Comment by jackpirate

Playing chicken with the world in order to prevent another conventional war between two superpowers... justified.

Otherwise, a hardline faction in any government could have easily pushed for it. Not the mainstream political force in the USA, most probably. (Though, who really knows, looking at Vietnam.) Also, my understanding is that the USSR was in an echo chamber that led it to believe capitalist USA would collapse on itself (hence the "we will bury you" line), so probably they wouldn't have attacked neither. Though the USSR had clearly the edge in a ground war, and I'm sure plenty fanatics could have been found. So there was still that possibility.

Of course, the perfect solution would be a perfectly-balanced economic/political federation of countries, policed by a neutral organization. That couldn't happen then, and that won't happen in the future. Neither Western countries, nor China+Russia, nor specially Arabic countries, will submit to a UN decision that violates their core political tenets, be it justified or not.

You seem to imply that "a little bit of negotiating leverage" is of trivial consequence rather than a question of how many people were at the mercy of a corrupt and perversely-incentivized bureaucrat or an abusive factory owner.

We didn't fight the cold war over which side you butter your bread on.