Quote Originally Posted by Geoffrey S
If you and your country are so confident that is the case, why do you still have nukes at all?
Actually, while we do have a number of them left, most of the ICBMs have been de-commissioned (or in-progress thereof) and the gravity bombs, artillery shells, and cruise missile warheads are mostly in secure storage and not on active deployment. The days of the hair-trigger MAD "system" are mostly in the past.

Short of being on the receiving end of a nuclear attack, there are very few scenarios in which it would be deemed appropriate to use nuclear thunder to make our point.

The situations in India/Pakistan/China and Israel/Iran? and NK?/China/Japan? are frought with much more tension as they are closer to the old MAD concept. MAD seems to have worked in the Cold War, but it wasn't exactly a relaxing process for the 45 years between the first Soviet Bomb and the breakup of the CCCP.