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[Samira Kernher]

I don't want war.

[Vikarion]

I don't want war.

Well. That's...not negotiable, in a way. There will always be war.

The question is, how bloody will it be, and how many people will it involve?

As an American, I want the next war to involve everybody but us. And yes, I phrased that statement entirely correctly.

[Samira Kernher]

There will always be war.

Because people are awful.

[Vikarion]

There will always be war.

Because people are awful.

Awful? No.

If you think that this is what this concludes, you have mistaken what universe we live in.

We are an evolved species, struggling for life, in a universe that hates us, that hates life. 99.9% of species before us have gone extinct, have died out, because they could not adapt. We, ourselves, killed off other human-like species, such as the Neanderthals, in order to survive, to thrive. We are the descendants of the most capable, the most violent.

Our heritage is one of murder, genocide, and destruction, in the name of survival. We didn't choose this - it is the way the universe is. And war is the choice of our species to compare and contrast two different social positions against each other, to find which is worthy of survival.

It's not perfect - that's why I think the U.S. should be spending its time investing in space tech rather than fighting right now. But it is fighting that got us to where we are.

But, even should we expand into space, there will be war, and conflict, and violent death. It's the way of this universe. It is survival of the fittest. You cannot get away from it. It will always be with us. It's where we came from, and it's written into the bones of this forsaken reality.

If you want to wish for something better, or blame someone, don't blame humanity. We've done more than can be expected with what we were given. Blame whoever designed this damned universe, whether a god, or blind chance, or whatever. It has made us to be what we are. We are what was necessary to survive.

Survival is the only ultimate value, until we can rewrite the laws of reality.

I only say this: that I want humanity to survive, to spread among the stars - and this, hopefully out of my own nation - as a revenge against all of reality for what it is. That life should persist, and thrive, and eventually dominate and destroy a universe so hostile to it.

[Nicoletta Mithra]

Leave evolution and the universe out of this.

1) The universe doesn't hate anyone. It's incapable of hating. And more objectively speaking, the conditions in the universe aren't life-averse either. And if you destroy it, there is nothing life would have a place in. Life depends on the existence of this universe.

2) Evolution has (by necessity, being descriptive theory) nothing to do with morality: And 'awful' certainly is a moral, normative category. Also, furthermore, cooperation playes and played a far greater role in the evolution of the human species than murder, genocide and destruction (and murder here, maybe also genocide, are again morally evaluative hand have basically nothing to do with the descriptive theory of the change of species).

Survival as used in evolutionary theory can't be a value. If you introduce values, evolutionary theory can't possibly be by what you measure them. If there are values in life and in the world - or in reality, then there are for sure more ultimate values than survival, as humans certainly don't merely want to survive, they aim to live well.

[Samira Kernher]

War is counter intuitive to survival. Especially when we have weapons that could end all life on Earth.

I'm scared enough about the future without having to worry about World War 3 too.

[Vikarion]

Leave evolution and the universe out of this.

No. Not now, not in the future, not ever.

1) The universe doesn't hate anyone. It's incapable of hating. And more objectively speaking, the conditions in the universe aren't life-averse either. And if you destroy it, there is nothing life would have a place in. Life depends on the existence of this universe.

All of our terms are anthropomorphisms of what really is. In this case, the phrase "the universe hates life" is entirely appropriate. If you were to place the universe, as a thought experiment, as a house, the area suitable for human life, would be smaller than a proton. Of all the reality we could potentially exist in, we would be instantly destroyed in the greatest proportion of it. And even in the tiniest portion that we do know, most of it is hostile to life.

Of course life depends on the existence of this universe, in the sense that it needs matter and energy to exist. But within those constraints, this is possibly the worst sort of universe life could exist in (see Krauss, and other physicists). We live in a universe as antithetical to life as it is pretty much possible to be, while still having life. If you disagree, you simply need to read more.

2) Evolution has (by necessity, being descriptive theory) nothing to do with morality: And 'awful' certainly is a moral, normative category. Also, furthermore, cooperation playes and played a far greater role in the evolution of the human species than murder, genocide and destruction (and murder here, maybe also genocide, are again morally evaluative hand have basically nothing to do with the descriptive theory of the change of species).

