There hasn't been much thinking about multilateral nuclear war. Until recently, China didn't have enough missiles to make it an issue. I don't think the smaller

There hasn't been much thinking about multilateral nuclear war. Until recently, China didn't have enough missiles to make it an issue. I don't think the smaller powers were considered; UK and France were on the US side and the others didn't matter. Also, Russia and China were probably targeted together. One factor is that don't need that many missiles for retaliatory strike; a single SSBN would be enough. The place where calculation could change is first strike since that takes lots of warheads and would leave attacker depleted. The other issue is keeping uninvolved country from launching, better tracking would help with that. But is good argument for not having nuclear war. Also, there wasn't much thought about strategy after nuclear war. I think it was assumed that the decision makers and most of their countries would be dead. Collapse of civilization and nuclear winter would mean that survival is the focus. Nobody will be worried about "imposing their will" but not starving.