Talk:Scenario: World War III (Obama vs. Putin)/@comment-26577560-20150721014136/@comment-26294986-20150721210748

You make a lot of opinions but you do not back it up with much in the way of statistics. For starters there is unlikely to be a hot war because Nuclear powers have the ultimate deterrrent. Thus conflict will always have to be through proxy. However, if the laws of physics change and Nuclear Weapons stop working Russia is in a world of hurt. When NAZI Germany invaded Russia, Russia was the bigger country with depth. Russia also had allies in Great Britain and the United States with tremendous populations and resources to draw upon. Germany ultimately lost WWII because the allies only had to win once. The resources in man and material were too great.

Fast forward to today. Russia only has a population of 144 million. China is twice as large as Russia in population even if you do not count the 1 billion. The United States plue Europe is also about a billion people. Both potential rivals have far more dynamic economies then Russia. In any extended conflict with either Russia would be out produced. If China decided they wanted to seize Eastern Siberia the only thing stopping them would be the logistics of dealing with the terrible terrain. Russia really could not do much to stop a determined effort. It might bring China's economy down.

Europe does not have much in the way of offensive minded systems. So a conventional war would be a fizzle. But Russia's conventional forces could not really do much. Too invade Europe, Europe would have the depth. Plus what Europe has is defensive minded. Russia does not have enough high quality tanks or interceptors to keep their tanks from being blown to bits by ground attack aircraft. And if the United States were to ever build up any ordinance of sigificance its over. Hitler benefited that great minds like Guderian, Rommel, and Manstein were going up against incompetents until Zukov came along and did his version of US Grant verse Robert E Lee in the American Civil War.

Sorry in my opinion Russia gets face planted in any convential war. The entire reason why they modernized their ballistic nuclear deterence first was for that very reason.