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I’m in the crowd that thinks Russia simply doesn’t have the conventional combat power to take us on in that theater. Not even close. BUT, even though a lot of people here blow it off, they have the power with nuclear weapons to utterly annihilate our country. They will never do this voluntarily because it is certain suicide for them too. But, when we place them in an existential threat someday, it could actually happen. History is full of examples of what happens after a string of humiliations, insults and economic warfare is visited by the strong upon the week. Eventually even an earthworm will turn and fight.
And believe it or not, I think many of our neocons and very top level generals would love a conventional fight with Russia. They envision it as short and sharp and us teaching them a big lesson.
We are been lead by some true maniacs at this moment in time.

And all of this so that we can defend Sunni jihadis.

Russians are still ready for war with underground shelters and food stockpiles. They still assume the entire system can collapse at any moment like it has many times in recent history.

Most of the population in the USA would be gone 1 month after highways stop delivering food and pure tapwater stops flowing.

They may lose a military confrontation but a surgical strike against civilian infrastructure would be far more devastating for us. Even without a single nuke fired

[BUT, even though a lot of people here blow it off, they have the power with nuclear weapons to utterly annihilate our country. They will never do this voluntarily because it is certain suicide for them too.]

We’re not Nazis. We will never pose an existential threat to Russia, short of a Russian nuclear first strike against us. And the goal of Russian empire-builders, including Putin, since Dimitri Donskoi started Russia on the road to empire 700 years ago, is to increase its territorial extent. Nuclear suicide means Russia east of the Urals, as well as the ‘stans become Chinese territory. And Russia becomes the Germany-sized state it was before Dimitri Donskoi get going. Because Russia’s European neighbors will grab its territory to prevent anything like this cataclysm from ever happening again.

The Russians aren’t being restrained - they are hemmed in by America’s first-rate early warning systems and robust nuclear triad. Unlike Muslims, Russians aren’t driven by eschatological motivations. Muslims may hope to induce the Muslim Messiah to reveal himself by staging a cataclysmic nuclear attack. Russians want to conquer the world, not reduce Russia to smoking radioactive ruin within the tiny rump state it was under Mongol vassalage.