Wampum

Are nuclear weapons a net gain or a net loss?

First, what militarized technology presents an existential threat to your polity of choice? For the United States, and the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation, and China, the only possible answer is weaponized fissiles, targeted at major urban areas. The military and industrial capacities of each, absent nuclear weapons, is insufficient to produce coercion of the political elites of a belligerent state. Soviet submarines could attempt what Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg attempted, and came within 6 weeks of achievement in February 1917, and Admiral Donitz also almost accomplished in 1943, but inflicting cost at the well head through area denial is more certain. American heavy armor and tactical air could attempt what Marshal Zukoff actually accomplished, and run Air/Land east, or the reverse, but even without NCB weapons, both offense and defense are exhausted before trans-Atlantic, or trans-Caucus political capitulation is required. Two decades of Air/Land scholarship by both Red and Blue Players confirm that absent NCBW, arbitrary carnage involving NATO and WARSAW Pact forces fails to produce a solution that secures either extreme of the envelope of control obtained by the Wehrmacht in 1940 and 1941.

In a nutshell, the oceans protect the WW2 protagonists, from everything except large numbers of nuclear weapons. I've written about this, but in the context of Rumsfeld's attempt to convert the blue water navy into a brown water navy, to transform an institution that forces diplomacy to an institution that is post-diplomatic. I'd link to myself if I could find the piece.