Israel worked with France in the 50s and 60s to build nukes. They’ve had nukes since 1967, they just don’t advertise them.
Also the link @Smapti provided shows the UK and Norway also secretly provided aid to Israel’s nuclear weapons program. My impression is during the cold war a lot of arab states sided with the USSR and Israel sided with the west. I have no idea if they were using Israel as a nuclear proxy against the USSR in the region or if that is why western nations helped Israel build nukes.
My scenario is a small nuclear power, with maybe 10-20 warheads, that uses one weapon to forestall an attack by a neighbor. Nuke the army in the field, and make it clear that if that doesn’t end it, you have some more where that came from.
With only a few warheads, no one has to worry about the “Assured Destruction” of one or more Major Powers, so the US, Russia et al. won’t feel an existential threat that requires immediate response. There will also be less of an inclination to “punish them” if they’re not the initial aggressor state - they were trying to defend themselves against a preemptive attack. And they can reasonably claim that they have no interest in nuking anyone else, and only nuked the first country due to massive provocations.
Think of Ukraine at the start of the war with Russia. Had they had a few nukes leftover from their Soviet days, and had used one to nuke Russia’s army, would anyone other that Russia have done anything? And would Russia escalate to nuking Ukraine, when they know Ukraine had a few more nukes ready to blow up Moscow?
And I thought of another possibility: What if a nuclear power nukes themselves?
A dictator has a few nukes. There’s a rebellion that’s largely confined to one or two cities, remote enough from key governmental assets that the cities could be nuked without ruining the rest of the country. If the rebellion can’t be suppressed with conventional forces, I could see the dictator deciding to just wipe them off the map.
If Putin had nuked the Wagner mercenaries when they first seized Rostov-on-Don, would the rest of the world have nuked Russia because Russia had nuked Russia?
The various chemical attacks that Assad perpetrated against the rebellious cities and regions in Syria are a pretty good proxy for this last scenario.
And although the escalatory nature of nukes is larger than from chemicals due to the much longer and more distant residual effects, the rest of the world pretty much watched and jawed. Nobody else thought this outrage was the one to end all outrages and deserved a decapitating response.
Not necessarily. The nightmare retaliation scenario for the US is if a carrier battle group at sea got nuked. It would strictly be a military target with no civilian casualties.
What if you had an increasingly desperate nuclear power losing a war to a non-nuclear power? I could see resorting to nuclear weapons in order to regain the upper hand. The non-nuclear power couldn’t retaliate, but the horrified rest of the world might be able to limit the engagement.
That desperation is what I think will escalate any conflict beyond ‘limited’.
I’m not sure if it is still the current doctrine, but there were some reports that Pakistan reserved the right to nuke its own (border) country to stop an Indian incursion of ground troops..
edit now with source
The Nasr is a solid-fueled, short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) with a range of approximately 60 kilometers. It is designed to carry a low-yield (sub-kiloton to 5 kiloton) nuclear warhead.
- Doctrinal Purpose: The Nasr is a battlefield weapon. Pakistan’s doctrine envisions using it against advancing Indian armored columns on Pakistani soil.
This points to a rather desperate strategy, only Pakistan can think of: nuking one’s own territory to stop an invasion.
- The Strategic Calculation: Pakistan believes that using a “small” nuke on its own soil against military targets would not provoke a massive Indian strategic nuclear response against Pakistani cities, thus “plugging the gap” in deterrence.
Extra edit, source is from an Indian think-tank not sure how reliable it is…
That is (vaguely, roughly) analogous to what Israel tried in 1973:
Dayan in the morning of 7 October called Shalhevet Freier, the director-general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, to a meeting with Golda Meir to discuss the possible arming of nuclear weapons. Meir rejected this option.
Existent nukes or not, mentioning the N-word was supposed to spur the United States and the Soviet Union to negotiate an end to the war. This worked, but, on the other hand, bluff or not, the USSR was not about to let Israel get away with actually using nuclear weapons and sent tactical nukes to Egypt:
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/22/archives/officials-suspect-russians-sent-atom-arms-to-egypt-atomic-weapons.html
The US, in response, went to DEFCON 3…
So, rather than “limiting the engagement”, it could have gone to Global Thermonuclear War.
Limited nuclear war is extremely unlikely.
See the book Nuclear War: a scenario. It’s very well researched.
Interesting fact- nuclear winter would not be just a few months long. To give you a perspective, nothing north of Kansas would see temperatures above freezing for fourteen years.
I think there’s one possible scenario, which just popped into my head the other day, in which they might be used. If Putin gets desperate enough, he might try a false flag using a small nuke in some part of Russia he doesn’t especially care for. He’d blame Ukrainian terrorists for having stolen and then used the nuke on Russian territory, and nuke Kyiv in response as “fair retaliation”. I don’t think this is likely, but it is possible.
As you say, consider the source. But I don’t see any legit reason for their sneering comment “… only Pakistan can think of …”.
NATO fully intended to use battlefield nukes on West German soil after the Warsaw Pact had pushed through both the Inner German (East/West Germany) border and the front lines of NATO’s armies.
Putting the brakes on an impending rout is exactly what a defensive-oriented country has battlefield nukes for. Which pretty well ensures they’ll be used on what was your territory, only now occupied by your enemy.
Conversely, an offensive-oriented country will intend to use its battlefield nukes on the enemy territory that they then intend to occupy while still hot.
Said another way, no matter who among the Warsaw Pact or NATO was going to use battlefield nukes, West Germany was going to take it in the neck. Due to their small geographical size, Pakistan is, of necessity, in the same boat if invaded for real.
Now how plausible an actual India - Pakistan war is, versus just a simmering battle of bogey-manning one another for domestic political gain is a big topic I’m not qualified to address.