M3ta7h3ad Small nukes arent clean and if you use them at ground level you are still going to get a lot of radioactive contamination.You might start off with small ones but the risk of escalation from countries with them would make them unuseable in any situations where the enimy has a nuclear capability.

That leaves those countries that dont and basically as soon as you used or threaten to use one there every other nuke free country is going to make damn certain that getting them their number one priority.

Overall what you are going to do is encourage nuclear proliferation and what do you do when everyone has got them?

They have had battlefield nukes small enough to fit into a shell for a long time but they decided they were counterproductive.

The whole point is nobody wants to use nukes at all, for a democratically elected leader it would be next to political suicide. For a dictator everyone else would dump on them in self defense.

Nukes were the only reason that the cold war was so stable and why America and Russia never went head to head against each other. Its also why the Indian and Pakistani governments have suddenly stopped their usual sabre rattling at each other and have developed rather more mutual respect than previous. Neither side wants to risk a border skirmish turning into nuclear war, its bad for business, profits and tax collecting.