PSA for those who are corrupted by the whole Schrodinger's Russia narrative:

(For those who don't know, a popular narrative that has been going around since the start of the war is that Russia is simultaneously far too weak to conquer Ukraine yet also about to take over the entire Western world)

The Russian army is much, much stronger now than it was at the start of the war. I am of the view that when considering war as a holistic extension of politics, Russia has the strongest army on the planet.

As my good friend WillyOAM has said, The US is brilliant at conducting warFARE. They can bomb this, bomb that, take out leaders, but they don't understand WAR. They are brilliant against non-state actors, but as soon as the opportunity to force regime change on Iran arose, the US absolutely botched it.

Russia understands war extremely well now. Engaging in a brutal 5-year long war of attrition is nowhere near what Russia planned, but it has allowed them to transform their fighting force into an almost completely unrecognisable one from 2022. Look at their adaptations: using missiles, glide bombs, strike UAVs, FPV drones, artillery and MLRS all in conjunction with one another to inflict maximum attrition on their enemy.

Not only does Russia possess what could be argued to be a full-scale war economy, but they have expanded their ground forces to 1.5 million men, and most importantly of all, they are immensely battle-hardened. Russian command isn't stupid - they don't launch costly offensives to take swathes of territory, because they know taking territory doesn't win wars (something the US has failed to realise) The west has not seen CONVENTIAL conflict in many, many years. Russia would not be a pushover in a hypothetical global all-out war. Russia would likely sweep through much of eastern Europe before a stalemate is reached in Germany and the Alps. This is my speculative opinion.

Underestimating Russia would only make fighting a war against them more difficult. The Western political sphere is also a huge weakness - neoliberal democracies are not as socially cohesive in wartime as autocracies.

The moral of the story is do not underestimate Russia. Napoleon made that mistake, so did the Germans. The west must learn from Russia in order to fight effectively against it.