The issue has always been escalation, if your enemy takes out your forward warning systems, you have to assume a full scale attack is coming, and thus you have to respond with a full scale attack yourself, damn the rest.

This was discussed at length during the 70s and 80s, and a big reason why the superpowers started to reduce their arsenals, because there is no winner after the first nuke is launched, not even a small scale exchange can be trusted to remain small.

This is a terrifying time indeed