Well, no, that isn't the argument I made.
I listed those five countries as the ones who I believe have an effective nuclear deterrent. I did not say that to be an effective deterrent you have to be able to torch those countries.
If your nuclear arsenal can be rendered 'not launchable' by an enemy invasion it does not deter that invasion.
That information does make a little more sense than what your argument seemed to be before. Still, if the state in question is not capable of launching such an invasion, then the nuclear deterrent is good enough. To re-use the India-Pakistan example, while the US, UK, or France,
might be able to render India's nuclear arsenal ineffective through a series of well-timed surgical strikes, neither Pakistan nor China, the two states that nuclear build-up is aimed at, is capable of doing so. In other words, the two states the Indian nuclear arsenal is designed to deter, it is strong enough to deter. That Pakistan is too stupid to realise this is its own problem, one of many.
If your only delivery systems are land based and immobile that means they can be disabled by a quick strike from anyone who can get the location intel, and nothing in the world is secret for very long. So mobile is a requirement for an effective deterrent...unless you have a really huge number and can say 'you will not get them all before we can launch them, and enough will get launched to reduce you to ash'. Otherwise, fixed point of launch missile systems should be considered as first strike weapons not deterrents, because they lack survivability.
The Indian arsenal isn't totally fixed. I don't know if they have submarine platforms yet, but I know they are planning them, and they have other mobile forces. Even North Korea's nukes have some mobility, via the train lines. It's a testament to Pakistan's inefficiency that they have the world's only non-mobile nuclear arsenal.
Actually, I was saying that countries with effective nuclear deterrence can't be invaded because the consequences are too great. Do you disagree?
I also said that Russia is indeed one of those countries. Do you disagree?
I've also said that Russia's boorish behavior is no worse than anyone elses, but I'm sure you disagree with that, which is fine.
The entire reason for NATO's conventional arms build-up after the Kennedy Administration is because nuclear deterrence may not be enough to stop a country which decides to call your bluff on a nuclear strike. North Korea, China, Vietnam, and other states defied the US and its allies in spite of the nuclear deterrent, out of a belief that the US would not use that deterrent; South Vietnam wasn't worth a bloody war with China or the USSR. There were many who feared that the Soviets might gamble on an attack on Western Europe if the US showed any sign that it would not risk its own survival to defend the Europeans; this was the main reason France and Britain pursued their own nuclear programs, regardless of any claims about prestige. Russia has always been paranoid about an invasion from the West (not entirely without reason, given Russian history) and therefore may not believe their nuclear arsenal to be enough deterrent.
And most states have not invaded and annexed anyone's territory lately. Regardless of your opinion of US foreign policy, they haven't annexed any territory since 1898, whereas Russia has annexed territory this year. The Russian puppet-states in Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, among others, are also far less independent than the US-backed regimes in Iraq or Afghanistan. US foreign policy is woefully incompetent, but it is nowhere near as aggressive or "boorish" as Russia's.
If we extend "anyone elses [sic]" to include
literally any other state in the world we will see that no one has tried to pull any stunts like Putin's in Crimea since Saddam's invasion of Kuwait back in 1990. Even if you want to ignore annexations and only focus on invasions, Russia is still more "boorish" than everyone except America, which it ties, with unprovoked invasion apiece since 2000. Given that Russia basically sat on Georgia's chest until the latter retaliated in 2008, that's also hardly unprovoked, but I'll still put it in that category.
After defeating Germany in World War I the victors imposed crushing economic conditions which destroyed the German economy.
The cold war ended when the USSR collapsed, and there is great rejoicing at economic conditions that damage the Russian economy.
Why? It really didn't turn out that well with the Germans, did it?
Entirely different situations. The rise of Hitler is actually because the other parties to the Versailles Treaty stopped mistreating Germany. Germany also did not begin to act aggressively until its economy improved - albeit temporarily - whereas Russia is lashing out while it still has a strong(ish) economy. Wanting the warmonger's economy to break down to the point he can't make war any more is a good thing; Germany lost a democratic government and gained a dictatorship due to long-term economic hardship, whereas Russia is more likely to go the Filipino and Indonesian route, of losing a dictatorship and gaining a democracy due to sudden economic collapse.
