Comment by fc417fc802
10 hours ago
TBF a proxy of one of the nuclear superpowers (ie Ukraine using US arms) is quite different from a run of the mill non-nuclear country retaliating against an invasion using conventional arms manufactured at home. The former invites MAD while the latter is predictable and boring. Seeing as they are the substantially larger aggressor presumably they can pull out of this war of attrition whenever they feel like it.
you can look into game theory and crisis bargaining to see when and when not nukes make sense.
theyre very expensive to use, so the benefits of war have to be extraordinary to match