Evolution is descriptive. How we got here is descriptive. However, your premises are flawed. First, the fact that something is descriptive does not mean that it does not also prescribe, assuming that one has certain values, such as "survive". I hold such values.

In addition, violence between living beings has been the greatest and most constant factor of life on earth. Of course people have cooperated. Of course people have lived together. No one is arguing that, except, perhaps, your mental straw-man of me you constructed to argue against because it would make you feel better.

What I am saying is that violence between persons, between cultures, between societies, is inevitable, because of the universe we live in. We live in a universe of scarce resources, locations, and opportunities. We live in a universe in which "survival of the most adaptive" is an ironclad rule. We live in a universe which designed us, not the other way around.

And because of that, the future of humanity will necessarily conform to those realities. To claim otherwise is the height of unjustified arrogance and hyperactive pride.

Survival as used in evolutionary theory can't be a value. If you introduce values, evolutionary theory can't possibly be by what you measure them. If there are values in life and in the world - or in reality, then there are for sure more ultimate values than survival, as humans certainly don't merely want to survive, they aim to live well.

Of course survival can be a value. I am valuing survival right now. In fact, survival is the basis of all values - for without the survival of a species, that species can value nothing. Personally, I also value survival - I may not thrive, but I cannot thrive without living to try. All lasting values, therefore, are predicated on survival.

If the species does not survive, all morality that species might possess is utterly of nothing.

[Lyn Farel]

People talking about Russia invading western Europe or vice-versa or America taking over the planet or any sort of total warfare scenario weird me out. The age where that sort of stuff could happen is done, and everyone involved knows it. All this fight is over is political projection and reputation, and a semi-nebulous financial benefit.

Nobody wants any sort of serious conflict, because they know that even the detonation of a modest amount of nuclear weapons (like the UK or Frances arsenals) would totally collapse the environment and lead to half the people on the planet dropping dead.

It's all about shifting the status quo a little bit in a direction favourable to you without breaking it completely.

That's more or less what people following the appeasement policy prior to WWII said.

While I understand the similarities, I find your analogy a bit harsh and unfair. They certaintly did not have nuclear weapons before WWII...

[Lyn Farel]

Lyn, Russia has 700k active military, at least, with 2 million in reserves. If Putin decided he wanted to be in Berlin, and went straight through Poland, he'd be there in probably not much more than two weeks, assuming no U.S. intervention or use of nuclear arms.

For example, Germany is a great country, economically, and perhaps socially, if you like that system, but in terms of military might, well, you guys (Europeans) are militarily sophisticated, but your sheer military force isn't even third-rate compared to the PRC or Russia. At a certain point, even in modern warfare, numbers will tell. And German weaponry, while good, is not good enough to go up against 1.5 million Russians. Sorry, it just isn't.

And that's Germany. Let's not talk about some of the others.

That's why, incidentally, the U.S. has pushed NATO so hard. It really isn't - if you look at past history and actions - just about a sphere of influence or selling weapons...although one would have to be blind and deaf to think that isn't part of it, true. It's been about the fact that the USSR really was an aggressive foreign policy player (not claiming that we weren't), and there is no way to deter a country the size of Russia from doing what it wants in Europe without all of the smaller nations following a "attack one, you attack us all" policy.

Should we want to deter Russia from increasing its influence on Europe? Well, that's for Europeans to decide. Most of the people who actually live close to Russia don't seem to like the idea.

As for the E.U., saying that the E.U. is more powerful than the U.S. only works if you believe that statistics outweigh reality. The E.U. is a loose coalition of independent states, often fractured, usually heading in several different directions, and, currently, rather in a bit of trouble. The whole system reminds me of the Articles of Confederacy that the U.S. colonies tried before the Constitution.

The reason that the U.S. has been having so much trouble in terms of military actions recently has nothing to do with declining power. Indeed, the U.S. is more powerful now than every before - the perception of declining power is due to the fact that other states are catching up, to a degree. That said, to portray this as an inevitable decline in American power is questionable - others are catching up, but, so far, not very much. Right now, assuming no nuclear war, the United States could easily crush any of its potential competitors, and probably two at once.

Rather, the problem the United States has is that it has been trying to embrace a humanitarian sort of war, a war in which, if you are not actually avoiding collateral damage, you can at least look like it. If you were to put someone with the war morality of the 1940s in control of the U.S. tomorrow, there would be no ISIS. There might be rather a lot of dead civilians, but ISIS would be gone.

