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There isn’t a nuclear-armed country moronic enough to put a nuke on a hair trigger in orbit.

The easiest way to engage it is functionally identical to a space debris impact, which could happen by complete chance.

Also, what if it goes off over your or an ally’s territory? If you deactivate it then, that’s a perfect time to destroy it. If not, you could get EMP’d.

In general, leaving nukes in space long term is a dumb idea, but it would have to be command detonated.

Overall, it being destroyed is absolutely better that it going off unexpectedly. The method of defending it would have to be threats about what you do if it is targeted or more realistically hoping people don’t realize it is a space nuke, but that does ruin the deterrence value.

All in all it’s the sort of thing that would put you on everyone’s shit list.