People forget that the Warsaw Pact had 6,000,000 men under arms and was designed as an unstoppable attack force designed to take Europe within weeks, and that WWIII was expected to end life as we know it, and possibly all human life on the planet.
Today, most of the Warsaw pact is part of our NATO, Russia is alone, and the Russian empire doesn’t exist anymore, yet.
You are correct.
As they often say, Generals are fighting the last war.
Many folks hear “Russia” and they think we are up against the strength of the USSR. And even back then, the USSR was not as strong as we thought they were.
Are they pikers? No. Would we be able to take them on in a conventional war? Sure. Just our ability to project conventional weapons from off shore makes that a no brainer.
Of course, they are not Iraq and they are not rollovers. Even though they could take us into the deep innings, in the end we would win handily. Of course, nukes are a different issue. No one really wins there.