They also converted the first four vessels in the class to cruise-missile launchers with no nuclear role after the Cold War ended, which is why there are only 14 Ohios carrying ballistic missiles today rather than the 18 that were built.

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If that was so, then constitutional procedures that could not be applied to nuclear war were simply no longer relevant.

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Yet a Soviet invasion quickly became unlikely, if for no other reason than the potential of escalation to nuclear war.

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U.S. military analysts figured out during the early days of the Cold War that no effective defense against a large-scale nuclear attack was likely to be feasible.

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For India, as for Pakistan, that means no exporting know-how, no testing new weapons, but instead exploring ways to avoid stumbling inadvertently into nuclear war.

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Until, that is, even he and the man who signed the treaty for the United States, Richard Nixon, publicly acknowledged in the 1990s that such deliberate vulnerability made no sense in the post-Cold War world with its proliferating missiles and nuclear programs.

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"This proposal - developed by national security experts - is grounded in the fact that these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe serve no meaningful purpose 20 years after the end of the Cold War, and represent nothing but a financial cost and a security risk, " argues Matt Brown, co-founder of Global Zero.

BBC: Tactical nuclear weapons 'are an anachronism'