When Russia invaded Poland, it led to them becoming a massive empire, and they never wanted to go nuclear.
Why would they now suddenly want to disappear in a senseless gesture of national suicide, by just deciding to end it all and attack us with nuclear weapons?
Where is the sense in what you are saying?
I never said they wanted to launch a first strike.
(Although Vladimir Zhirinovsky has publicly said that the Russians should nuke Warsaw and the Baltics to put NATO in its place.)
I only said, that the bear is unpredictable. It would not likely start as a first strike, but even if it did, THEY WOULD NOT DISAPPEAR! Obama has publicly stated that he would not respond in kind.
A more likely scenario would be in the baltic states - there are some towns on the Russian border inside Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia where there are only Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. Some of them do not speak the language of the country they live in.
What if they did the same thing that the nutcases in the Eastern Ukraine did? This time it would be in NATO territory.
It could be done in a more fabian style, an incremental little nudge, then another, then...
My admonition was be careful what you snicker at, as it might not end up being so funny. I like seeing Putin get smacked down hard, but it might not end well.
History has proven that betting on people stumbling into war is a safer bet than predicting a long lasting global peace.