In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the possibility of Germany acquiring its own nuclear weapons, the news writer had this remark:

[W]ith warheads in the low hundreds, neither the British nor the French arsenals are a match for Russia’s nearly 6,000 warheads.

This comparison is silly. How many targets does Russia face? How many targets in Russia do the UK or France, or potentially Germany, face, whether individually or together?

The match is whether the Europeans have enough warheads and delivery systems to survive an initial Russian attack targeted on those systems, to launch against targets in Russia (and Belorussia and Kaliningrad, since Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons there), to relaunch against targets necessitated by systems failures, and to launch again against additional targets in successive waves. Especially that last, since Russian doctrine, inherited from Soviet doctrine, specifies that nuclear war is winnable and that it will be won by successive waves of nuclear attacks rather than a single spasm of everything launched.

It may be that low hundreds are insufficient for that, but it’s unlikely that 6,000 are necessary.