General Petraeus suggested how to retaliate for Putin's possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, with more or less the approach I suggested. I think his idea does not go quite far enough.

NATO should not limit itself to the rather small Black Sea fleet. It should capture or sink every ship in the Russian navy, explicitly and carefully excluding nuclear missile submarines because we don't want to lead Putin to think that he must use them fast or lose them.

In addition, we should seize as much as possible of Russia's civilian shipping, including their giant fishing ships.

Russia would be unable to prevent this, and the effects would last for many years. Announcing the plan should have a substantial deterrent effect.

A deterrent effect is what we want. Our goal is to deter Putin's use of nuclear weapons, not punish them.