I find it endlessly fascinating that since Nagasaki the think tanks and talking heads have worked overtime trying to develop scenarios where the use of nuclear weapons might result in a military victory. This would be followed by the generals and admirals converting these theories into deliverable weapons that would be deployed, become obsolete due to technology advances or rendered useless because of political changes and attitudes. And then the cycle begins again...
The USSR's rationale on nukes was always far more pragmatic than that of NATO. There was no place in the Soviet nuclear lexicon for "tactical" nuclear war, we didn't believe that was the case during the Cold War of course but there's plenty of evidence that limited first use by Nato would either of provoked no retaliation or massive strategic retaliation and the the "escalating threshold" held dear by NATO pundits was an illusion.
But see:
http://www.armageddononline.org/doomsday_device.php
and
http://www.slate.com/id/2173108/
Fortunately we never got to test that theory.
After completing courses in nuclear targetting and fireplanning with tactical nuclear weapons one tended to become very cynical and measure the distances between West German villages in kilotons rather than kilometres. It's amazing that we thought so glibly that nuclear release could be not only justified but necessary.
Cooler heads prevailed though.
It is said (possibly apocryphally) that when President Kennedy used the phrase "full retalitory response" in his 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis speech, (see below at about 2:00 minutes) brother Bobby asked him later if he was really willing to kill many times more people than Hitler and Stalin together ever did. If true, it would seem Kennedy wanted the threat of nuclear war so very real and unambiguous that Krushchev would know it would be carried out. This threat coupled with the secret promise to remove the obsolete Thor IRBM batteries from Turkey gave the Soviets an out although it arguably cost Krushchev his job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLxgeINIBEM
Later, once the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction took over it became anathema to NATO nuclear strategists who turned to weapons like "tactical" cruise missiles, enhanced radiation weapons (anybody else around here remember the uproar over the so-called Neutron Bomb, that killed people but saved property, at least in the popular imagination). Such weapons allowed them to create situations where nukes could be successfully employed without the end of civilization as we knew it. We should be able to see now that it was all a pipe dream.
The biggest ironey regarding nuclear weapons is that they make lousy weapons if war is a political act taken to a controlled level of violence. They were created at a time when the wholesale destruction of cities and cultures were considered acceptable and were designed solely to make that destruction easier, cheaper and with greater shock value than a thousand B-29's or Lancasters dropping incendiaries and high capacity HE. Only if the mindset where killing millions in their beds is the political price one is willing to pay will nuclear weapons first use be justified. As for retaliation, it works as a deterrent only so long as those who wish to deter believe that you will actually follow through with the threat. During the MAD years, there was never any doubt that all those well trained young men who held the keys would turn them if ordered, Hollywood's
Wargames notwithstanding.
For some excellent books on the subject see Richard Rhodes
Dark Sun, on early nuclear strategies and
Arsenals of Folly on the latter stages of the Cold War, the nuclear arms race and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Apologies for the $0.02 wall of text.
