Comment by andrewflnr
2 days ago
The main reasons those weapons aren't used is not idealism, it's because they're not actually that effective in a battlefield scenario.
Strategic nukes in particular are a hilariously bad example here. In most cases in war, the objective is to take ground, and making the ground uningabitable is counter productive. MAD, aka "pragmatism", is the main factor that prevents their use in general.
Chemical weapons, well, let's hope MAD holds there too, to some extent. But the US to my knowledge never signed any treaties banning them. We took them out of inventory because they're not that useful to a modern, mobile military.
Nuclear weapons don't make territory uninhabitable. (Nuclear reactor meltdowns do, but they are very different.)
More precisely, ground that receives fallout is deadly for 2 or 3 weeks. Ground that has been in actual contact with a nuclear fireball might stay deadly longer than that, but that will be only a tiny fraction of the area of the attacked country.
Ok, but the basic point stands that there is nothing there left worth holding.
I disagree.
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