I'm not arguing for that. I simply maintain that trying to interfere, without being willing to go all the way, is a fools errand. I don't argue that the U.S. should become isolationist, I argue that we should leave NATO because protecting Europe isn't worth the cost, whatever happens to Europe. Besides, France and the U.K. have nukes, let them deter Putin. Or not. It's not our problem, and if Putin ends up as master of Europe somehow, we can just trade with him.

I also don't think that we should be running around the world trying to prevent genocides or overthrow regimes. Every time we do, we either kill way more innocent people than might have died otherwise, or we create the circumstances for an even worse regime later. This is not always the case, but it is enough of the time to convince me it's a bad idea. So if we decide that we have a national interest in Iraq, for oil for example, we don't go in trying to liberate people and set up a government. We go in, take the oil, and kill anyone who tries to stop us. Or, you know, we can buy the oil for less than the cost of invasion. 

As it is, we went in, and we didn't get the democratic government we wanted, or the oil either. Yay.

Incidentally, if you want to know what I would do as the leader of the U.S...well, I would pull out of pretty much every foreign country except Korea. I would focus on maintaining dominance within our own hemisphere, and I would open the U.S to unlimited immigration (but not emigration) from around the world.

As for Empire...you had better damn well hope the U.S. never becomes a true empire. The U.S. has so far acted more like the old Roman Republic, so far as I can see. More of an emphasis on alliances, and persuasion. Get an analogue of someone like Titus Vespasian in charge, and the world would be a much nastier place. That's true for the PRC as well, btw. Both the U.S. and PRC have behaved much more diplomatically than they technically have to, given the disparity of strength between them and their neighbors. That's not to say that they've acted morally, it's just to say that, compared with the British Empire or the Roman Empire, they've been far less, well, imperial.

Vikarion, that's where we disagree then. France alone is something lke 150k active, and then you can add Germany, UK, Italia, Spain, Sweden, Finland, etc... All the 27+ countries that can contribute + maybe all the other non EU states that will feel threatened. Ok, a lot of them may be counted out considered the state of their military. So at worst, we are left with the core countries, which can totalize an equal if not superior number of military forces. The EU alone is 550k in demographics, which is like 3 times what Russia can field.

I'm not saying that the scenario would be easy, and Putin might blitzkrieg its way all the way through there the time for all those countries to coordinate. I'm just saying that I think I disagree with your assesment of the situation...

Anyway, that case scenario sounds so ludicrous to me that well...

Also, I never said that the EU is more powerful than the US (which sounds a bit weird and vague, i'm not really into national pissing contests...), just that their economical influence and sphere is rated first... And as you say, it doesn't say it all. It is a pointer among many. Also, the EU is no more in trouble currently than the US. We all have our current crisises and social issues, and it's true for the US internally too, which can be a real boiling powder keg in certain social milieus and inequalities. It is also true that EU is currently going through an certain amount of internal problems because it's still being built, and like anything relying solely on international cooperation... Well, it's not easy. The only thing I was saying is that economically, the EU holds generally more weight, the same way that military wise, it's certainly not the case. I only brought it up as a way to prove my point, and I sitll think it does.

If we want to speak about decline then, let me rephrase : a relative decline in power then. Although I might still disagree with your view here as well. I'm not only speaking about sheer military might alone. Maybe I will have to look for a source I had on the matter that I found very insightful, even if not american. Probably biased though, like we all are... But it was actually more taking into account the global image that the country projects on the world rather than it's military force in itself.

I would disagree with your view on dealing with IS with a 1940 mentality. You will beat them at the cost of civilian and military losses. Ok. Then what ? What do you think happened in Mali ? They got defeated and mopped up, and are now coming back from Lybia. Which means military forces have to remain there. Which stretches military budgets and logistics. I know the US has a vast military power where to draw forces... Is it limitless however ? NATO considers that the current situation will only be resolved in cooperation with the locals, a view that I might be more inclined to believe than 1940 doctrines on total warfare...

I also am not sure where you got that the term Empire necessarily implies an evil or tyrannical regime... Or maybe we don't share the same definitions ?


