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to be fair, nuclear war is a bad example. if all the nukes are in the air and you have no anti-missile system you're done for no matter what. arguments like "at least we can keep the soviet side of the world habitable for later humans" actually make sense.
'course, that has nothing to do with retaliating for attempted murder. whole different paradigm.
Right, it does fall apart if you look at it that way- the soviets being dead doesn't make Americans less dead. It does make sense if you open it up to a wider timescale, though- if the Soviets knew you'd retaliate because you'd been doing that all along about the smaller things, they'd be less likely to launch a nuclear first strike. The principle of mutually assured destruction is a strong deterrent.
Certainly many on the left won't have enough self-awareness to think about it that way, but unilateral disarmament is indistinguishable from surrender.
A better metaphore would be America constantly building nuke bases and bioweapon labs on your borders and never retaliating.
It kinda does, that's the MAD principle