… There’s a lot to unpack here but I think I’m going to focus on “Russia destroying the US with hypersonic nukes”.
While there is a non zero chance of The Russian government being suicidal enough to attempt an attack on the US/Nato, it would still be suicidal. Even assuming that russia’s nuclear arsenal is functional (given the fact the country is a kleptocracy this isn’t a given, part of their utter inadequacy in Ukraine is due to the years of pilfering of their own military budget to line their pockets) Russia is not in anyway a military match for the US.
To put things in perspective Russias total military spending in 2020 was around 60 billion dollars. The United States spent 37 billion dollars on it’s nuclear weapons program alone. Over half the total russian military budget on a single program. All and all the US spent nearly 780 billion on its military budget, That’s 13x more than russia.
So in the incredibly unlikely event that Russia fired nuclear weapons at the US or its allies the results would be catastrophic for Russia. While ICBM defense systems are unproven, and thus a massive nuclear strike on the US would more than likely result in the de facto end of the country, the moment such an attack would be detected (and it would be detected) the retaliation by the US would result in the utter annihalation of Russia as well. Hence the term “mutually assured destruction.”
Russia’s nuclear threats are more than likely saber rattling tactics. Tactics meant to cow the rest of the world into believing they are crazy enough to risk nuclear annihilation to pursue their imperialistic ambitions. Their talk of “hypersonic nukes” the military equivalent of an elderly man showing up in a sports car to try and prove that they still have their sexual virility.