Edit : I also almost forgot to add that while differences there is, I would really like the EU and the US to continue cooperate, maybe on a new blank slate, rather than having to worry about petty conflicts with a country that grossly shares the same postmodernist values.

[Vic Van Meter]

Ooooh, sounds scary, doesn't it?   

Hint:  think about what the deep red countries have in common.

Well, just seems to me that the US did a bit more than just arms sales to Poland...

Yeah, they sent in McDonalds...

Look, I know there's a narrative for all this, and it's meant to inform you a certain way.  However, it's VERY important that you step far, far, far away from the conversation and just look at the world as it actually is.

America's military isn't, and hasn't, been this inescapable worldwide-influential superpower for probably 20-30 years.  They're a for-hire kneebreaker.  Nobody's fought the kind of war the American (or Russian) military was built to fight in decades.  When they have, the American military was about as negotiable as a steamroller.  But, then, that's not the war anymore.  The war in Iraq with an actual military resistance was over in a matter of weeks, at most.  The actual war in Iraq, fought against ever-shifting factions of guerrillas, took over a decade.  America, in fact all countries, are not prepared to deal with that kind of war.  They're still trying to figure out how to fight it.

However, that doesn't stop American arms companies from selling munitions.  And what you need to understand, rather urgently, is that war makes the most money during the periods on the brink, so times when those last for very long periods are very good for arms manufacturers.  How's this for a statistic.  The last time official reliable records were available, Russia was the second largest arms exporter with total exports of 4 billion dollars.  The United States was first... with 50 billion.  That's right, everything you've ever heard about Russia selling weapons, it's small potatoes compared to the money US companies have invested into that.

And, lest we forget, the US arms companies actually employ companies from around the world and in multiple states, meaning that everyone has hands in the pie.  It's why you don't see much in the realm of weapons sales regulations here.  They employ people in all 50 states and in countries from Israel to Germany.

So the phrase, "more than arm Poland", is a misnomer.  They will sell weapons to anyone that wants them as long as they can drum up fear of an appreciable threat.  Poland's more than armed already, and Putin probably just sealed them a ton of business in Eastern Europe.  This is after ISIS showed up, which, alone, in 2008, more than TRIPLED arms sales out of the United States.

Putin's playing the same game, of course, but he doesn't understand the stakes or contestants.  That's why everyone's talking about the United States here when Obama has, probably shrewdly, decided to let Putin take the heat and follow the EU's bouncing ball.  We all remember that his political situation was starting to look shaky for the first time in decades and he needs a boogeyman as much as any conservative politician.  But he's fighting from an old playbook.  He took over a piece of ground that's doing little but sucking up money and given his "enemies" all the PR they need.  He's made his oil supply seem unreliable, his intentions seem imperialistic, and his economy vulnerable to international sanctions.

His army, of course, isn't going to stand up to the combined forces of NATO, but then again NATO isn't interested in stopping him completely.  They need a boogeyman, too, and a lot of the old boogeymen in the Middle East aren't painting themselves in such broad strokes.  If we, as people, suddenly hit the brakes and decide to start looking at our domestic situations rather than fearing foreign powers, we have a tendency to tell them to do very difficult things or we vote them out of office.  It's always expedient, if you aren't interested in improving your country, to make sure everyone's afraid of what's outside of it.

So look back at your images.  Ever wonder who makes them?  Who informs you as to what they mean?  Who even tells you that these are the affairs of state for the United States and Russia even though we'd probably rather someone fix our broken infrastructure and social lattice?  A very few, but very influential people have, for the better part of human history, led us all around by the nose.

Don't buy the hype.  There's heavy metal in Iran, Starbucks in Russia, and we celebrate Cinco de Mayo in the US.  The only thing stopping a true cultural revolution in our lifetimes is that global power is based entirely on fear, and unfortunately fear is easily marketable.

[Silas Vitalia]

Thoroughly interesting read from all of you thank you for writing in this thread.

I think sometimes we like to play the what-if military thought games and we head out into the realms of the improbable.  But we all know the improbable leads to the possible sometimes :/

I don't think there isn't going to be any sort of 'hot' war anywhere any time soon with any first world countries, just not going to happen (although we are happy to keep building weapons systems to fight the last war we never fought).  Sadly we'll continue to see "third-world" countries obliterating each other's populations at a low boil for decades to come.  Hundreds of thousands of people dead across Africa, Iraq, Syria, and a lovely slow soft war in Eastern Europe that will continue for a long time.  As pointed out earlier none of the big boys are getting involved, we're happy to sell to the combatants or fund proxies.

