I was thinking more along the lines of Russia using short range nuclear weapons as a threat in Europe and Korea against both US forces and allies. Since Russia had the bomb in 1949, and was designing the R7 in 1953, I suspect they had the ability to put a nuke on top of a short or medium range missile before the end of the Korean war, and of course at the least deliver a nuke via bomber (not to the continental US necessarily, although there was the concept of using the pole as the route to do it via one way trip; I have no idea if the Soviet bombers had range for a one way trip in 1953).