This is gonna sound mean, but you're getting bad information from some dick at FP, and it's not your fault. This response is mostly aimed at him.

[quote=So Boerd]Having outlined the unrealistic scenarios, time for a realistic one.http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/04/putins_nuclear_option_russia_weapons
[/quote]

Piontkovsky is a moron. When your calculation is 'We couldn't win a conventional war,' [b]you don't go to war.[/b] This author is treating him like a prophet. But hell. Let's pretend there is a 'War Party' in Russia, and they manage to 'romance' the Kremlin into 'World War IV' 'for the glory of matha rasshaaaa' (that last one is lightly paraphrased -- the others literally aren't). Let's pretend that despite acknowledging an inadequate conventional military, they decide to attack anyway.

[quote=Jeffrey Taylor]Piontkovsky surmises that, in such a conflict, the nuclear-armed country with the "superior political will" to alter the geopolitical "status quo" and -- most importantly -- with the "greater indifference to values concerning human lives" would prevail.[/quote]

Have you seen what even the greenest hippy liberal says, if an oil company hurts, like, a dolphin? Hilarry Goddamn Clinton voted in favor of OIF in response to 9/11. We do not lack the ability, as a nation, to fight a war. We lack the impetus. That's a really, really great thing to lack, because it means the world is pretty peachy on the whole. Russia nuking a NATO ally? That's an impetus. Everybody, even the imaginary 'War Party' in Russia, knows this. 

[i]But in principle.[/i] Let's pretend that it happens *anyway*. Antichristovsky takes over and nukes Estonia. Should we nuke them back? I would argue no, we should not. Not as a first option at least. The nuclear exchange is a russian-roulette match -- there are not winners, only survivors. No good reason to roll the dice on that, [i]especially[/i] if we enjoy such a conventional advantage that they'd turn to nukes in the first place. De-escalate the ICBM game, and [i]grind them into powder[/i] with our trump-card conventional military. If all else fails, we can always nuke Moscow later -- but you can't un-nuke Moscow. 

Simplified: Putin, in this (still imaginary and impossible) scenario, has made the assumption that we will not trigger a nuclear apocalypse over some asshole city in Former Bloc Europe. There is no incentive to prove him wrong on that account. As long as we can make them pay for it without ending the world (which, with the US army, is all the time), that is [i]always[/i] the better answer. Response? [b]Of course[/b]. Nuclear response? [b]Absolutely not.[/b]