The severity of going nuclear in this situation would prevent anyone but a bond villain with a death wish to even attempt it. It's a valuable thing to remind people.you are a nuclear power but it's fucking suicide to actually set one off. Nukes are more powerful when you don't use them. Once you do you can't threaten people with nuclear war and also are burdened with the apocalyptic reality of following through with it. If limited scale nuclear war were viable without setting off nuclear Armageddon we would have already seen tactical nukes dropped on Iraq.