Mountbatten gave the bluntest expression of the assumption that distant events did not matter because the war would become nuclear within three days. The trade-off was stark: dispatching scarce carriers or nuclear submarines to hunt a raider would weaken the forces assigned to the North Atlantic and Soviet bastions. Britain might have only two of four carrier groups available, making a distant hunt consume half of its ready carrier strength before escorts were counted. Sending an attack submarine would likewise remove a boat from pressure against Soviet bastions and northern waters. The belief that nuclear escalation would end the war within days postponed the decision rather than making the raider threat disappear, a problem NATO only absorbed institutionally near the end of the Cold War.
Chapter · 29:09-32:51
The surface-raider problem beyond the North Atlantic
Assuming a war would turn nuclear within days made distant Soviet raiders seem irrelevant, but it did not solve the practical problem of countering them in the Indian or South Atlantic oceans.