURN!