This is on MAX/HBO in the US without any ads. Modestly sitting there, but what dynamite. Maybe the most superb documentary ever on how the tension built and built, late in the Cold War, and how the spying actually helped to keep it in check.
From post WWII Cold War leaders had a choice: it was either nuclear equilibrium, or first strike. Induced paranoia was one of the weapons of war on both sides (we still pay for that) and bomb shelters were dug under many a house.
In the early sixties, Kennedy placed McNamara in the Pentagon and deterrence was gamed out. Dr Strangelove came out in 1964 suggesting it was not fail-safe. Kissinger was at Nixon's elbow just several years after that. SALT talks began in 1969. Thatcher arrived in 1975, about the time neutron bombs were deployed (small bang, vast radiation - mass killers, seen by some as feasible battlefield weapons).
Finally, Reagan and Gorbachev (and Thatcher) in the 80s are clued up enough to ratchet it all back, with the help of a growing economic divide. For a while, Russia was chummy to NATO and the European Union, but was pushed back out into the cold and Putin was the result.
High praise to all the well-chosen BBCs ringsider explainers and actors, their images mostly show on this IMDB page; they were extremely good, and I will not forget them in a while.
So, were the spies a plus? My vote is yes, unconditionally, even if rogue spies on both sides did great harm - there was almost certainly one never nailed at the top of the UK's MI5. And those numerous film snippets from those days.... tanks pouring into Red Square! Dramatic times. One can miss them now and then.
