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There’s an element of the fact that the west is generally on Ukraine’s side, and that we’re therefore seeing a Ukraine-centric perspective
But at the same time, the maps don’t lie: Russia was expected to roll Ukraine over in a matter of days or weeks, yet is now 7 weeks into the war and have clearly not steamrolled Ukraine or even achieved their likely/apparent goals
Russia spends 3x times more of it’s Budget on the military than countries with a comparable economy, so it has far more military hardware and personnel. They also have mandatory military service.
The export a great deal of hardware from guns, vehicles, tanks, and airplanes to other nations which helps justify their R&D budget.
They also have huge amounts of surplus hardware left over from the Soviet Union. A lot of hardware the Russians are using is very old and much of the new state-of-art equipment they flaunt is in very short supply.
Tactical nukes are small, a few kilotons yield. They’re delivered by normal weapons systems, such as artillery or strike aircraft over relatively short ranges.
Their job is to break up formations of enemy troops on the battlefield. This can be offensive or defensive. It may seem odd to think of a nuke as a defensive weapon, but the idea is that when you see enemy forces massing to attack you, you drop a tactical nuke on them to break up the attack.
This is quite a complex situation and there’s not really a single clear answer. Broadly speaking, there are 3 explanations that have been commonly offered for the current conflict. These reasons are not mutually exclusive but opinions differ on which of them is more important.
There are a couple of ways to answer this. I’d argue that, in order of formidability, the most determined enemies the United States has faced in battle are:
Themselves (the combined military forces of the Confederacy and Union).
The military forces of the Empire of Japan (the Imperial Japanese Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces).
The military forces of Nazi Germany (the German armed forces, or the Wehrmacht, consisted of the Heer (Army), the Kriegsmarine (Navy) and the Luftwaffe (Air Force).
