It’s impossible to achieve anything from further escalating this conflict.
Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive has been disastrous, which even the Mainstream Media was forced to acknowledge after it became impossible to deny. CNN revealed that it already lost around 15% of its Bradley infantry fighting vehicles during the first week, while Forbes reported that about the same percentage of German Leopard tanks were destroyed as well as half of its “unique” breaching vehicles. Meanwhile, President Putin claimed that 25-30% of all their total foreign equipment was lost.
Biden’s re-election hinges on the success of the West’s most important military campaign since World War II, thus prompting the question of how the US will respond after its failure. The best-case scenario is that it’ll force Kiev to begin ceasefire talks with Russia aimed at reaching a Korean-like armistice, but that probably won’t happen until all other options are exhausted. These include expanding the conflict to Belarus, Moldova, and/or Russia’s pre-2014 borders and approving a Polish-led military intervention.
All of these options could lead to American-provoked nuclear brinksmanship with Russia, which is already being prepared for as evidenced by NATO’s largest-ever air drills that are presently occurring in Germany and the reported strengthening of its nuclear capabilities on the continent. There’s no chance of this dangerous gamble succeeding and Russia capitulating to blackmail, however, since it’s more than capable of guaranteeing that the West would be totally destroyed if it dared to use nukes first.
Russian subs prowl the oceans and are always ready to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike if the order is given. On the European front, Kaliningrad has been turned into a nuclear-equipped fortress, while tactical nukes are about to be deployed to nearby deployed in Belarus. Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missiles can pierce the US’ so-called “missiles defense shield” so there’s no hope of it preventing “mutually assured destruction” in the event that liberal-globalist warmongers decide to strike first.
These purely defensive capabilities should more than suffice for deterring the apocalypse, though it can’t be taken for granted that the US will react rationally after the failure of its proxy’s counteroffensive. Too much is riding on the impossible scenario of Kiev completely removing Russia from all the territory that it claims as its own for Washington simply accept defeat. Its policymakers might therefore think that they should “escalate to de-escalate” out of desperation to achieve something that can be spun as a ”victory”.
There’s no chance that Russia will ever make unilateral concessions on its objective national security interests, let alone in the face of nuclear blackmail, which is why the US’ liberal-globalist warmongers should banish the thought before they put humanity’s existence at risk. Whatever their reaction to the failure of Kiev’s counteroffensive will be, it must be guided by this fact and ideally de-escalate the NATO-Russian proxy war since it’s impossible to achieve anything from further escalating this conflict.
"...it’s impossible to achieve anything from further escalating this conflict."
I disagree. I believe the only way to conclusively end this conflict is for the Russians to conclusively chase the Americans out of the Ukraine by escalating all the way to Lvov. Only then, when the Russians and Ukrainians are determining a course to rebuild the country in line with norms consistent with the emerging multi-polar international community, will the Americans finally be able to accept and reconcile themselves to the new role they have to fulfil. Eventually, any other outcome, which fails to enable and consequently address the demise of NATO, can only lead to a repeat of the past couple years' hostilities; only next time would be far more dangerous. We've got away with it this time, thanks to Putin (and Lavrov and Patrushyev и тем прочим; и, конечно, самому великому народу) and Russia. It would be foolhardy beyond description and imagination to dare believe we might be so lucky again.
When you wrestle a vampire to the ground, you drive a stake through its heart. When you've got a silver bullet upside a werewolf's temple, you pull the trigger. You don't let it go and ask, 'Best of two out of three?'!
The war mongering and beligerance of the US Empire DOES have an upside, if you own US "Defense" industry stock, or are a member of its socialist Military Complex. See e.g. Forbes:
"Defense stocks did well in 2022, enjoying a big rally in October and far outpacing the wider stock market: the MSCI Aerospace & Defense index has seen 18.66% growth in a 12-month period. They could be a good addition to investor portfolios with the current climate. " May 19, 2023.