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Yes.
They don’t need a standing army if they shoot nuclear warheads at my house.
Well they have nukes so the threat is never off the table, no matter how comical their conventional army is.
Yes. Russia has nuclear weapons.
While there’s plenty of jokes these days about “well given the state of the rest of their military, I doubt they even work”, I’m not really comfortable banking on that. Especially since their nuclear capability is what allows them to act the way they do.
Could they beat us conventionally? Of course not, but that’s not what matters.
Of course I’m concerned. I’m concerned because I have to be, because as a member of the military I can’t afford not to be.
Let me be clear that the Russian armed forces are not even remotely close to being as strong and capable as we previously thought, and in the event of a conventional war between our nations the US or NATO would certainly emerge victorious.
That being said, a minimal threat is still a threat. Americans would still be coming home in coffins in perhaps record numbers. Ask the families of dead Ukrainian soldiers if they’re happy to see global perception of Russian military strength deteriorated, ask the people coming home to destroyed cities if they care that this war has been beneficial to the expansion and reinvigoration of NATO. You’ll probably get knocked the fuck out.
And quite frankly, the Russian military now might not be the Russian military of 15 or 20 years from now. This is the largest country on Earth, with the 11th largest economy, 9th largest population, they’re the 3rd largest energy producer, and they have a military that, though severely depleted, is still qualitatively and quantitatively superior to most of the world’s forces.
They fucked up and they’re in the dirt, but they can rebuild. And should we in the military or intelligence fields allow ourselves to become overconfident and assume the Russian threat has evaporated, we may very well find ourselves blindsided some time in the future by a Russian army that finally figured their shit out.
Lastly, this is the nation with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. The concept of mutually assured destruction, so beloved by theorists of deterrence as the one thing “keeping the peace” in this world since the 1950s, relies in part on the assumption that all sides are RATIONAL actors. I’ll let you decide for yourself if Putin seems like a rational actor.
So yeah, I’m concerned. We should all be.
Their nukes (and their willingness to use them) have always been the concern. I don’t think we’ve been very concerned with their conventional forces for the past 30 years or so.
Cribbing from a response on AskHistorians…
Why do wars end? Wars end because the cost of fighting exceeds the cost of not fighting for one or more of the belligerents. The cost can be monetary, physical, human, existential—but it is a cost nonetheless.
In a representative form of government the cost of fighting is not only dictated by the opponent but also dictated by the social contract the government enters into with its electorate. When the cost exceeds what the electorate will tolerate, the war ends.
In a vastly oversimplified example:
Japan’s cost of not fighting in WWII was unconditional surrender, including the removal of the monarchy from power. This was almost but not quite the destruction of the Japanese state. Japan’s cost of fighting was the men and treasure it was prepared to expend.
When the United States came along with nuclear weapons, the cost of fighting went up from men and treasure to the extermination of the Home Islands, the killing of its people and the reduction of its settlements to radioactive ash. The cost of fighting exceeded the cost of not fighting and the Japanese sued for peace.
In a dictatorship, which is what Russia is at this point, the cost of fighting is material deprivation and loss of life, for years. There is no serious internal threat to Putin. The cost of not fighting is the further encroachment of NATO on its borders, the rejection of the country from any kind of international system and the loss of captured territory and influence in the former Soviet powers.
Putin has shown a willingness to expend lives and treasure at a rate unthinkable in modern warfare, by some estimates racking up twice the American dead in Vietnam over seven years (58,000 from 1965 to 1972) in fourteen months.
Anyone who can do that and remain in power is a force to be reckoned with. The fact that he has nukes and sits atop a hydrocarbon horn of plenty is icing on a very ugly cake.
I mean, they still have nukes. Putin hasn’t used nukes in Ukraine because he knows that would mean war with NATO. I think he REALLY doesn’t want a confrontation with NATO because he knows he’d lose a conventional war, and everybody loses a nuclear war.
