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Yes, but in the hypothetical different nuclear equilibrium, they wouldnt get to keep it.
The purely nuclear equilibria have very sharp rules. If theres a situation where neither party is allowed to nuke, its a free win for whoever invested in conventional forces. It cant actually, realistically happen outside a toy example world set up with it. In the cold war, I think neither party would have been willing to nuke over losing individual european satellites that somehow happen without a general attack.
I think youre just not confident enough because this mechanism is new to you. Start out small in using it. My example was chosen for illustrating what sort of thing I mean, not for being convincing. Something more realistic might be e.g. the discussions early in this war whether Russia could get away with a "tactical" nuke - they propably cant, but there may well have been a world where they could.
They could get away with a tactical nuke, it's just that doing so would incur various costs. It's just a matter of calculation about risk and reward. If somehow the whole Russian army got encircled in Mariupol, they might well start nuking intensively rather than lose the war. The US considered nukes in Korea and Vietnam but concluded the costs weren't worth the gains.
These weapons aren't unthinkable, that's just a social construct that the US likes to propagate.
Russia has been confident of conventional victory the whole time and doesn't want to irradiate land it wants to conquer, a country they want to vassalize or annex.
In the Cold War the Soviets demonstrated what they'd do if they lost a European satellite - send in the tanks!
Yeah I was to vague about this. Of course they wouldnt be strategically nuked back. What I meant is that it might have been viewed a lot more like doing the same thing with conventional explosives (modulo radiation).
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