“they would be justified in attacking our assets”
Being “justified” won’t stop them from getting attacked right back, and they know it.
That’s true.
My point is that people better be just fine with that happening (our assets such as US Navy ships being targeted) because it is a mistake to assume the Russians are going to react rationally.
They aren’t a democratic state beholden to the will of the population. They are a corrupt and violent oligarchy run by people in constant conflict with each other.
The same people in our country and around the world who are all for active US involvement are the same people who are going to whip us into a state of outrage when one of our Arleigh Burke class gets sunk with loss of life, or a billion dollar AWACS is shot down with a loss of all aboard.
We sure have advanced a lot since June 1914 when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and overheated propaganda directed at people back then supposedly “less sophisticated” than us modern people plunged the world into war.
We may be smarter (we think...we have Google after all, right?) and less susceptible to propaganda, but the propaganda that will compel weak-minded people to support military action has become more sophisticated, widespread, and insidiously invasive, so we are still in the same danger of being manipulated into a global war as they were in June 1914.
The consequences of that have the potential of being far, FAR more reaching and catastrophic today than they were in 1914.