doomer

Thanks for clarifying. I think there may be a misunderstanding about my argument. I'm not saying that distance necessarily makes us safer from my own perspective. I could agree with you that mutually assured destruction is probably the end result regardless of distance. The point I'm making is that for military and national security experts, distance (and consequently time before being hit) is assuredly considered a factor, despite what you or I may think. This article may provide some useful background on these concepts. There may be better articles out there but I happened to run across this one when I searched for when ICBMs became viable.

I've mentioned this before, but the US nearly completely lost it when they found out that there were Russian nukes in Cuba in 1962. The same exact scenario would be just as alarming to the US today. Trying to wave away Russia's concerns with this type of scenario is unrealistic. Have you ever watched Dr. Mearsheimer speak? If you haven't, it's worth looking on Youtube for his name and Russia or Ukraine. He is a renowned scholar in international relations who has a realistic perspective of West-Russia relations and who speaks very clearly about it.