Regarding Europe as a defensive military vs Russia on it's own in a fantasy non nuclear conflict, it's game over in quick order for a short campaign.   Europe's forces just don't have the numbers, and more importantly the massively complicated command and control and force projection required for today's sort of fighting.  The Russians are quite good at this sort of thing, and it's Borsch in France in a few weeks.  Remember the Libyan air campaign recently? The Euro air forces couldn't do much of anything on their own and were about 100% dependent on American command and control, coordination, and pointing out where the Europeans put the bombs.  This was not widely reported in the press because this was supposed to be seen as a 'European' leading campaign, but it was basically run by the Americans because the Europeans just don't have the air hardware and coordination to run those sort of sorties.  It's not a slight on the Europeans, they are (perhaps wisely), spending that money on healthcare and public infrastructure, and we spend it on fancy AWACS.

And let's be honest even at the -height- of the cold war, there weren't nearly enough NATO ground forces to do much more than be cannon-fodder to slow down Russian armored advances until a full mobilization could occur or before things escalated to nuclear.   This is a similar situation in South Korea;  there's enough North Korean artillery and missiles pointed at Seoul to basically obliterate the civilian population and the small US/Korean force on the border in a surprise attack.  This doesn't mean that NK won't be absolutely crushed if an actual campaign gets going, but the first part of the conflict those border troops are forfeit. 

The same thing in Europe, if it started the actual 'long' war would be about beating back Russian forces from their full advances gained early on.


As usual though all of our military hardware and R&D tends to be for the last conflict.  I personally feel like the current US disposition will be caught on their asses with the over-reliance on satellite/GPS/electronic coordination. 

The Chinese and the Russians are just as smart as we are. There are ways to beat technologically superior forces and bloody their noses so they don't engage fully. Detonating an EMP in low orbit and frying the local band of GPS and spy satellites would be devastating. The US forces are utterly dependent on 'high tech' for coordination.

The Chinese specifically are investing heavily in area denial capabilities.  They don't have to beat the US military, they just have to launch enough missiles and torpedos and destroy enough satellites to knock out a single carrier and keep our ships away from the South China sea.  It's a different set of priorities.

As it is I've got huge facepalm for the current F-35 boondoggle. We're spending billions on ultra high tech manned fighters when all signs are pointing to this being the last generation of human piloted air combat.   The best solution is always a mix of high/low tech.  You don't retire the A-10, you mix the A-10 with capable drones, etc.  Hugely expensive and under performing platforms like the F-35 are not going to turn conflicts, you can buy 5x the number of slightly less high tech fighters and bombers for what you pay for a few F-35's who are jack of all trades masters of none.  Or in 10 years you are throwing 100 AI-controlled expendable drones lobbing their own missiles at independently selected targets.  I think the days of having a giant floating ship full of people flying manually controlled aircraft is on the way out, and unfortunately we probably won't realize it unless one gets destroyed.   

We are in a very, very strange time period for military stuff. 

There's a brilliant sci fi short story by Arthur C. Clarke "Superiority" http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html

Basically a technologically advanced space military spends all it's time upgrading and spending on super weapons while the opponent fields conventional forces.  The new high tech weapons are super awesome, but there's always some problem and the conventional 'backwards' opponents keep winning with their 'inferior' tech.  It's a warning, great story.

[Vic Van Meter]

Thoroughly interesting read from all of you thank you for writing in this thread.

I think sometimes we like to play the what-if military thought games and we head out into the realms of the improbable.  But we all know the improbable leads to the possible sometimes :/

I don't think there isn't going to be any sort of 'hot' war anywhere any time soon with any first world countries, just not going to happen (although we are happy to keep building weapons systems to fight the last war we never fought).  Sadly we'll continue to see "third-world" countries obliterating each other's populations at a low boil for decades to come.  Hundreds of thousands of people dead across Africa, Iraq, Syria, and a lovely slow soft war in Eastern Europe that will continue for a long time.  As pointed out earlier none of the big boys are getting involved, we're happy to sell to the combatants or fund proxies.

