It was Robert McNamara, defense secretary of John Kennedy and Lindon Johnson, who set the unit of measurement for destruction and peace in the nuclear age: 400 warheads. It would have been enough to destroy a quarter of the Soviet population and half of its industrial capacity. Of course, the same number of Soviet bombs would have had the same effect on the United States.
Today both the USA and Russia have thousands of bombs that are a thousand times more powerful than the first ones.
Moreover, the nuclear matter does not only concern the two historical superpowers anymore. There is also China and Xi’s plans to build an arsenal with thousands of warheads.
The only concept that stands is that of mutually assured destruction(*). So what’s the goal? A nuclear Armageddon?
(*) principle of deterrence founded on the awareness that a nuclear attack by one superpower would be met with an overwhelming nuclear counterattack such that both the attacker and the defender would be annihilated.