Just for fun (?), suppose the unthinkable did happen and the US and Russia (or China, or...) traded somewhere in the area of 25 to 50 nukes, then what? Easily 30% of us are dead and the another 30-40% are going to die within a couple weeks. Does it matter that we died because of a bigger nuke? At that point, the only thing that would matter to me is that 1) similar or worse was inflicted on the enemy and 2) several Muslim ‘holy’ sites got hit as well.
The ‘MAD’ logic won’t stop the nut-jobs in NK, or Iran or the radical muslim. But is should give serious pause to any leader of a ‘normal’ country. So long as the US has the realisitic ability to deliver a freakishly horrific nuke nightmare (and we do), I don’t think nukes will be the weapon of choice for the Russians or Chinese.
Today, the US has enough enemies who are using economic weapons which are kicking the crap out of us. Spending billions to make the dead even deader doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Now that's funny. I totally agree with your entire post.