What, if you ignore the fact that two countries on the western side of Europe are independent nuclear powers, a further six have nuclear weapons in their borders under the NATO weapons sharing agreement and a country of Russia's size is an incredibly easy target?

EDIT: and obviously you need to watch out for the Swiss army. They look like they're not carrying, but actually they have any of a knife, a corkscrew, a pair of scissors, an implement for removing stones from the feet of horses, a bottle opener or a miniature fork at their near-immediate disposal.

EDIT2: reading this whole thread, is there some sort of confusion amongst the Americans as to who NATO are? The 'A' is for Atlantic, not 'American' — it's the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It's an expansion of a Western European treaty organisation formed immediately after WW2 to include members from North America. It's subsequently expanded east to include a whole bunch of countries that are nowhere near the North Atlantic, I think as far east as Turkey, which technically means that it spans three continents since Turkey, like Russia, is Eurasian. The main point of NATO is its mutual defence agreement.

So, if Russia attacks any NATO state then it immediately becomes at war with all of them. Not just the eight countries with nuclear weapons in Europe, but also the wealthy North Americans. It would instantly be at war with a total population an order of magnitude larger than its own, with a much greater arsenal, many times as much wealth and many more friends in the rest of the world. And all that with a decreasing population in both absolute and relative terms.

If you're going to make up imaginary land grab situations involving Russia then I would have thought that some attempt to charge south into Asia (that continent where most of Russia's land actually lies) would be more likely. Tactfully avoiding China, of course.

Russia talks a big game, but it's hardly a superpower. It's a slowly decaying nation that doesn't know what it wants to be politically and is running scared from extreme poverty and irrelevance into the comforting blanket of nationalism and whatever reassurance comes from still having just enough tanks lying around to occasionally go to war with absolutely tiny neighbours.

The only deterrent for nuclear war is mutually assured destruction. Assuring that should one country launch, the others will causing full scale destruction. Whats the point of winning with nuclear arms if it decimates the entire planet, or at least the areas you now controll?

edit: which is what you said but basically that IS the defence strategy.

Oh you sick sexist bastard!

That is why I said it could look like. Sure, the times have changed and situation today is quite different. But then again, if that would hypothetically gonna happen, Europe would change into modern battlefield.

Iran wasn't a problem for the Americans. There were no WMDs, and a letter that they used as proof of links from Iraq to alqueda and whats his face was FORGED by the nsa. It was also an obvious forgery (not only was the main point of it convenient, a couple other convenient bits of false info were included), yet people chose to believe it. If they'll go into Iraq for no real reason, they could easily go into the UK.

And before you claim it was all for the oil, the US is getting NONE of it. It hasn't helped lower the price of oil, or get more into the market, all its done is help raise the price of oil . And isn't getting paid back for any of the billions its already spent on the war and rebuild, and given as cash to people. Iraq however has an 80billion budget surplus this year and the PM was giving cash away on the streets at one point. What was the point of the exercise again?

Given we split up northern ireland so the protestants (i.e. british loving side of things) would have the majority, there'll never be complete peace.

As for beating us, I put it 3-1 to England with the loss only due to a minor fire in the capital (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Dutch_Wars)

Err...

Draw.
Dutch 0.5 English 0.5

Dutch 1.5 English 0.5

Dutch 2.5 English 0.5

We'll chalk that one up as a draw too, since although you ended up with a Dutchman on the throne, the bastard wanted to move his entire power base over to England when he became king there.

Just how did you manage to make that 3-1 for England?

Nato on paper looks pretty good doesnt it.
There were treaties in place to keep germany from taking territory before WWII and you know what, they were ignored by both sides.
Just let Russia have some breathing room thats all that they ask!

I doubt Europe has the balls to use a nuke. I think if they were nuked they would just suck it up because it would not be worth it to damage the environment any further with a retaliation. I heard it would speed up global warming too so in the name of the planet Europe would cave. England would be the one exception of course.

Dont worry after the USA finishes up in Iraq the USA will issue a mild demand for Russia to free Europe.

BTW I read that part of this is due to oil competition. Some new oil pipe line that was going to compete with russia. An attempt was made to bomb this pipe line, when it is far from any combat zones.

Ah, the War Nerd finally weighs in: http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-south-ossetia-the-war-of-my-dreams/

So Georgia beats Russia! ...in beach volleyball. And the Georgian players live in Brazil. Wait, am I in the wrong thread again? D'oh!

Wag the dog? Maybe this was created to distract everyone from the real issue, John Edwards' affair.

A misnomer. It's "The Iraq invasion".

Nice liberal talking point yea got there.

Iraq was warned for more than a year about what was brewing.
Iraq broke many UN mandates and sactions.
The USA ended up going into Iraq thus providing the backbone to enfore UN-rules.

This is a bit different from Russia invading Georgia without warning and of course without UN backing.

You should be ashamed of your ignorance.