Because the US always uses shock and awe terror tactics, the US will target Russian cities. There is no doubt about that … and no doubt they will laugh and joke as they trigger the attack … if they believed they could get away with it.
As such, Russia has to target US cities. And because it knows there could be spies at all levels, it actually has to be targetting and ready to hit US cities, because if the US knew the Russians were not going to follow through with the threat, the US would immediately launch a nuclear strike against Russia (get them before they change their mind).
So, US is targetting Russian cities, and so Russia is targetting US cities (forget what the press say).
But, the UK is for all practical purposes just a offshore base of the US. The UK cannot independently fire the US’ missiles. An “Independent” deterrence is a joke. The UK will fire weapons when ordered to by the US … indeed, the weapons will fire irrespective of whether the UK government agree.
As such, the UK view on the matter is irrelevant to whether the nukes are fired. So, it does not matter if Russia targets UK cities of not … the UK politicians are irrelevant to the event. As such, Russia will ignore civilian targets and instead target military targets. There is no point wasting nukes on civilians, when there are plenty of military targets to take out. Indeed, why hit Manchester … when the nuke could go as a third or forth round to Washington?
Would Russia fire first?
This is an interesting question. The simple answer is that the answer is unknown, because if it were predictable, then the US would use that fact against Russia. Which means that Russia is quite prepared to fire first. But it is also prepared to only fire in response.
The simple rule, is that he who fires first has the advantage. Another simple rule, is he who can most speedily empty their cities and is prepared to take casualties from those who have not got out, has the advantage. My guess, is that the Russians would win such a race. The reason, is because they are a cohesive society that believe in Russia and they don’t have all the stupid ideas & divisions of the US. They are just pragmatic … and will probably exit in half the time of a similar sized US city.
However, the US administration are quite prepared to kill their own people. That will include a whole city. I’m not sure if the Russians are that ruthless.
How would the UK do …. you have got to be joking. Russians will probably leave within a few hours. The US within a couple of days. London would take about a month to exit … and all most of them would do is go to another city. And would the US care if British cities might be hit? LOL
However, my guess is that the Russians have a detailed set of decision criteria which decides if they fire. Probably not written down, not even known to just one person. But, they will have worked out how best to respond and how to make known or hide those intentions at every step.
If Russia did fire, it would start by giving warnings. But it would finish without warning as a first strike. But, I do not believe it would ever launch a first strike unless severely provoked. But it may have been extremely close to that first strike at times during Ukraine. But, they will not make that known. Because they will not tell anyone how close they are to firing … until they fire.
The key criteria they will use is this: When the circumstances make it highly probable that whatever reasonable action Russia takes will lead to the US launching an attack on Russia. As soon as those conditions are met (from their perspective based on their intelligence, based on their interpretation of US intentions), they will launch a first strike.
There will not be any last warnings … there will be no signal that they are “very close” to launching a first strike. They will warn vehemently about the “unacceptability” of US actions (or its proxy), but never openly threaten a nuclear strike. Instead, if the US doesn’t back down and keeps pushing the issue so that a nuclear war seems inevitable (to the Russians) … the Russians will strike first.
Here “inevitable” means something very different in the Russian psychology. It is not the outcome tomorrow of the next debate or the next US scandal. Instead, it is their best assessment of what it going to happen in several months and even years. They will analyse US past behaviour and using their own modelling of US behaviour, then predict the likely outcome months, even years in the future.
So, to the US, it might appear that a nuclear conflict was something in the remote future … something where there was a lot of actions before anything like that was being considered (by them). In contrast, the Russians, may have decided, that based on past US behaviour, all roads lead to nuclear war.
Ukraine
That was why Ukraine was so dangerous. If at any point, the Russians could see that any course of action they took to secure their borders from nato was going to end up in an escalatory cycle of increasingly aggressive responses leading to nuclear war, they would not play that out. They would instead fire when escalation to nuclear appeared the only likely outcome (they would not back down …and allow Russia to be destroyed by the US/Nato).
They are not playing poker. They are not threatening the US. They are not bargaining peace. They are simply doing the most rational thing to secure Russia from US aggression. Most of the time that is not to fire nukes. But, if the best way to prevent the US doing to Russia what it did to Iraq is a first strike of nuclear weapons, I have no doubt the Russians will do that.
And, so, the only thing stopping a first strike, was the Russian perception of whether the US was prepared to accept Russia’s requirement that they leave Russia and its immediate neighbours alone. Something that during the Bidem regime, didn’t look at all likely.
