> I suspect that the semi-nuclear option will get pulled sooner rather than later. Ultimately we are seeing a world where the west is extending financial, economic, societal, and diplomatic infrastructure to countries which actively disagree with the security, co-operation, and economic principals required for those institutions to exist.

There's another option, which is growing the rules-based international order (as it's called). It had been growing for decades, and despite a bad few years, it is bigger than ever from any perspective other than ~2010 - for example, consider it from the perspective of 1985. And growing it is incredibly beneficial economically, for security, and for freedom - a far better outcome.

The semi-nuclear option only achieves short-term survival; it does not build a world for our future.

The main obstacle to growing it is not China and Russia, but the far-right nativist, reactionary political movements in democracies, especially the Republicans in the US. They oppose it (though being reactionaries, have no solution with which to replace it).