Yes. The nukes and the social media undermining they do on a daily basis. More dangerous to us than an army of T-90’s.
Yes, because they’re losing their grip with reality and are leaning into their irrational genocidal ambitions. A nation led by fascist lunatics with nuclear weapons, dilapidated and incompetent as it may be, still poses a grave danger to the world if it lashes out. The only reason those psychopaths haven’t used a nuke yet is because China would finally have to tap out and abandon their tacit support. But the longer it drones on and the more paranoid Putin gets, you just don’t know what he and his crony state is capable of doing.
Ignoring nuclear escalation which has already been covered in this thread, I’m obviously not concerned with spetznaz paratroopers landing in my town. But they’re still scary because they’re irrational actors on the global stage and could still make life increasingly more difficult, which is concerning. Even just the Ukraine war had an impact on supply chains on the other side of the globe. Never mind if NATO troops were made to put their lives on the line for some silly half-baked reasoning by Putin.
Yes. Putin is still an irrational actor with a nuclear arsenal.
You should always be concerned about any threat, take all threats seriously
Hell, no.
I mean, yeah because nuclear weapons. Also an inept military does not cease to be dangerous. They are massively hindered by corruptions, bad leadership, fund pilfering on a breathtaking scale, and troops with no morale. However, it is still a lot of people with guns, a lot of tanks, and a lot of munitions.
Also Russia doesn’t really do surrender. Look at WWII for an example of that. The Soviet Union never even considered surrendering to Hitler and they lost 10.5 million soldiers (not to mention another 13 million civilians). That’s about 13% of the Soviet pre-war population. So to put that in todays numbers that is like 43 million Americans dying in a war. Also just to loop that back to WWII for a comparison the US and UK together lost well under 1 million troops, France lost 217,000. Germany’s military was pretty much wiped out and had teenagers fighting by the end, and they didn’t crack 6 million (about 80% of those were killed on the eastern front in what is commonly believed to be the most brutal scaled fighting in earth’s history). So yeah, Russia stacks bodies in war and keeps going. Hopefully not the case here.
Russia is killing Ukrainians.
They could kill other non-hostile citizens in other European countries, NATO or not.
So yes, we should be concerned about Russia.
Everyone here is concerned about nukes, which are possible but still unlikely. Cyber warfare is a much more likely way for them to wreak havoc in the US from the comfort of their own dachas.
yes the Big Boom. I’m in legion territory and its a long way to the NCR if it goes down.
Russia and China are the only countries that pose an existential threat to the United States via nuclear weapons, so I would say yes in that realm.
Yep, nuclear weapons are still a thing and a lot of European militaries aren’t really in the best shape. Russia still has the capability to do a decent amount of damage to a number of countries even discounting nukes.
Russia is always a country that we’ve always had to look out for, just in case they get aggressive
Somewhat. But at the moment they have been doing so poorly and nothing major has happened i’m not too concerned.
We still have to be wary because they do have the most nuclear weapons in the world and just because they are hurting by shooting themseleves in the foot over this war doesn’t mean they are not a threat.
I’m concerned with the nuclear option. I don’t think they will win the war and if it gores south, i’m. afraid Putin goes scorched earth
I was never concerned.
I feel like these talks often get into the zone of who is the strongest rooster in the farm.
What really matters is in the event of a conflict, there will be massive destruction, tens or hundreds of thousands people dead, injured, and millions of lives broken. The immense human suffering caused by such conflict is more important than who emerges victorious.
So yeah, I am concerned. Russia showed it’s capability to destroy lives of millions of people eveh despite shamefully losing on the battlefields.
To be more precise though, I am concerned of the threat of an authoritarian Russia, not any Russia. If it becomes a democracy, I am hoping it will be peaceful.
Yes, look at the destruction they are causing in Ukraine, despite their performance nobody wins in war, deterrence is necessary.
