I never see anyone describing how a small nuclear exchange wipes out the nations involved for generations, not in body counts but in economic and social systems.
Wouldn’t the countries involved in a limited exchange hitting a few of their economic and population centers be somewhat removed from the world stage for a few decades while their economies and economic structure recovered and those economic hubs and the people and data making them up were replaced?
Every nuclear war game I’ve been in goes full and total exchange eventually unless they arbitrarily stop it. They often did, usually going for a few hours at most. Even those that start out kind of tit-for-tat eventually go full on, because who wants to get sucker-punched and lose all your leverage if you enemy/potential enemy has nukes left when yours are gone due to not reacting in time?
China could think they’re going to wait out a Russia/USA slugfest, but neither side wants them to later dictate nuclear terms, so they get targeted, too. Same for Pakistan/India, Israel/Iran, and the British and French will follow America, as they’d be as likely targets of Russia, too. And who can blame Russia even if the French say they’ll remain neutral?
No, the whole world suffers. Also, at Cheyenne Mountain weather data was cycled in in real time so we know which way the fallout would go at any particular time. Not just fallout but really huge radioactive dust storms. Here in the USA, winds are generally west to east, but not every day. Same worldwide. You’d think your country would be safe, but...
The only “benefit” I can say was back in my day bombs/warheads were bigger due to some imprecision of the delivery vehicle (missile or aircraft). Now that accuracy is much better, warhead size has shrunk.