Be careful what you wish for:A number of informed commentators...

Be careful what you wish for:

A number of informed commentators believe the pullback (or pause?) in the move to approving long range missile attacks into Russia (with by necessity direct US involvement to program and guide via satellites) came about at the last minute due to:

• back channel efforts where Russia convinced the cooler heads in the Pentagon that they were not bluffing and have planned for and are committed to directly attack the US and the UK, on a "proportionate" basis, along the lines of using non nuclear hypersonic missiles to destroy the US and UK factories that manufacture storm shadow and attacm missiles.
• they sent the list of sites to be destroyed.
• a sort of coup occurred where the Blinken and Biden have been sidelined and the Pentagon has taken control of the Ukraine war decisions.

The US and the UK always factor in to their plans that chaos elsewhere is acceptable as calm and safety at home as island nations / continents is assured.

For them, the prospect of multiple factories being turned to rubble in their homeland would be yet another huge embarrassment (their impotence to defend revealed) and a shock to the population.

It would also force the US into being directly in the hot seat of the end of the world decision.

Suck it up or go nuclear? .... knowing that Russia is equally capable and perhaps more so in the nuclear response arena.

The 72 minutes and we are all either dead or soon to be at the start of a horrific nuclear winter scenario is on the line.

The suck it up option sounds unlikely at first.

But, the calculus in the plan might be that with the homelands revealed as exposed, the world sensing a degree of proportionality and logic in the attack (attack Russia facilities and get an inkind response) , and given the attack could be sort of rationalised as "just" some factories, self preservation would kick in. Poking the bear might be off the agenda - for now or maybe much longer.

One can imagine a media backout on the strikes would be enforced. Headlines would suddenly be filled with stories on Taylor Swift and the latest on Puff Daddy or some other highly distracting event(s). Ukraine would become non news like Afghanistan.

Might be what happened - seems logical and to fit the chain of events.

Edge of precipice. Escalate is good?