Sorry, it was a poor choice of words on my part. I am at work and was in a hurry. I was talking purely about nukes. At the end of the day, they are really all that matter when a super power faces another super power. Ever since the nuke was invented, super powers haven't fought other super powers because the end game of the escalation is nukes, which means end of the world for everyone.
When the USSR collapsed, we assumed they had roughly the same nuke strength as we did. While that may no longer be the case on paper, every country that has nukes keeps the extent of their arsenal secret, even if they claim they are transparent. If there is any country in the world that could rival us in terms of nuclear capability, I have to believe it would be Russia. Even if we do have more than they do, and who really fucking knows if that's the case or not, I'm certain they have enough nuclear capability to set off an end of the world nuclear scenario.
I personally don't think we'd ever go toe to toe with Russia because the people that make those decisions on both sides of the table know that both countries have nuclear capability and that would be the end game. That's the whole reason the cold war happened and why we sort of seeing a remergence of the cold war with Russia right now. They are meddling in the affairs of other countries but are politically savvy enough to dance around an outright conflict.
