It is more than that, the first Cold War had bureaucracies on both sides staffed with 10’s of thousands of people who had just survived WWII, were reluctant to engage in total war - at least in Europe/USA, and had nothing like modern drone technology, cyber warfare, or MANPADS.

This war can turn into a conflagration any moment when either Russia is pressured to act domestically or NATO collectively. Russia’s economy is in collapse, and the causality numbers for the Russian-Ukrainian conflict are going to put the same sort of pressure on Putin that the Soviet-Afghan war’s numbers did on Brezhnev/Gorbachev. Putin doesn’t have the manpower to occupy Ukraine, so in the end even a withdrawal of Russian forces will now spark a bloody retreat which can keep escalating the conflict ever further with NATO involvement.

Every NATO country has its own domestic cauldron of personalities/issues so any one of them could end up in a hyper-nationalist turn and go to a war footing. The US’s constant imperial wars alone has shown why NATO is so dangerous. Many countries the world over would have been justified launching attacks on the US since NATO’s inception, and then what? NATO responds by leveling the country defending itself? NATO at inception had the opportunity to renounce wars of imperialism. It chose instead to act as a conduit for them.

I don’t hold much hope of either Putin or the dozens of NATO members who are involved to be the adults in the room on this. The generation that knew total war in Europe and the US is almost all gone. Nationalism is the curse that keeps on giving. Without a serious international security organization - without veto powers - this world is in for a rough ride going into 2022 imho.