[quote=So Boerd]
Because the adversary is important to the question.Americans, what level of Chinese provocation would warrant a US nuclear strike? How about Russian?Anglo-French, at what level of Russian provocation would you support your country independently using its nuclear capabilities?Russians, American/Chinese provocationChinese, Russian/American provocationIndians/Pakistanis, each other and for Indians, China.Israelis, Arab world.I have deliberately not provided casualty estimates, as A. I just had this idea for a topic, B. That's a lot of research, C. I want to see how your opinions change once I give cold hard numbers. But, I suspect you will all look it up anyway to avoid looking disproportionately hawkish/dovish. D. Because there are different attack options.
[/quote]

For the US, it depends.

Hundreds of tactical nuclear warheads were to be used in the event of a third world war in Europe. Both sides had plans to use said weaponry to great effectiveness in order to eliminate entire regimental sized formations and great gaps and openings to conduct offenses into.

The combined overall nuclear warhead count of NATO was smaller than Russia's however NATO had more medium/long-range ballistic missiles with better guidance packages than the Russians had. What this brings into play is that the Russians would have been unable to utilize nuclear weaponry without some kind of major event that would seriously impact not the WP, but the SFSR itself. This could be anything from NATO troops (For some dumb reason) advancing into the SFSR, or maybe NATO troops on the verge of taking a major city (St. Petersberg, Moscow, etc).

Models created about a possible nuclear exchange during the later-Cold War end up with a NATO pyrrhic victory at best.