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I actually believe that if the exact same thing (intercept, harassment, and then collision, perhaps even with loss of life) happened to say a F-16 in international airspace, that US would not meaningfully escalate. The west has been quite clear in telegraphing that it does not want to escalate to direct war with Russia. Regardless of "legality", this effectively makes the bar for "act of war" (as in what would induce the US or the West to actually enter a shooting war with Russia) very high. Russia is purposefully acting in this grey/sub-threshold space to be provocative, and to carve out what agency/space to maneuver it can. It is purposefully being provocative, and it's in the US' interest to not over react (remember, the end game of escalation, however remote is nukes). In a sense, this is the logical outcome of the position that the west has taken, where it has gone ahead and done a bunch of things that are already very close to declaring war on Russia (exclusively materially aiding Ukraine, allowing Ukrainian troops to train on NATO soil, enforce economic sanctions on Russia), while also saying that we don't want to directly fight Russia -right now-. Also, while the intercept and harassment is obviously purposeful, I feel the collision is still in question, particularly because of the risk to the Su-27. I wouldn't it put it past Russia to think that the risk was worth it, but I don't think we're in rock solid territory. |
This is Russia not the Soviet Union. With Putin and cronies ransacking the Russian treasury for more than 20 years, what are the chances there's enough left to maintain the arsenal? Of the 5K+ nuclear warheads Russia inherited, how many even work? Remember that the Soviet Union was a rusting shell years before it dissolved in 1991. I just have a sinking suspicion the US could win a nuclear war against Russia with a single, low yield strike, with no response. But then again, why would we waste a nuclear warhead when we can use Rods from God to cut the head off the snake? The ethical considerations have a lot of wiggle room here, as Russia is a mafia state with a government that is an assassination society, so an assassination exception for Russian heads of state is then only ethical.[1] But honestly, it would be so much cooler to arrest and extract Putin, and take him alive to face justice at The Hague.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_ass...