Regarding Europe as a defensive military vs Russia on it's own in a fantasy non nuclear conflict, it's game over in quick order for a short campaign.   Europe's forces just don't have the numbers, and more importantly the massively complicated command and control and force projection required for today's sort of fighting.  The Russians are quite good at this sort of thing, and it's Borsch in France in a few weeks.  Remember the Libyan air campaign recently? The Euro air forces couldn't do much of anything on their own and were about 100% dependent on American command and control, coordination, and pointing out where the Europeans put the bombs.  This was not widely reported in the press because this was supposed to be seen as a 'European' leading campaign, but it was basically run by the Americans because the Europeans just don't have the air hardware and coordination to run those sort of sorties.  It's not a slight on the Europeans, they are (perhaps wisely), spending that money on healthcare and public infrastructure, and we spend it on fancy AWACS.

And let's be honest even at the -height- of the cold war, there weren't nearly enough NATO ground forces to do much more than be cannon-fodder to slow down Russian armored advances until a full mobilization could occur or before things escalated to nuclear.   This is a similar situation in South Korea;  there's enough North Korean artillery and missiles pointed at Seoul to basically obliterate the civilian population and the small US/Korean force on the border in a surprise attack.  This doesn't mean that NK won't be absolutely crushed if an actual campaign gets going, but the first part of the conflict those border troops are forfeit. 

The same thing in Europe, if it started the actual 'long' war would be about beating back Russian forces from their full advances gained early on.


As usual though all of our military hardware and R&D tends to be for the last conflict.  I personally feel like the current US disposition will be caught on their asses with the over-reliance on satellite/GPS/electronic coordination. 

The Chinese and the Russians are just as smart as we are. There are ways to beat technologically superior forces and bloody their noses so they don't engage fully. Detonating an EMP in low orbit and frying the local band of GPS and spy satellites would be devastating. The US forces are utterly dependent on 'high tech' for coordination.

The Chinese specifically are investing heavily in area denial capabilities.  They don't have to beat the US military, they just have to launch enough missiles and torpedos and destroy enough satellites to knock out a single carrier and keep our ships away from the South China sea.  It's a different set of priorities.

As it is I've got huge facepalm for the current F-35 boondoggle. We're spending billions on ultra high tech manned fighters when all signs are pointing to this being the last generation of human piloted air combat.   The best solution is always a mix of high/low tech.  You don't retire the A-10, you mix the A-10 with capable drones, etc.  Hugely expensive and under performing platforms like the F-35 are not going to turn conflicts, you can buy 5x the number of slightly less high tech fighters and bombers for what you pay for a few F-35's who are jack of all trades masters of none.  Or in 10 years you are throwing 100 AI-controlled expendable drones lobbing their own missiles at independently selected targets.  I think the days of having a giant floating ship full of people flying manually controlled aircraft is on the way out, and unfortunately we probably won't realize it unless one gets destroyed.   

We are in a very, very strange time period for military stuff. 

There's a brilliant sci fi short story by Arthur C. Clarke "Superiority" http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html

Basically a technologically advanced space military spends all it's time upgrading and spending on super weapons while the opponent fields conventional forces.  The new high tech weapons are super awesome, but there's always some problem and the conventional 'backwards' opponents keep winning with their 'inferior' tech.  It's a warning, great story.

Why do we talk up potential opponents of the western world like the contenders walking into Floyd Mayweather fights?  Putin's nowhere near stupid enough, I would imagine, to start any kind of war with the rest of Europe.  Those nations benefit by him being just warlike enough to scare the nations not in-line yet.  We tend to forget that this whole mess started through a gambit by a president attempting to balk at European ties in favor of Russian ties.  Frankly, Putin just did the EU a big favor by proving what a lot of people were saying about him at Maidan completely correct.

But a real hot war?  Well, let's think about this strategically.  The Russian military may be able to make it through a few nations with some kind of blitz warfare... if we're playing a gigantic game of Risk.  However, Putin did get a nice, long look at the world's ability to combat CONVENTIONAL forces.  Remember, the ten year quagmires in the Middle East were all guerilla warfare with people huddled in small enclaves.  The actual military forces, many of which are just as well-equipped as the modern Russian army?  It took a "coalition" of western nations something on the order of a week or two to conquer entire countries.  Unless Putin wants to wage a religious war of attrition (and that's only if NATO doesn't just carve up the Russian Federation), he would be dead in the water.

