Towards the end of the 'Cold War', Treaties were concluded to prevent a major catastrophe due to some sort of misunderstanding between the 'Super Powers'. At the time there were only two 'Super Powers'. NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with the US and the Soviet Union at their core respectively. As the Soviet Union broke up, and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, Russia was left with a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and nuclear capable launch platforms. But the reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union was that it had invested too much in developing their military as a deterrent, to keep up with NATO in the 'Arms Race'. And no, they never developed any plans to invade Europe, comparable to Churchill's 'Operation Unthinkable'
The burden of the war in Afghanistan eventually killed the Soviet Union. This was considered a major success by those who designed that strategy of using Al Qaeda in this way. Zbigniew Brzeziński is generally credited as the architect of that strategy. Extremely cheap and expendable 'Rag-Heads', with American arms, paid for by the Saudi's. And the Soviets were history. Without a single shot being fired between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, we entered the 'Unipolar Moment'.
Easily forgotten, but during those 'Cold War Years', there were a few tense moments. In all of these cases cooler heads prevailed. After the threat of a clash with the Soviets was gone, and the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, NATO should have been dissolved as well, but wasn't. Underscoring that NATO had never been a purely defensive organisation to begin with. Increasingly it shape-shifted to become the world's non-commissioned police force. Never acting in unison, but offering a pool of 'willing and able' countries for various missions ignoring, and circumventing the UN. Meanwhile, the US shredded one Treaty after the other. It had never abided by any of those Treaties anyway, but that is another story.
While the Soviet Union had been considered a formidable adversary, requiring massive investments on our side to fight a classic battle when it came, I was shocked to learn that the Soviet Union was a bit of a 'Paper Tiger' as I did a force analysis as a junior officer, asked to present a briefing on recent developments by my superiors. True enough, they did have some pretty serious nuclear armed weapons platforms, and right after the 'Cold War' ended we discovered they had some great 'gimmicks' which would have been a nasty surprise if war had broken out, but the bulk of it was either junk, or not suitable for offensive purposes anyway.
After I left the military, I 'stayed in the loop' through reading specialised publications, and talking to people who joined the company I was working for from the military at a later date, and I understood where this idea came from that Russia was a 'Gasstation with Nukes'. All of that started to change after NATO invited Ukraine and Georgia to join the 'alliance'. It was clear Russia felt threatened by NATO, as expressed by Putin at the 2007 NATO Security Conference in Munich. Putin wanted to resolve this tense 'standoff' through diplomacy, returning to the Treaties which had worked wonders during the 'Cold War' years, but not from a position of strength, obviously. NATO spit him in the face.
Russia started to plan for war. And China did the same thing. Moreover, they decided to form a team. A team to fight a war with NATO if they had to. While NATO was merely planning to expand its concept of being the worlds non-commissioned police force, using the strategy which had been so successful in Afghanistan, arming 'proxies' and using PMC's' to do the heavy lifting, merely planning the general strategy, picking up the tab, and providing training. If NATO went to war, with the 'Rag Heads' after they went rogue, they took their time preparing, and brought all their state-of-the-art stuff to 'test it in battle'. But none of their adversaries was anything close to being an 'equal'. It was Mike Tyson going up against some angry toddlers with his bare fists.
Both Russia and China expanded their military capabilities, but they avoided the mistakes made by the Soviet leadership, of ignoring the people's desire to grow their wealth, with massive investments in the military, and a vast standing army costing a fortune, dragging consumer spending down. While the Russians also kept all their 'junk' stored, oiled and ready, with matching capacity in factories to upgrade production at the blink of an eye. At the same time, the Russians relaunched their 'R&D' to develop brand new, very innovative weapon systems across the board. Hypersonic missiles. Nuclear powered cruise missiles. Extreme high speed torpedo's with nuclear warheads capable of destroying any harbour instantly. And very capable fighter aircraft. State of the art electronic counter measures. Radars capable of detecting 'Stealth Aircraft'.
Reportedly, a brand new ICBM hit the industrial area at Dnipro early this morning, carrying a conventional warhead, or warheads, in response to NATO launching an attack using twelve British 'Storm Shadow' cruise missiles on a target in Russia. If correct, I do concur that it was primarily 'pay back', and a warning. At the time of writing it is still too early to say anything about the result of either attack. Some of the 'Storm Shadows' can be seen hitting a target in a forested area far removed from the front-lines in the Kursk Oblast. The explosions are not massive, suggesting that if anything was hit, it must have been some kind of command bunker. A short clip of multiple warheads landing in Dnipro did look like it must have done some serious damage. But since the former was during the hours of daylight, and fairly close-up, while the latter was in the dark, and from a considerable distance, it is too difficult to tell whether the one, or the other, was more formidable.
However, the actual damage was not the point. Assuming it will be confirmed that the Russians launched an ICBM, the intention of both attacks was to indicate a willingness to escalate. If you will allow me a premature conclusion at this point, that 'Storm Shadow' versus a MIRV'ed ICBM, even with conventional warheads, isn't even a match. And no way NATO can provide Ukraine with a similar weapon without triggering a nuclear response, if they would have anything like it, which I doubt. Note that one source said that Trump had been consulted on providing long range missiles to Ukraine, and that he had signed off on it. Signalling that there is not going to be a fundamental shift on Foreign Policy, as Brian Berletic predicted. Although Trump may still withdraw from Ukraine, and leave it up to Europe, satisfying his voters. But we'll see about that.
NATO is still in a pickle. With her non-commissioned police force, massive carriers, and costly, complicated weapons platforms, no large standing army, and even shortages at almost every level, save for the 'Egg Head' working out strategies that do not work anymore. Not to mention staff preoccupied by challenges like working out how to integrate 'Trans-People', and Europe near to total disarmament after it gave everything to Ukraine already. This 'Project Ukraine' is going to be a serious head-ache.
The 'Average Joe Six-Pack' has no clue what is at stake. I do not claim to know everything there is to know about the military side of things. But I feel strongly that we need to be extremely cautious to accept 'news' coming from Ukraine about all the Russians they've killed in a month, or Russia struggling to find fresh recruits, and the country being on the brink of an economic collapse, as claimed by outlets with close ties to Western 'Intelligence'. We are moving deeper into the woods. Not about to emerge from it.