If we are serious about balancing ends and means, there are implications for our defence posture as well as our foreign policy. This could be the subject of another paper
As noted, the nuclear trip wire is too low; we have no depth of conventional forces and so have created a situation where tactical nuclear weapons are deployed. A full-scale war is going on under the cover of (using the implicit threat) of nuclear response to interference. It may be that nuclear deterrence only seems to deter Armageddon, and it might not do that with any certainty, that being the case should we get rid of it?
Sweden has already decided to ramp up its conventional military, such action helps lower the nuclear threshold.
- The very idea of a tactical nuclear weapon is crass. Given thermobaric bombs, hypersonic missiles, drones and targeting technology, they just are massively too destructive to be of used on the battlefield so it becomes imaginable that NATO could give a clear and unequivocal statement that it will never engage in the tactical use of nuclear weapons.
- Yes they are also illegal weapons of mass destruction, but it is practicality that will make them obsolete so that the right thing may be done for (arguably) the wrong reasons though I am sure the moral high ground will be claimed if this is how it turns out
- NATO could also strengthen its commitment never to be the first to use strategic nuclear weapons and recommit itself to deterrence. The removal of ambiguity is necessary to make a MAD work at all; whether anyone surviving a first strike would be willing to launch the assured destruction is immaterial – as they say in business if you need to consult the contract you have already failed.
Balancing ends and means is a necessary discipline under any circumstances, but isn't easy. I discuss difficulty of balancing ends and means here
https://brianfishhope.com/index.php/on-power/ends-and-means
Putting it in the context of the use of power here
https://brianfishhope.com/index.php/part-3-consider/on-power