With the development of small-size, small-yield nuclear weapons suitable for local use by ground troops with modest equipment, and with the development of nuclear depth charges and nuclear rockets for air-to-air combat, the technical characteristics of nuclear weapons have ceased to provide much basis, if any, for treating nuclear weapons as peculiarly different from other weapons in the conduct of limited war. It has, of course, been argued that there are political disadvantages in our using nuclear weapons in limited war, particularly in our using them first. Even those who consider a nuclear fireball as moral as napalm for burning a man to death must recognize as a political fact a worldwide revulsion against nuclear weapons.

XREF: Connects to classic Cold War limited-war deterrence theory and debates among strategists like Kahn, Schelling, and Brodie about the 'nuclear taboo' and firebreak.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 589