Quote:
Originally Posted by Targan
It doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet, so I will.
In the 1e and 2e timelines, the Soviets nuked China first, right? So when we look at the likelihood or not of either NATO, France or WarPac would be willing to lob nukes at one another and why, we need to look at it through the lens of a world traumatised by the knowledge (and no doubt ample TV footage) of what had occurred as a result of the Soviet nuclear strikes on China. I think that alone goes a long way to explaining why the first nuclear strikes in Europe, and even the first strikes hitting the US mainland, didn't instantly result in a MAD outcome. What had previously been theoretical in terms of a large-scale nuclear conflict was now terribly, terribly real.
It's one thing to use your imagination to describe a nuclear war, it's entirely another to have seen months and months of nightly TV news footage of devastated Chinese cities and the shattered survivors pouring out into the countryside.
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That, of course, is the other silly thing.
There's no such thing as a limited theatre strike or a limited tactical strike.
India stated this as much to Pakistan when they flatly stated "it is the global opinion that a tactical strike is a strategic strike and will therefore trigger a strategic response, and this is India's nuclear policy".
[Edit: I shouldn't oppose a point without supplying another method]
I use an almost total nuclear disarmament in the early 1990s to gut the world's nuclear arsenals, starting with the big ICBMs. At that point a political reaction sets in against it and there's a military rearmament but no one goes quite so far to start making new silos. So the belligerents do end up launching their whole arsenal but its only a rump of what it had been.