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SanAndreasX on 07 November 2016
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AsGryffynn said:
Final-Fan said:

Correct:  I think the idea of the USA or NATO actually invading Russia is about as implausible as nuclear war with Russia.  I simply do not know why they would have much reason to be interested in conquering Russian territory. 

Suppose a no fly zone was created, and Russia chose to violate it, and the USA chose to shoot down the violating aircraft, and it continued to escalate into a real war.  I expect that this war would be fought primarily in the air and sea as naval forces clashed in the world's oceans, and on the ground in Syria.  Mounting a land invasion of mainland Russia just doesn't seem to make sense to me under these conditions.  What would be the objective?  If the USA wins the war around the NFZ, the Russian threat has been crushed; if they lose, I don't see how they would be in a position to gain by invading Russia which has air superiority by now. 

Now, that isn't to say that there 

Well, given we have never seen how a war with Russia will unfold out, we can't say for sure. No one's really won a war against them. We don't know how it'd unfold. Thing is, how will the US react to bombers? Russia will probably expel them and use everything they can throw at them to do it. Since sanctions will have a negligible effect (they are already as closed off as they can be) the US will either have to keep shutting aircraft down and replacing what's destroyed. Odds are the moment the US says there's a NFZ Russia will simply destroy all US and NATO ground forces and employ heavier firepower to decimate Aleppo (I can see them giving the rebels an ultimatum and telling organizations within the city to run for it). 

As it stands, a proxy war will have no winners, but I am not sure if the US will react violently to their aircraft and ships being destroyed. There's a substantial loss of power projection solely on losing a bunch of ships. 

The opposite is actually true: Russia has a spotty track record in war. They lost badly in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, against a newly industrialized Asian country with a fraction of the military power. They lost World War I and their victory in World War II was pyrrhic, with the German invasion only being turned back mere miles from Moscow. If Germany hadn't been fighting on two fronts they might very well have sacked Moscow and taken Russia. They couldn't handle Afghanistan when they were far more powerful than they are now. And Soviet leadership from Stalin onward was actually scared shitless of the United States as was discovered after the USSR dissolved. The Soviet leaders believed that there was almost no scenario in which the USSR would win in direct conflict with the United States and that the US would destroy them with nukes. They were afraid of China as well. They knew China could overwhelm the Russian army through sheer force of numbers.  And that was back when the disparity between the US and the USSR was far less than it is now. Russia is a shell of the former Soviet Union. 

One other factor that is against the Russians is the fact that the United States Armed Forces have far more actual recent combat experience than the Russian military. Experience counts on the battlefield.