Exactly, lunching nuclear weapons at someone and whiping out whole nations is a whole different ballpark then droping a few bombs on villages with some military bases or soldiers hidding inside it.
I am not saying americans are the better humans, but a nuclear war would be essentially a kind of hollocaust in it's own right. Killing everyone indiscriminately, what ever if they are your enemies or not. And I am not seeing really how a lot of American politicans and military personal with half a brain could agree to that, at least right now. And I am pretty sure that you will find this mindset in Russia or China as well. But, this mindset will only work as long as MAD is still intact. If that kind of ballance dissapears, it will open up a whole new box of possibilities, because the kind of emotin which would take over at this point, is fear and fear has the problem that it can bread all kinds of unrational emotions and decisions. See the Cuban Missile Crysis as best example. Or what people do, when they are in a state of panic.
Already in the 1960s, a small number of people, I think one of them was Mc Namara, already asked what a few nuclear missiles on Cuba are going to do? They didn't' change the overall game or the nuclear balance in any way. What ever if the Soviets have now 5, 10 or even 100 short range ballistic missiles now on Cuba or not, isn't going to do anything, as long as both nations have the capability to strike back at each other. And this is an assessment born in pure logic, as the US already had for years missiles in Turkey at that point, which could have been fired at the USSR in mere minutes. So if you want it that way, the missiles in Cuba simply leveled the field. And yet, it caused a crysis that lead almost to a war! All, because a lot of people, couldn't really make rational decisions anymore, or didn't understand the complete situation, because they lacked empathy.
McNamara talks a great deal about this in the documentary Fog of War, which I can only recommend to everyone, who's interested in the cold war and the politics behind it - albeit it is strictly from an american point of view, but still a very important piece of information historically speaking as Namara is very honest in his answers as far as his emotions goes.
So, with saying this, if someone is actually looking for a way to dissaple the nuclear potential of a nation, like completely, then I would argue that this is a good recipe for disaster. Doesn't matter if we're talking about the Americans or Russians at this point, beacuse if Russia would be attempting something like that, it would cause the same reaction in the US. Even if everyone would have access to such technologies it wouldn't change much, because it will simply lead to another arms race. Fear, is one of the strongest emotions humans have. And it often enough, trumps empathy - not so much the idea to feel for another human being, but to put your self in the shoes of someone else.
