I think you’re underestimating how effective air power is. As bravely as the Ukrainian Air Force has been using what they have against Russia, it’s a very tiny fraction of what NATO has. And yeah Russia has a lot of land, but none of it is outside of the range of NATO air power. This isn’t the Napoleonic wars, Russia can fall back from ground offensives all they want but they’d be hit from the air while they’re making strategic retreats.They didn’t really have the accuracy needed to target individual tanks for the air (despite claims to the contrary) in WWII. NATO can do that now. They didn’t have mid air refueling in WWII, but that’s something NATO does have. So the range is effectively unlimited, they’d have tanks being destroyed during their their retreat and would have no way to replace them.
We’re talking about the equivalent of taking the whole of United States. In a week? Yeah, that’s not happening.
Yeah that indeed isn’t happening because there’s an insane number of air superiority fighters that would prevent anyone from getting close. An attempt for anyone to try to gain air superiority over the US would be over in minutes. NATO gaining air superiority over Russia would take longer than that because Russia would have ground based air defenses to deal with, but it wouldn’t take that long.
It would be a long and tiresome war and would give plenty of time for China to come up with ways to benefit from it.
As with all wars in modern times, the long and tiresome part would be the occupation, not the invasion. Well all wars except the failed Russian invasion of Ukraine. But in the the event of a hypothetical war between NATO and Russia, Ukraine would be behind NATO while the Russia (the country that failed to accomplish the easy part of an invasion) would be in front of NATO.
And yeah China would find ways to benefit, as all nations look for ways to benefit from any situation. If it came down to it (though hard to see it happening because nukes exist) most likely outcome would be the Russian Federation being broken up. There are many groups that aren’t happy about being ruled over by Moscow and granting them independence means less area to occupy. China would do shenanigans to get puppets installed in the newly formed countries close to them. In fact if there were a conventional war between NATO and Russia, it’s likely China would side with NATO so they could invade from the east while NATO invades from the west. Then they’d be in a good position to set up puppet governments post war. Because there is zero question who would win.
But since nuclear weapons do exist, none of this will happen.
I think you’re underestimating how effective air power is. As bravely as the Ukrainian Air Force has been using what they have against Russia, it’s a very tiny fraction of what NATO has. And yeah Russia has a lot of land, but none of it is outside of the range of NATO air power. This isn’t the Napoleonic wars, Russia can fall back from ground offensives all they want but they’d be hit from the air while they’re making strategic retreats.They didn’t really have the accuracy needed to target individual tanks for the air (despite claims to the contrary) in WWII. NATO can do that now. They didn’t have mid air refueling in WWII, but that’s something NATO does have. So the range is effectively unlimited, they’d have tanks being destroyed during their their retreat and would have no way to replace them.
Yeah that indeed isn’t happening because there’s an insane number of air superiority fighters that would prevent anyone from getting close. An attempt for anyone to try to gain air superiority over the US would be over in minutes. NATO gaining air superiority over Russia would take longer than that because Russia would have ground based air defenses to deal with, but it wouldn’t take that long.
As with all wars in modern times, the long and tiresome part would be the occupation, not the invasion. Well all wars except the failed Russian invasion of Ukraine. But in the the event of a hypothetical war between NATO and Russia, Ukraine would be behind NATO while the Russia (the country that failed to accomplish the easy part of an invasion) would be in front of NATO.
And yeah China would find ways to benefit, as all nations look for ways to benefit from any situation. If it came down to it (though hard to see it happening because nukes exist) most likely outcome would be the Russian Federation being broken up. There are many groups that aren’t happy about being ruled over by Moscow and granting them independence means less area to occupy. China would do shenanigans to get puppets installed in the newly formed countries close to them. In fact if there were a conventional war between NATO and Russia, it’s likely China would side with NATO so they could invade from the east while NATO invades from the west. Then they’d be in a good position to set up puppet governments post war. Because there is zero question who would win.
But since nuclear weapons do exist, none of this will happen.