So, in the Cold War, when NATO would do conventional war games, they almost always lost. (1) At some point or another NATO ran out of troops and a Soviet tank a

So, in the Cold War, when NATO would do conventional war games, they almost always lost. (1) At some point or another NATO ran out of troops and a Soviet tank army Operational Maneuver Group broke through and there were no NATO forces left to stop them. At that point it becomes a political question: will the NATO political leaders (most importantly West Germany) allow the use of nuclear weapons on their own territory, killing their own civilians? (2) Some people thought that 'neutron bombs' were destabilizing because they made it more likely that, under those circumstances, the West German government would say "yes, let's go nuclear" and then that would lead to an escalation chain and pretty quickly it's Dr. Strangelove. (That all depends on the idea that a conventional NATO-Warsaw Pact war was even possible, which I'm not sure is true.) But that's why some people made it such a big deal, they thought that a bomb that had almost no fall-out might lead to nuclear weapons use, it's the political not engineering consequences of deployment that worried them. The engineering is not the constraint, in fact it's actually barely easier to build one. 1: Looking at the capabilities that the Soviet Army was supposed to have, not necessarily the capabilities that they actually had, the Soviet Army should have crushed NATO conventionally from anytime ~1950 on. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine reminds us, armies are not always actually at the level they claim to be. 2: The French- who were sort of in and sort of out of the NATO command structure- answer to this question was the Pluton missile which was not capable of reaching East Germany, could only hit targets in West Germany (from bases in France- it was a mobile missile that could theoretically drive into West Germany, but... come on now). So they had the ability to engage targets in West Germany, and there was no question of their political leaders: they were 100% totally willing to nuke Germany rather than let Soviet troops conquer their country.