Yes. Russia never could invade the US. It’s just not possible. They could send 10,000 troop carriers, be it in the air or sea. And we would not only see them coming, we would be able to destroy it deflect all of them.
It’s the MAD we all worry about.
Yes.
Russia’s performance in Ukraine is abysmal *from the standpoint* *of a superpower.* They are still more than capable, and indeed ***are doing so as we speak***, of destroying cities into rubble, bombing buildings into bricks, and ruining lives.
If Russia decided to invade the rest of Eastern Europe, they would be causing strife and struggle on a level that part of the world hasn’t seen since WW2. It doesn’t really matter that they would inevitably get their asses kicked and forced back into Russia
They have the largest, and arguably most diverse and advanced nuclear arsenal in the world, and Putin has proven himself anything but rational. However, aside from the nuclear threat, not so much
Atomic weapons.
They still have the big ones (nuclear weapons), so they’ll never be completely unthreatening, but I’d like to think the Joint Chiefs spend some days in the Pentagon laughing at how shit Russia’s army is.
My concern has diminished, but they do still have nukes so I have some concern.
Yes. As others have mentioned their massive nuclear arsenal, including doomsday weapons such as Poseidon and Sarmat. They are the world’s largest country with 145 million people, the 11th largest economy, an educated population. Even if their army is getting rekt in Ukraine, they still might thwart the coming counteroffensive, keeping Crimea as well as the land route along the Azov Sea, which would give them a strategic gain. Putin is not going to give up his ambitions, and whoever comes after is likely to be even more hardliner. Russia will begin rebuilding their armed forces as soon as hostilities cease or freeze in Ukraine, if not before. They will be rebuilding with hard lessons learned, they won’t be making the same mistakes. Russia will remain a threat to the US/NATO/Europe/EU and Democracies around the world.
Their military may be a joke but they still have nuclear weapons. People should NOT underestimate the power of nuclear weapons. It would only take a fraction of Russia’s nuclear stockpile to completely destroy the US
I’m not concerned about any nation on earth soldiers being able to win against USA soldiers head to head. I’m more concerned about the nuclear powers deciding that hey what do we have to lose just nuke the world.
Russia is still a threat to NATO. They aren’t able to send columns of tanks through the Fulda gap and drive on the English channel, but they can certainly take or attempt to take chunks of the Baltic states or a chunk of Poland so they have a land route into Kalingrad. Their cruise missiles still seem to work fine, and presumably they have at least a couple submarines still functional that can make things difficult in the Atlantic
Disregarding the nukes, they’re still a threat. Maybe not in a conventional war but this is the world’s largest country, filled with many minority populations that the Moscow elite have a history of brutally suppressing. Its also a country that is largely third world outside its major population centers and has a history of supplying enemy nations and terror groups as well as breaking apart and “misplacing” everything from handguns to nuclear weapons.
They still possess the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, and their existing/new ICBMS such as the R-36 and Sarmats are highly capable, perhaps more capable than our Minuteman IIIs in terms of range. They are also in the process of building up their stealthy [Borei class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borei-class_submarine) SSBN(nuclear missile submarine) fleet. Another concerning aspect of the Russian military is likely its submarines, e.g. the Yasen class armed with supersonic and hypersonic missiles such as the Oniks and Zircon. These subs, in particular, are regarded as close to their Western counterparts in terms of stealth and capability, and [concern](https://news.usni.org/2023/03/23/northcom-russia-close-to-persistent-nuclear-cruise-missile-attack-sub-presence-off-u-s-coasts) American Naval commanders.
I would not discount the Russian threat, the preponderance of which doesn’t actually stem from the Ground Forces, which proved rather inept in Ukraine. Their Navy and Air Force, both among the three largest in the world, remain very much intact, and should Russia truly go off the rails with its nukes, nothing much precludes it from the international equivalent of a murder-suicide with the USA.
One word: Nukes.
Russia still has nukes, right?