I don't know about "willing". Prepared perhaps - and a senior Russian army officer who defected a few months ago warned that the Russian Federation still has many ex-USSR missiles still kept maintained.

Dealing with Iran would not be as straightforward as you suggest, because Russia would almost certainly side with her.


[Why did that officer defect?

He objected to an order illegal under international law to tell subordinates to regard all Ukrainians, including civilians, as legitimate targets. In response his superiors demoted him and posted him to the front line. Basically he wanted to be no party to Putin's war-crimes.

This is not a "proxy war" even if it has expanded to something like it. Russia decided it wanted to seize Ukraine so marched in, but was surprised to find the Ukranians themselves objected. Other countries becaome involved only later.

Russia had already stolen Crimea; despite Russia, Ukraine, the UK and USA signing a Treaty of independence and sovereignity for Ukraine in return for Russia taking back ex-USSR nuclear weapons kept there.]

Why does one man have the power to make this decision? Nukes should only be used when authorized by congress. Now, think about how twisted our system is. Congress has the power to declare war, but the President can order the military to strike or nuke any country , which is basically the same as declaring war.

If Trump stikes Iran, chaos will ensue. We know that the U.S. won't be able to penetrate Iran's nuclear facilities unless they use nukes. Those facilities are too deep underground and in fact, the Houtis have bragged that the U.S. strikes have been largely unsuccessul because their missiles are also deep underground.

I really hope you are wrong. Interestingly, Trump's list of nations to be subject to his tariffs exclude Russia and N. Korea! It does include Antartica!

Russia, Chian and North Korea have other weapons now, and are already using them in what so far might be just "tests" or "probes", by Internet-based subversion, interference and sabotage.

The Russians are already occasionally sabotaging property on land and under the sea. Bear in mind the greatest bulk of international telecommunications including the Internet is not by satellite but by fibre-optic cables overland and across the sea floor. Some countries also have undersea electrical power cables or oil and gas pipelines between each other, also potential targets.

The problem with conventional war for the aggressor is that he is taking a gamble and knows he will lose a huge number of people and vast amount of equipment. If a territorial ambition it also means taking over a physically ruined country. If he also If he uses nuclear weapons he also risks not only similar ones landing on his territory, but also the radioactive fall-out drifting down onto his own land.

If an all-out nuclear war ever broke out no-one would "win" but one side would come off less devastated than the other, and everyone including all those neutral and otherwise unaffected would suffer for decades to come.

So any major future war is more likely to something very different from the past.

Until the First World War, fighting was by armies and navies slugging it out. The fighting had relatively little effect on the non-combatants civilians other than conscription, looting by passing soldiers and damage to farm land. Air attacks on cities started in WW1 and WW2 saw the start of widespread damage to cities, culminating in the nuclear fission bombs dropped on Hisoshima and Nagasaki, and the partition of Europe.

The Cold War was a nuclear threat stand-off between "The West" and the USSR; with America apparently using Western Europe as both ally and sacrificial buffer. The Pentagon even placed nuclear warhead missiles in European countries with no intention to seek the host's permission to use them.

It was also the era in which the nuclear hydrogen-fusion bomb was developed; a weapon far more powerful than the uranium-fission weapon. The two fission bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 had "yields" <20kt TNT. The fusion bombs are in the Mega-tonnes range; the most powerful ever tested was a Russian experiment rated at 50Mt, though impracticable as a war weapon due to its physical size and weight. A US test in the Pacific of a 15Mt bomb claimed more Japanese victims by its fall-out drifting down onto the crew of a fishing-boat 100 miles down-wind.

Hence the Cold War stand-off based on the gruesome "Mutually Assured Destruction" premise; though planning also assumed invasion by the Soviet land, air and naval forces and a vast amount of "conventional" fighting.


Now though, we have a new and far more stealthy weapon; launched by pressing [Send] on a computer programme, even a social[??]-media site....... The attacker is hidden, he and everyone around him are physically safe, there is no damage to the physical assets the attacker wants to steal or subjugate.

Backed by the odd ship "accidentally" dragging its anchor across a cable or two, by selected assassinations, by mysterious arson attacks. Or by naked intimidation (as indeed the Chinese navy and air-force are using).

It’s how I am thinking too

Its a scary situation.

We aren't doing that; we're trying to restore our adversary.

maybe we should all get together and have a party while we can

i stopped worrying about this when trump won the election. (thumbs up emoji)

We failed to disarm them.
The capitalists will always bring war!
So now the West is responding to a moment of insecurity by threatening everyone else.
Unfortunately the twentieth century didn't include a complete disarmament of the psychopathic permanent war feature of the West that runs its enormous world domination project out of Washington.
When, in the near future we say "never again" it will definitely be about things such as this gigantic war machine

Oh it’s coming… not if but when. Just a matter of when.

sum of all fears moment imminent.. but i dont think nukes are going to fly...