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Of course!
I don't think this is true. The threshold for nuclear use is probably lower than people think and does not require miscommunications.
Particularly when discussing tactical nuclear weapons, the location is very important. Russia can't hit the US with ~any of its tactical nuclear arsenal, whereas the entire US tactical nuclear arsenal can be targeted at Russia due to NATO air bases.
I agree that NATO/the US is very unlikely to launch a first strike against Russia, nuclear or otherwise.
It depends on what exactly was done to the VLS cells to prevent Tomahawks from being loaded in. If the answer is "nothing" then you could stick a Tomahawk in at any point.
Yes, but the INF bans conventional intermediate-range weapons as well. China did not subscribe to the INF, which is one of several reasons why it was good the US withdrew.
Is this historically true? How long has it been since Russia fought a large conflict to maintain control of their territorial borders? World War Two? Maybe the 1990s...?
Is this an either/or? It seems completely wrong, if you pay attention to individual Russians, to think at least some of them aren't emotionally caught up in the cause of the Donbas separatists. If Russia was entirely motivated by greed and expansionism I would have expected them to seize Finland first, as it is smaller and much less armed than Ukraine. (Similarly I would have expected them to have seized Latvia and Estonia in 2003 before they became part of NATO, those countries have essentially zero power to resist a Russian invasion.) But instead they first attacked Ukraine after the government was violently overthrown in 2014. It seems to me that "realpolitik," while present, is probably overstated when modeling Russia's interactions with its neighbors, particularly with Ukraine.
The analogous situation is California leaving the Union during a big break-up and then flirting with a Chinese security alliance. After a revolution overthrows the democratically elected government and replaces it with a Chinese-favorable one, the government of the United States moves to seize its naval bases and a land corridor to ensure they can be resupplied. Local insurgents, with a bit of CIA encouragement, attempt to split some of the northeastern farmland off from California proper, and California, with supplies and training from China, responds by shelling the insurgent's cities for eight years and preparing a large offensive to retake their territory.
Do you think the US government would be entirely motivated by realpolitik in that scenario? Might some other motivations creep in?
Yes, this is CTSO.
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