Tactical nuclear weapons might be worryingly flexible, but they’re useless in one of the few scenarios that would plausibly endanger the U.S.’s very existence: strategic nuclear warfare with a rival state. Battlefield nukes don’t fulfill Bleich and Jacobovitz’s moral or strategic criteria. And interestingly, a 2014 study in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists found that the Israeli nuclear arsenal likely consists entirely of city-busting strategic weapons, suggesting that generations of Israeli leaders have viewed the country’s nukes as a guarantor of the state’s long-term survival, rather than a viable tactical option.
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