My interpretation of increased NATO troupe positioning at the Russian borders is that they intend to have boots and tanks on the ground immediately after a nuclear exchange, to prevent Russian post-war influx of influence in Europe; they basically want to have us militarily occupied in ways that would prevent the Russians to spread their spiritual and political influence here. Those troupes make no sense for “deterring Russia”, but they do make sense for keeping Europe enslaved by military boots on the ground.
The Russians are taking it seriously and they responded with their own counter-posture, by securing their southern border, and cleaning up Ukraine which was intended as a point of primary military penetration into Russia, from the South instead of the West, where Russia is expecting it and has impenetrable defences. They have the army on the ground in Belarus and Ukraine now, while Kazakhstan was neutralized as a threat.
NATO will get another warning to remove elements of nuclear warfare to pre-1997 positions, or, even better, to remove them from Europe altogether, at which America/NATO will laugh and increase the belligerent posture.
What happens next is that Russia inflicts a major military defeat upon America, but in such a way that it gives them a way out of total escalation. America has already propagandised its sphere of influence to the point where de-escalation would be seen as surrender, “appeasement” and treason, and is basically impossible; they closed the door for any kind of a diplomatic compromise some time ago, which means that now “diplomacy” will be conducted through “other means”.
There are many ways this could go, but most paths include a limited nuclear exchange – hundreds of warheads, aimed to de-fang, or, in nuclear doctrine speak, “counterforce”. It all eventually ends very badly. Basically, the expected stages of nuclear war are 1) non-nuclear limited counterforce, 2) nuclear total counterforce, and 3) total destruction of the enemy.
Non-nuclear limited counterforce is what recently happened in Yavoriv; the Russians flattened a Ukrop/NATO mercenary camp with cruise missiles. This was under a NATO radar umbrella and yet there were no warnings, just death from the sky. The same would have happened to the Aegis Ashore installations in Romania and Poland, and similar elements of nuclear gameplay that Americans have installed across Eastern Europe. I think Americans would respond to this by an attempt of a decapitation strike against Putin and the Russian leadership, but that’s the absolutely worst course of action since Putin is the only one who’s actually trying to contain this and play a limited game against America. Also, I would expect that the successor of the Perimeter system of automatic nuclear retaliation in case of a decapitation strike has been activated, and that’s the absolute worst case scenario for America.
Nuclear total counterforce is the kind of a nuclear war everybody wants to have. Limited, pin-point strikes against military targets, aimed to destroy the enemy’s ability to fight – sink the nuclear submarines, destroy ICBM silos and airforce bases, destroy the major military infrastructure nodes, take down the military satellites. This naturally escalates, and the number of targets increases with each iteration, until one side either surrenders (which is possible, but extremely unlikely), is completely crippled and unable to proceed (a more likely outcome), or is cornered to the point where it goes into phase 3:
total destruction of the enemy, by retaliating with full force against the cities of the enemy, causing their complete destruction, and in the process triggering the retaliatory strike against its own cities. This is the kind of a nuclear war everybody always talks about and fears. The likelihood of this outcome is intentionally exaggerated in order to present any kind of a nuclear war as so destructive, it must never be attempted, because any kind of a limited nuclear exchange will necessarily lead to a total mutual annihilation. I don’t necessarily disagree, because most of my wargaming simulations actually end with one side triggering phase 3 in total desperation, after attempts of waging limited nuclear war actually pissed the enemy off more instead of killing his will to fight.
Most of my wargaming simulations look like this: America uses hybrid measures against Russia; sanctions, colour revolutions, media pressure, modifying neighbouring countries into hornets’ nests of hatred for Russia which then start civil wars against their own Russian minority, forcing Russia to intervene and get caught in an Afghanistan-like scenario aiming to kill its economy and basically collapse its society, as it did in the 1990s. Russia understands the plan and makes preparations to strengthen its economy (completely internalizing the food supply and energy, for instance), discredit the internal enemies and traitors, and prepare its military for both conventional and nuclear warfare.
The next phase is Russia issuing an ultimatum to the West – back off or else. The West laughs it off because it lives under a false assumption that Russia is weak and can’t really do anything, and this is augmented by Russia’s prior conciliatory stance, which was misinterpreted as weakness. Russia then does a phase 1 of war – protect their borders, make sure that any kind of an incursion into its own territory is not possible, make sure that conventional warfare is waged in the neighbouring countries, thus giving themselves the ability to trade space for time in case the war goes hot. Eliminate all kinds of proxies NATO has established on its borders. Repeat ultimatum after a limited military action in the former-Soviet territory. After the ultimatum is laughed off again, destroy American military installations in all hostile post-Soviet area including the Warsaw pact countries. At this point America responds by a conventional strikes at the Russian leadership, trying to decapitate Russia with a pinpoint strike. If this fails, Russia responds with nuclear counterforce war against America and NATO, which means that a dozen nuclear strikes pepper Europe, and several hundred pepper America. At this point, the American military would probably try to de-escalate things, but their civilian government is made of complete lunatics who only know how to escalate. If decapitation strike against Russia succeeds, it triggers a phase 3 total nuclear annihilation instantly, and that’s the worst case scenario. Basically, whatever Americans want to do, they need to keep Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov alive or everybody dies, because a decapitation strike is one of those fatal miscalculations that actually does the opposite of what the planners intended.