Except neither the Chinese or Russians accept the docrine of MAD. They’ve both developed offensive proxies to launch first strikes against the US and Europe respectively. The strikes would be aimed at the C&C, land and air strategic assets. Only SLBMs would be capable of responding and would be depleted attacking the proxy. At that time China and Russia invoke their mutual defense treaties with these countries and launch a full attack upon the US and Europe.
In reality China is the only one which likely still intends to do this. They realize they cannot compete with Western culture so they must destroy it to achieve global ascendency. They don’t want to just defeat us militarily. They want to replace us. They require our complete destruction.
I was Air Force Active Duty from 1976 - 1998.
We made every effort without expense in $ and lives to find out where the Soviet and ChiCom LEADERSHIP would hide in a nuke war, and put many additional resources on those targets, effectively making them very deep craters if the balloon went up.
We then made every effort to let the Russkies and Chicoms know where knew where their holes were, and we were gunning for them there.
This is why Ted Kennedy complained about all the extra bombs we had planned for certain places, which he said, “Would just make the rubble bounce.”
Little did he know.
The Russkies found out we knew their hidey holes, and along with Reagan’s Space Defense Initiative, almost freaked out about what to do.
Believe me, this was one aspect were we “convinced” them THEY (Personally) wouldn’t win.
From this, they lost their will. It wasn’t peristorka or glasnost under Gorbachev, it was visions of Chairman, vice chairmen, mistresses, and Admirals and Generals of the Soviet Union dying in a glowing rubble pile that did the Soviet Union in.
It’s one thing for Uncle Yuri to know that poor Ivan and Svetlana had to die for the greater glory of the Soviet peoples, but quite another when Uncle Yuri found out he himself would die. Same for Chairman Tse!