Let’s be serious. Putin is no friend of the west, and the West would be prudent to prepare to defend itself. While the Russian threat may not be the Red Army of the Cold War era, Putin still maintains his goal to reconstitute the old USSR as best he can. That means reabsorption of eastern Europe into Russia’s orbit.
I am not sure if Ukraine is the hill we should die on, for many reasons. But I DO believe Russia/Putin is becoming belligerent with their belief their new weapons make them superior in some useful way against us.
The Russians are a tough culture and people.
They/Putin only understand strength and despise weakness.
They WILL exploit any advantage they think they have, and the more they do, the more they believe they have advantage.
Deterrence only works if in the mind of your adversary you are strong.
-We should remove ourselves from the New Start Treaty and upload all our ICBMs and SLBMs to their normal warhead loadings.
-We should fully fund, and expand our nuclear deterrent renewal plans and warhead count significantly to at least match Russia. It DOES matter, to the Russians.
-We should adhere to all present treaties for now, like NATO, and not expand further east. If our NATO allies don’t step up to protect themselves within the NATO structure, then we need to re-examine our commitment. We can’t fight their wars, which are today existential, without at least their full support.
-We should approach Russia from a position of strength, and NOT weakness or any position of inferiority (thank you Obama) , and focus on increasing that position such that Russia isn’t so adventurous.
Putin WAS a friend of the West until 2007. Would you tell me at least two reasons why he needs to continue to be so?
The reconstitution of the USSR is a red herring. Russia is all too happy it doesn’t need to support deadbeat republics anymore.
The reluctance to have foreign military infrastructure on its border has nothing to do with the USSR. These are reasonable security concerns.
Total insanity, short of a hot war (which Russia would lose) that is not going to happen.