There was a long running thread in Cold War thought/fiction where, in order to end the Cold war in a way that didn't involve atomic holocaust, the superpowers would have to come together, stop their fighting, live and let live and out of that we'd have world peace, and joint space missions, and the Vulcans would make first contact, and yaddah. And through this coming together, we'd learn to be better people and show all those thick skulled military men what for....
That didn't happen. Instead, the USSR fell without a fight, the US was left as the only superpower, and in the post-Cold war world got -along with the rest of the west- pretty full of hubris and big headed that it had won through superior moral standings that that the USSR and Communism were always doomed to fail, and all that.
My question is, can the Cold War end in the "good" way people thought it would end (the bad way being us all getting nuked): we come together, stop all our fighting, and become friends? Or, was it doomed to either end in war and/or one of the superpowers falling, or continue with on-and-off detente periods?