ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[Kralizec]

Those of you who believe this seem to be looking at raw counts of available materiel and troops, which is rather stupid; for example, it suggests that the United States would have a good shot at conquering Russia.

War is not like a game of RISK, in which 8 chits against 5 chits by definition results in total victory for the former. Militaries have to cover actual ground to get to their enemy and their enemy's strategic places, unless you figure that wars are about to be fought entirely by Space Marines coming down on in drop-pods.

All true, an invasion/occupation wouldn't work. I didn't mean to imply so, but I guess my bit about tanks gave that impression.

What it boils down to: if the gloves where off, could Russia deter Turkey from interfering in Syria again and tolerate the occasional violation of its airspace? Assuming that NATO wouldn't intervene, yes they could.

Russia would simply pull their reserve aircraft out of storage and move them into position to attack Turkey. No need for land forces to cross any uninvolved countries. The quality of Russia's navy in the Black sea doesn't matter that much, either. Realisticly Russia doesn't want to resort to this, but Turkey wants it even less, because it couldn't fight them off.

EDIT: I don't think hypothetical dick contests are important though, because it's not going to happen anyway. You should all be glorifying the exalted ruler Assad and debate wether he should rule for 40 more years. Or not.