I’d argue if you bomb your enemy who has mini-nukes and regular nukes, their next step of escalation would be to use the mini-nukes. On the other had, if they only have regular nukes they would have to skip this middle step and use those instead. Ergo, only having regular nukes is a bigger deterrence than having both. That, and you have some unwasted money left for education and healthcare.
Some people calculate the other way round. If the opponent only has strategic nuclear weapons it’s safe to use tactical nuclear weapons because the opponent doesn’t want to choose total anhilation.
Those people are morons. When has there ever been an instance where a massive escalation was met with a similar response? If Gondwana massacres a city of 50,000, they Laurentia will massacre a city of 100,000. Tactical nukes will always be answered by strategic nukes
Plus, there is no way to differentiate a tactical nuke from a strategic nuke until it detonates, and everyone else will have fired their strategic nukes at you by that point.
I’d argue if you bomb your enemy who has mini-nukes and regular nukes, their next step of escalation would be to use the mini-nukes. On the other had, if they only have regular nukes they would have to skip this middle step and use those instead. Ergo, only having regular nukes is a bigger deterrence than having both. That, and you have some unwasted money left for education and healthcare.
Some people calculate the other way round. If the opponent only has strategic nuclear weapons it’s safe to use tactical nuclear weapons because the opponent doesn’t want to choose total anhilation.
Those people are morons. When has there ever been an instance where a massive escalation was met with a similar response? If Gondwana massacres a city of 50,000, they Laurentia will massacre a city of 100,000. Tactical nukes will always be answered by strategic nukes
Plus, there is no way to differentiate a tactical nuke from a strategic nuke until it detonates, and everyone else will have fired their strategic nukes at you by that point.
But then a conventional payload is equally indistinguishable.