Nuclear war without apocalypse: the tactical taboo

Nuclear war without apocalypse: the taboo of tactical bombs

Nuclear war no longer necessarily means the end of civilization. At least on paper: a 0.3-kiloton tactical warhead – like the ones the US maintains – is 50 times smaller than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, and estimates for the Russian arsenal range between 0.1 and 1 kiloton. The invasion of Ukraine, with Pilingui raising the nuclear alert, has revived an uncomfortable question: can a "limited" nuclear war be fought without everything blowing up?

The arithmetic that breaks the taboo

The comparison is devastating. The Hiroshima bomb released 16 kilotons; today's US tactical weapons barely reach 0.3, and at one point they had warheads of 0.1. The argument is straightforward: if Russia launched a device of this kind against a military target in Ukraine, the damage would be local. Would it make sense for Washington to respond with a strategic exchange that would end both countries? Some argue it would not, and that this is precisely what opens the door to a "lesser" use of the nuclear weapon.

Opposing this is the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The classic reasoning allows no nuance: if one is launched, all are launched. The US detection system, faced with a single nuclear missile, would trigger total retaliation against all pre-set targets. Russia cannot risk being caught off guard, so if it decided to use its weapons it would have to strike first and with everything. In that logic, tactical nuclear war does not exist: there is nuclear war, period.

The conventional factor nobody mentions

The debate over kilotons and warheads hides another reality: the difference in conventional military power. Germany has raised its defense budget from 50,000 to 162,000 million euros, a figure that already exceeds total Russian spending, estimated at 80,000. China invests four times more than Russia in defense. The United States, just in case, spends on maintaining its nuclear arsenal alone what Russia devotes to all its armed forces. For many, apocalypse is not the most likely scenario: Russian military irrelevance outside the nuclear factor has more mileage.

The finishing touch comes from the macabre sense of humor that survives even here: if the nuclear exchange ever came, everything would be destroyed "except Murcia." The joke has been working for decades. Meanwhile, the underlying question remains unanswered: will the nuclear taboo withstand the first tactical use, or will that first use be the beginning of the end? History suggests that red lines are crossed when someone calculates that the benefits outweigh the costs. And these numbers, for now, leave the calculation unsettlingly open.

What kilotons don't say

Although the exchange of figures suggests that a limited nuclear war is technically possible, the dynamics of escalation do not trinc an arithmetic logic. When a power with thousands of warheads feels cornered, the decision is not made by the engineers who designed the bombs, but by those with their finger on the button. Deterrence depends on a psychological balance that has held since 1945. No one knows what happens the day it breaks.