So, what’s new in Syria.
The Russians threw all but the kitchen sink at it. They moved in their capital naval assets, their capital aerospatial defense assets, airforce assets and probably have several satellites covering it at all times.
Essentially, they put enough of their forces there to perform three functions. First, that Syria doesn’t follow the pattern of Iraq and Libya in becoming a jihadist post-apocalyptic banana republic. Second, that Americans don’t succeed in destroying all Russian allies one by one, and fencing off Russia with a five meter tall concrete wall, according to the principle of “Is the wall finished? – Yes. -Then start filling with water.”
The third function of the military buildup is drawing a line. If the Americans attack any government assets in Syria, it will be an attack on Russia, which will be dealt with swiftly and violently. Essentially, Syria is now under Russian military umbrella.
What does that mean? First of all, it means that a no-fly zone administered by Russian armed forces has been established in Syria. It doesn’t mean that Americans and their allies can’t fly there, just that they aren’t allowed to perform offensive acts without permission from Russian and/or Syrian government. If they do, they will be taken down. And yes, that includes “stealth” aircraft, because “stealth” is bullshit, it’s a problem the Russians solved more than a decade ago with a few lines of code, basically saying that if something with radar signature of a ping-pong ball flies at supersonic speeds it’s not a seagull, it’s an American jet, so don’t delete it as noise from the radar screen, but instead define it as a priority target. If you believe that the Russians couldn’t do it, you’re a fucking idiot. All Russian radar-guided missiles can shoot down “stealth” assets without any difficulty.
Let’s make a high-probability tit-for-tat scenario.
Americans attack a Syrian government asset. The Russians stage a layered response: first, they send a “cease and desist” order. Second, they send in the fighter jets to intimidate the Americans. If that doesn’t work, they shoot them down. This, of course, makes the Americans mad, and so they retaliate against some Russian asset, for instance they barrage the aerospatial defense battery with cruise missiles. The Russians then destroy the asset that was used to launch the missiles. The state of war is then declared between Russia and America. Russia then uses cruise missiles to knock out all important American assets in the middle east and Europe in preparation for a strategic nuclear exchange. I would expect that they knock out all satellites from orbit, starting with the GPS network and all the military assets, tear down all transatlantic cables and start sinking American Ohio class submarines and Nimitz class aircraft carriers, knock down the electric grid in America, knock down the command chain and the nuclear silos, essentially forcing America to immediately surrender without killing off its population.
If America still manages to squeeze off a few hundred ICBMs toward Russia, I would expect 10 out of 200 to pass the Russian anti-ballistic shield, destroying Moscow, St.Petersburg and several other major cities in Russia. The Russians will then get very angry and destroy all major cities in America, killing about 250 million Americans instantly, and the rest will starve, die of various illnesses and resort to murder, plundering and cannibalism before eventually perishing. America will disappear from history, China will take over as the world’s greatest power, Russia will rebuild within a few decades, Europe will be engulfed in a major civil war with the Muslim population, Japan and South Korea will make a peaceful alliance with China, North Korea will be taken over and transformed peacefully by the South, and Israel will be in shit creek without paddles. Within a hundred years, the American wasteland will be colonized by the Latin-American population from Mexico and turned into a typical Latin-American shithole of violence, corruption and poverty. Russia will be reduced to China’s protectorate. Europe will become a war-torn shithole. All the rich people who escaped to New Zealand will be dug out of their holes, killed and their carcasses thrown to the dogs, as everybody will understand it’s all their fault. Australia will be commandeered by China. Chinese economy will collapse, as it is based on export which will vanish, and popular revolt will destroy their socio-political system, turning them into a civil-war-torn shithole.
Everybody who will have anything positive to say about America will be seen the same way as the neo-nazis are seen today. Civilization, as it is now, will never recover. There will be endless regional wars that will prevent any accumulation of wealth, global connectivity will be permanently lost, and the world will descend into savegery. This will continue until the next ice age, which will raise the probability of human extinction to double-digit values. It’s anyone’s guess whether human species will exit the ice age at all, and in what condition. So that’s my prognosis if the Americans follow the course they are most likely to follow. They will of course think that they have the military superiority over the Russians, but they are miscalculating because they indeed do have the conventional advantages, but the Russian nuclear forces are two decades ahead of them and the conflict will escalate to nuclear level very quickly. The Americans simply don’t calculate with the fact that they are dealing with a spacefaring opponent now, who can strip them of their high-tech layer and proceed to dismember them very quickly and efficiently. They would be idiots to mess with Russia, but yeah, that’s what they are, so they inevitably will.
As I see it now, there was a reasonable probability of mankind avoiding a nuclear war before the Sochi Olympics; since then, the probability of war rose sharply with every attempt of America to cow the Russians into submission, and now, I put it at 99.9%, because the only way it can be avoided is if America miraculously starts acting opposite to everything it’s been doing since the 1990s. The only way I see the nuclear war being avoided is if the Gods pull the plug first, which is what I hope will happen, because I would seriously dislike dying of dysentery while eating garbage and drinking filthy water in a post-nuclear wasteland.