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>But that's the thing: nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to provide a strategic advantage in a conventional war of conquest I don't know what this means other

>But that's the thing: nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to provide a strategic advantage in a conventional war of conquest I don't know what this means other than we will fight a nuclear war to prevent other states from using the threat of nuclear weapons to secure their interests. But this is just unintelligible to me. > If they have no retaliation to fear, they have no reason to hold back anymore. We can demonstrate, and have, a massive increased cost to such incursions. But some nations may choose to pay that cost some of the time if they calculate the benefit is sufficient. The only way to prevent this is nuclear war. It is absolutely not worth it to maintain the stability of the current border configuration.

mcv 4y ago
> I don't know what this means other than we will fight a nuclear war to prevent other states from using the threat of nuclear weapons to secure their interests. I don't really know either. There's definitely a point where nuclear escalation is going to require a nuclear response, but if a non-nuclear response is possible and proportional while still stopping Russia's ability to deploy nuclear weapons, that would of course be preferable. There's a good reason why nobody wanted to escalate to nuclear war during the Cold War: you put the opposition in the position of either having to accept one-sided nuclear aggression, or go to full nuclear war. Both are terrible.