[quote=@Odysseus]
Yeah but the entire concept of "mutually assured destruction" is what drove the Cold War. The idea that if you hit us, you better be sure we stay down.
[/quote]And the MAD concept got cleanly broken in WW3 here because all sorts of nations used nukes against each other.
This isn't the Cold War, neither our post Cold War modern world.
This is a post-WW3 setting and while not everybody and their long-dead mother threw nukes at each other, as described in the background stories of other nations, these happened "frequently enough" still.
Nuclear taboo is both the past and in another sense reaches new heights.