The salami strategy! Thanks for sharing. It makes some good points. Basically you can't defend your allies if all you have is nuclear weapons. Mind you, maybe you don't need allies either. If anyone is foolish enough to invade you directly, you wipe them (and yourself) out. Probably no state is that suicidal to bring on such a suicidal response (isn't that a logical contradiction?)

Non-stupid enemies simply won't put you in the situation where you "have to" push the button anyway.

In any given encounter, they'll steal a minority of your stuff unopposed, and you'll refrain from the murder-suicide button because staying alive with majority of your stuff is still a better outcome for you.

The pattern will continue until someone acts irrationally and then you've got a lot of people dead for reasons that have more to do with pride than logic.

Yeah, that sounds about how it would go down to me. Ever increasing provocations until they get into a situation where neither side can back down without looking bad.