I am not convinced the current breed of politicians in (more or less) democratic countries sees that differently.
If ships can't get to the UK, or the foreign shipyards reduced to rubble - or outbid - then it's more effective and cost efficient then any direct kinetic action.
More are planned (the SSN-AUKUS), but it is probably still some time away.
If you buy your ships from half way around the world, then the shipyards can be destroyed before you get anywhere near them. And certainly now preventing that is politically commiting to a war on the other side of the planet which may not immediately effect you, but is likely to eventually.
But the other part is: you don't have to physically do anything. You could deny shipping to your opponent by someone just outbidding you for the output. Why not? You're already outsourcing so you're cost sensitive, and guaranteed volume is cat nip to manufacturers - no amount of strategic alliance wording is going to save you if an adversary reliably buys 10x as much.
Say, with satellite coverage to find out where any blockade runners are and a lot of cruise missiles you could enforce a blockade from a thousand miles away.
What Russia considers "a buffer zone" is really "inferior peoples we can atomise without having to open a new conflict with a foreign power." To be clear, I use the term "inferior peoples" as seen from the Russian point of view.
Soviet doctrine (not Russian) was to use tactical nuclear weapons immediately during their attempt to invade West Germany and march to the Atlantic.
Russia has nukes and got invaded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_campaign), did it use them?
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2024/03...
I don't think that could realistically work. The suicidal leader would need buy-in not only from the military command, but also from the numerous operators responsible for preparing and conducting the launches. Everyone involved would be presented wiath a choice between signing death sentenses for themselves and their loved ones or trying their luck with whatever enemy they were facing.
Too bad it's hard to find a country which isn't autocratic by this standard in practice.
US did not fire nukes during Korea or Vietnam despite several high up people wanting to repeatedly.
USSR did not fire nukes the several times they thought the US had launched. USSR did not fire the nukes during the Cuban Missile Crisis even though Fidel was adamant that they be allowed to sacrifice themselves to destroy the US.
Somehow, that generation was able to maintain a sober view of nuclear weapons. Even as Nixon himself drunkenly insisted we nuke most of the world, he was ignored.
As that generation has aged out, it seems like that respect may be going away. Trump wants to start detonating nukes again. There may be a genuine reason, like maybe we have lost confidence in our simulations and models to build new nukes and desperately need to build the next generation of deterrence, but maybe he's just a dumbass. China is going back to building a shitload of nukes, even though they had plenty. Geopolitical conflict is back on the menu the world over, and everyone is itching to claim some century old grievance to go beat up a neighbor. The Ukraine invasion and muffled response proves to everyone that if you don't have nukes, you are not going to be protected, while North Korea proves that if you do have nukes, you can do almost anything you want.
I think a nuke will be used this century in anger. I think the world will be too gunshy to respond adequately, or too split along some axis, and there will be geopolitical bickering about who is the bad guy for using N+1 nukes in a conflict.
We will have some great new video footage though.
The flaw in that annoyingly common logic is 1) countries are very reluctant to use nuclear weapons, and 2) any kind of nuclear escalation is an instant loss for your own side.
I personally don't think any country would resort to nuclear weapons in the case of an invasion or blockade, and certainly not a democratic one [1]. They may threaten, but I don't think they'd actually put that gun to their own head and pull the trigger.
[1] An autocratic one may use them when the leader is close to defeat as one last "f*ck you", because he doesn't serve his people, they serve him.