Russia will respond with either strategic bombing of Kyiv or tactical nukes. And then what do we do? Nuke Moscow? Send NATO troops in? More sanctions?
Russia knows that we are not going to blow up the world to save Ukraine, which means escalation always ends with us backing down.
Sanctions escalation should have happened already. Too many parts of Europe are comfortable trading with an enemy.
Therefore, ending the war as soon as possible is the moral thing to do.
US most certainly has anti ballistic missile tech, however wasting exposing it on Russia is something that is not worth it when there are more capable nations on the line.
They have a much lower defense budget, and have been forced to actually be creative and clever about problems, as opposed to our throw-money-at-problem-ergo-win approach.
tl;dr Russia is not a fun opponent, and they culturally really enjoy statecraft so best to stick with statecraft.
no
>are laser-focused on hypersonic tech
no
>and we don't officially know how good their missile defense is
we do know. Its mediocre at best.
The thing about Russia that most people don't get is that even before all of this happened, there was no money to be made in terms of talent for stuff that requires engineering. Everyone who was smart was leaving the country so they could make much better salaries elsewhere.
They are a full scale paper tiger, none of their stuff even from cold war era is as good as the propaganda claimed.
Their only real playing card is nukes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreshnik_(missile)
And the S550 prototypes are looking great.
> They are a full scale paper tiger
This is a bad approach to take, even if you're right.
Sure there is a 0.1% chance it may be able to hold 2 circle or one circle against F22, considering that no F22 has ever flown publicly within its full maneuverability envelope, but it sure as shit would lose to the flying supercomputer that is the F35 because BVR missiles that are smart enough to avoid countermeasures are a thing now. Some even use optical tracking.
As far as ICBM defense goes, we did this back in 2002:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
And you better believe that we have way more advanced shit now.
All you need to know about capability is to look at defense spending of a country in totality. Nothing beats US.
Nukes would likely drag Europeans into the war formally, which Russia cant handle. They dont have resilience, and their oligarchs dont want a nuclear war any more than we do. At the end of the day they are cowards; once their actual livlihood is at stake they will cut and run to save whats left.
Russias only actual card is political division. Biden effectively gambled the US would be more politically resilient than it actually is, and appears to have been wrong. Putin gambled he could manipulate enough in the US to turn the tide.
Now that Trump has exposed it, imo it actually increases the risk because now one warning Nuke can maybe whip his followers into line.
Ultimately today Z played new cards. He saw the writing on the wall, knowing agreeing to Trumps current deal would likely be the (eventual) end of his country. So he appealed to the US voter. This bypasses Trump so it was never going to end well. Now the next phase plays out. Trump tries to discredit z; if he wins its over. If he loses we go back to the Biden plan, rebranded as the Trump plan one way or another.
Strategic victory for Putin in the meantime. JD isnt cut out for the big stage is my main take away.
My own sense is that Putin waited Biden out to see what might happen in the 2024 elections, and now that Trump is back and conciliatory there is no need for him to escalate to limited nuclear war. And my sense is that Trump understands Putin's limits and that is why Trump is keen to make peace on terms vaguely approaching a complete capitulation to Russia -- for Trump it's not his war anyways, so for him it's not so much capitulation but something that can be sold as another domestic political victory over the Democrats and the Washington establishment.