Don't forget this isn't the Cold War anymore.  China will very likely wash its hands of the whole business (they tend to make a profit when the US in particular gets involved in these kinds of things).  That means Russia, likely all by itself, will need to defend itself from both sides, one of which is absolutely in range of unassisted US airpower and, unfortunately, that's also the place where the Russian economy (and feasibly its war machine) derives a large sum of its wealth.  And that's only taking the US into account.  Britain would almost certainly be involved, and despite what many people even in my own country tend to think, the Brits aren't exactly tea-drinking pacifists.  A war in Iraq over questionable means is a lot different than a Russian attack on the EU.  I'd say that, by themselves, the Brits are more than a match for the western half of the Russian army.

Then you consider Russia's airpower and naval power.  In this theater, they're not even close to matching or equaling any kind of western retaliation.  While land warfare gets a lot of press, America alone could make life complete Hell for any Russian force anywhere with drone warfare.  Their development is leagues ahead of anyone else in the world visibly, which makes you wonder what they have that they don't tell us about.  That's without taking into account the enormous array of contraptions the US not only has, but markets everywhere.

Then there's the list of allies he'd have.  Putin can count on nobody and nothing anymore outside his own country.  Counting Hong Kong and Taiwan, Russia is China's tenth largest trading partner.  In front of them on that list are, in order from first to ninth, the US, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, and Brazil.  You'll notice that, at the very least, three of those countries would certainly be heading to Russia if they went to war with the EU.  As many as seven would be willing.  Almost all would be sympathetic.  That doesn't put Russia in a great position to ask them to be their partner here, especially in their own war of aggression.  Jingping's interests here lay in maintaining his economy and profiting from bond purchases, not jumping into a war that the US is almost certain to deal them considerable damage in (China's military is, at best, a few decades in development behind the US, mostly because they spent their time and money developing tools which have practical geopolitical value).  North Korea might help, but that's going to be hilarious for the above mentioned reasons.  China won't save North Korea from its most important trading partners if an actual war broke out.  Not anymore.

These kinds of things are being told to Putin by people who have knowledge of the situation.  In terms of a conventional war, Russia's position couldn't be much worse.  If the Russian army and (we're assuming universally supportive even after the breakdown of Russian authority) people decide to forego modern convenience and fight a Taliban-style guerrilla war, they might be able to hold their own for a while (though certainly not to keep anything they take).  What they need to do, more than anything, is spin what is essentially the loss of a Ukrainian situation that was turning out to their advantage into something they can call a victory.  Sort of what happened when weapons inspectors came up empty-handed in Iraq and the US had to try to spin the situation into some kind of victory so they could pull out rather than calling it a "whoops!" moment and a colossal waste of money.

Hence Crimea, east and west Ukraine, etc. etc. etc.  Not enough to actually piss anyone off, since everyone will use EXACTLY these points to get what they want.  The US stands back, and their corporations make money while their sure first-ballot victory in the World's Most Evil Imperial Organization contest gets downgraded to, at best, co-finishers.  The EU gets every opportunity to tell Ukrainians that if they'd been part of the EU then this wouldn't have happened (and I'm assuming that the prospect of essentially snapping up Ukraine is occupying the minds of everyone not involved in Greece's doubling-down on their economic bluff).  And Russia gets a little feel-good ra-ra-ra from their people by snapping up "Russian" lands full of "Russian" people to downplay just how badly this all turned out for them, their economy, and their geopolitical currency.

I imagine the narrative will play out though.  This is all, of course, assuming two things.  One, that Putin is well aware of how this is all turning out and has decided to make sure everyone looks at his playbook and agrees with his telltale signs of "victory".  The other is that people with real political-military power don't actually buy it.  Putin's got no chance of coming out with even a consolation prize if someone does something that Europe considers crossing the line from politically expedient to liability.

[Silas Vitalia]

I don't disagree, I was thinking more Risk board game style of 'this is how many forces Russia has to throw at Europe' today vs 'this is how many actual tanks and planes are ready to go' in Europe to defend. 

In that scenario before the US gets involved, before anyone else does anything, the Russians just plow through with sheer number of forces. 

