One of the "facts on the ground" that people don't appreciate (because MSM has not informed them) is that Russia's military challenge to the US does not begin and end with its nuclear weapons. Ask yourself why the US has not sailed its carrier groups into the war zone as it has in all other cases it wanted to intimidate with its power. The answer is that Russia's newly deployed maneuverable hypersonic missiles would send any ship directly to the bottom, including carriers, as soon as they tried to attack Russia because the US navy has no defense that can stop them. In addition, Russia's air defenses (including state-of-the-art electronic warfare measures that screw with flight systems) is the best on the planet, so planes drones and missiles targeted at Russia are very likely to be intercepted -- not all perhaps, but many if not most. Also, relative to NATO, stewing in military-industrial complex corruption, the Russian army is far more better organized, equipped, and motivated (Russians are fighting to defend their homeland, while US forces would be asked to fight on the other side of the planet in places they've barely heard of against a country that has never directly threatened US territory). It would take NATO years to build up its forces to match Russia in a ground war, which Russia will make difficult if not impossible by sinking transport ships sending troops and materiel to Europe with missiles and subs. It will also take out US satellites, on which the US military is currently totally dependent. Probably the US could prevail after a long, bloody conventional war, which would see American cities destroyed by long-range and submarine fired conventional missiles that the US homeland also can't defend against. You also have to consider that China cannot afford to let Russia go down because that would leave it facing a victorious West all by itself. This means that if the US sends its Pacific-based air, naval, and other forces against Russia (which it would need to do to have any chance of prevailing), not only will its military and other assets in the Far East be left vulnerable, China will probably attack them, and, at the same time, send sizable portions of its military to aid Russia in the European theatre (as many as are needed). The upshot is that, given a conventional stalemate, anything NATO does militarily against Russia now is all but certain to eventually escalate to nuclear, where the US cannot win through a first strike, meaning that all of us die. This implication is that NATO is helpless to aid Ukraine even through conventional military power. It will try to make life difficult for Russia in Ukraine, but don't hold your breath that the buffoons at CIA can run an insurgency that Russians can't crush at acceptable cost to themselves, while venging themselves on the US in Syria, Iraq, and all the other places the US has bases where there are loads of people who'd love to be armed and trained to kill them. The consequence in the short term I think is this: NATO's impotence will have been exposed again by its utter inability to help Ukraine just as publicly as it was in the Afghanistan theatre, only this time on a far larger scale far nearer to the centers of Western power. A lot of questions will be asked about the supposedly greatest military machine in the galaxy.
One of the "facts on the ground" that people don't appreciate (because MSM has not informed them) is that Russia's military challenge to the US does not begin and end with its nuclear weapons. Ask yourself why the US has not sailed its carrier groups into the war zone as it has in all other cases it wanted to intimidate with its power. The answer is that Russia's newly deployed maneuverable hypersonic missiles would send any ship directly to the bottom, including carriers, as soon as they tried to attack Russia because the US navy has no defense that can stop them. In addition, Russia's air defenses (including state-of-the-art electronic warfare measures that screw with flight systems) is the best on the planet, so planes drones and missiles targeted at Russia are very likely to be intercepted -- not all perhaps, but many if not most. Also, relative to NATO, stewing in military-industrial complex corruption, the Russian army is far more better organized, equipped, and motivated (Russians are fighting to defend their homeland, while US forces would be asked to fight on the other side of the planet in places they've barely heard of against a country that has never directly threatened US territory). It would take NATO years to build up its forces to match Russia in a ground war, which Russia will make difficult if not impossible by sinking transport ships sending troops and materiel to Europe with missiles and subs. It will also take out US satellites, on which the US military is currently totally dependent. Probably the US could prevail after a long, bloody conventional war, which would see American cities destroyed by long-range and submarine fired conventional missiles that the US homeland also can't defend against. You also have to consider that China cannot afford to let Russia go down because that would leave it facing a victorious West all by itself. This means that if the US sends its Pacific-based air, naval, and other forces against Russia (which it would need to do to have any chance of prevailing), not only will its military and other assets in the Far East be left vulnerable, China will probably attack them, and, at the same time, send sizable portions of its military to aid Russia in the European theatre (as many as are needed). The upshot is that, given a conventional stalemate, anything NATO does militarily against Russia now is all but certain to eventually escalate to nuclear, where the US cannot win through a first strike, meaning that all of us die. This implication is that NATO is helpless to aid Ukraine even through conventional military power. It will try to make life difficult for Russia in Ukraine, but don't hold your breath that the buffoons at CIA can run an insurgency that Russians can't crush at acceptable cost to themselves, while venging themselves on the US in Syria, Iraq, and all the other places the US has bases where there are loads of people who'd love to be armed and trained to kill them. The consequence in the short term I think is this: NATO's impotence will have been exposed again by its utter inability to help Ukraine just as publicly as it was in the Afghanistan theatre, only this time on a far larger scale far nearer to the centers of Western power. A lot of questions will be asked about the supposedly greatest military machine in the galaxy.