One can argue that the Chinese or Russians were deterred by the prospect of major war, not just by the prospect of losing a limited war or winning one at excessive cost. Even if they were convinced that we would exercise every skill and caution to keep a war limited, and they were prepared to exercise skill and caution themselves, they may simply have felt that the process that leads to bigger and bigger wars is not one that they or we fully understand or can foresee, and that the risk, though numerically small, was appreciable.

XREF: Connects to deterrence theory and escalation dynamics, relevant to nuclear strategy literature like Schelling's work on shared expectations and credible threats. Builds on: "Limited war between great powers carries genuine, uncontrollable escalation risk."

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 430