They can't hold it, they can't possibly win long term, but they can blow up a ton of things and zoom where they want to for a very short period of time.

[Vic Van Meter]

I don't disagree, I was thinking more Risk board game style of 'this is how many forces Russia has to throw at Europe' today vs 'this is how many actual tanks and planes are ready to go' in Europe to defend. 

In that scenario before the US gets involved, before anyone else does anything, the Russians just plow through with sheer number of forces. 

They can't hold it, they can't possibly win long term, but they can blow up a ton of things and zoom where they want to for a very short period of time.

That's sort of the thing, though.  Russia's military sounds a lot bigger and badder than it is.  They can bully countries like Georgia, but I'm not convinced that, even in that scenario, they'd get through Ukraine and Poland before Germany's military met them.  And, lest we forget, those maps showing US military bases sort of skips over a salient piece of information.  Germany is host to a pretty ridiculous amount of NATO forces.  I think there are almost 40 thousand American servicemen in Germany alone, plus a whole host of NATO's toys.

It's one of those things that gets glossed over a lot when talking about these kinds of issues.  NATO's major strength (and the reason most countries have tried, for the sake of all that is Holy, to not piss them off) is that they can be almost anywhere in technology that reduces the strength you derive from your numbers.  Putin said, straight up, that fighting NATO was foolish, and that takes a lot from someone whose endgame here is to try to showcase strength.  The best thing to do is to try by every means possible to get what you want while making sure NATO doesn't think you're a threat.

... Actually, the best thing to do is to single-handedly become one of the largest trading partners of all your former enemies by using your people as a sort of semi-enslaved workforce, then using technology derived from those former enemies to make sure your own people are economically valuable and earn a spot at the head of the table, thereby making your country untenable to attack just because of the sheer pain of not having that trading partner.  People do not give the Chinese government of the last thirty years anywhere NEAR enough credit for essentially figuring this game out before anyone else did.  America will do its best to appease those nations where US citizens make money.

Anyway, on the subject of Russia, Putin's pretty well aware of his situation.  Russia, like many countries, sounds better militarily on paper.  They have a lot of active duty service personnel, but their technology hasn't really kept strides with the rest of the developed world since about the 80s.  They're not shopping at Wal Mart, mind you, but they're built to engage in a kind of warfare that hasn't even been the means of conventional warfare since the mid 90s.

It also doesn't help his cause that his own country houses at least one of those aspiring Islamic nation-states that the US has a bad habit of arming when it's politically expedient.  Part of his military is, unfortunately for him, going to be tied up on internal matters.

I'd say he'd make some serious progress through Ukraine and conquer places like Estonia in the about 10-12 hours he'd likely have before he'd have to engage NATO on both fronts.  So yeah, you might be right about a few of the Baltic states if we're talking about a Hitler-esque land blitz.  The terrain would be a pain in the ass, though, so I don't think they'd make it through Poland.  On the other hand, at least that would make their western front a little easier to hold once they were stopped.

Putin's biggest problem, though, would be who arrives through his backdoor.  Honestly, if it was just the European theater, I'd be inclined to say Russia could invade and hold quite a few nations for no reason but the terrain alone at least for a little while.  However, unlike almost every other war in their history, their biggest problem would be coming from the Pacific Ocean.  I think a blitz across the Pacific on behalf of a force consisting of units from the American, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, and possibly even South Korean militaries would be far more devastating than anything we're imagining in Russia.  Hell, the first two nations routinely coordinate training exercises in each others' backyards for just that kind of attack.  That's a more interesting scenario in the Tiger forest, how bits of some of the world's most technologically advanced militaries would fare against Russia's manpower in one of the densest forests known to man.

Entirely unlikely to happen, but that's a great thought experiment.  How fast could those nations advance through the east of Russia?  Obviously, that's exactly the kind of scenario that the Russian army has been practicing for since Stalin was in power.

[Silas Vitalia]

Too much land mass, not enough troops.  Impossible to conquer any really large parts of Russia.

As your front moves forward it spreads, and eventually you've got a million square miles to cover. With today's low number/high tech forces you can't cover it.  You can go straight to 'x' city and kill anything in the way, but you can't hold x, y, z, russian cities 2,000 km apart.