The two feds who downvoted your post will clock off at 5pm having this be the only thing they did at work today.

Why depressing? If the West wants to accelerate their complete destruction, and a few thousand frogs leap gleefully to their death, I say let them. As long as they keep trickling into their deathtrap and not flooding with poise and planning and coordination, the West is ironically just bleeding themselves on Russian bullets.

Even if it went intitially decent for them, they cannot possible divert their forces both to Russia and to Africa. Africa frees itself, another source of funding for Western empire gone, another nail in the coffin. There's no winning, this is Nazi Battle of the Bulge latewar desperation.

I applaud your optimism, but I remain skeptical that this will go so well, at least at first. I can see France sending more troops or getting other countries involved.

I honestly doubt that Russia will use nuclear weapons. Right now, the war is going rather well for them. If things continue as they are, Russia will probably win sometime next year.

More NATO troops being sent in is an issue for Russia, but the collective west is unable to produce and send enough equipment to Ukraine (especially artillery shells). Furthermore, there are already a lot of NATO troops and CIA agents in Ukraine.

It is unclear how much this will benefit Ukraine. Even if Macron goes ahead with this escalation, Russia is still in a favorable position where it can bleed the west.

it may be the the fact we are that the point that only a nuclear illustration will sober the west

It would also be the perfect justification for escalation.

We're speeding towards WW3

On the contrary I think we’re going in the other direction.

This all started out as a revived Cold War. Then there was the WW2 phase before WW1-style trench warfare set in. Now Macron is bringing back le Grand Armée.

I think we’re speed running back to Hastings.

Though I am unsure conventional weapons will do anything but make Macron angry, it may be the the fact we are that the point that only a nuclear illustration will sober the west and Macron may be so deranged he will only double down in the face of that and use French nuclear weapons.

Russia kind of has to use nukes here because if they don't NATO is just going to increase troops to Ukraine little by litte and will obviously use Ukraine, at first, and their own forces later to attack inside Russia as well, but will Russia really do it? Or at least something close to it?

I remember them not doing much when the colonialists used one of Russia's planes as a shield to attack Syria. They did get the colonialists to stop attacking the north of Syria after that I think but will they continue not doing much in this case too or will they finally show where the red line is?

try taking out more transport and infrastructure links, destroy rail at Ukraine’s borders, take out rail bridges to force troop movements by road

Military might want to do that, it might be sensible. But the bourgeoisie running the country won't let them. Same reason the oil and gas and ammonia pipes are still operational

pave the way for Le Pen to become the president of France.

There could also legit be a military coup. A lot of people would support it (for the worse). Either case I would recommend any leftist residing in France to not wait for the first wave of arrestations to conceal their activities.

Not necessarily. Not like other members of NATO are going to physically stop them or condemn them for it obviously but it's not under the banner of it. Right now many other members seem more skeptical of this.

The only one who can make NATO jump and march is the US. France and other members can launch their own military operations but the bloc as a whole won't engage unless the US agrees. The US could probably veto France on this but they might have to lean on them more than they'd like and may be unwilling to do that and catch the blame when people talk after Ukraine falls and the US wants to engineer the blame to lie at the feet of the Russians of course, the Ukrainians who will be said to have not done enough, and Europe who will be blamed for not having bigger arms manufacturing capability and not spending 2% of GDP on military as NATO requires. The US will use that to force austerity and higher military spending while creating a zone of cheaper labor that's more amenable to signing up to die for the USA in the pacific against China in the near future.

Of course the deranged baltic nations are and have ever only been advocating a #nukerussianow strategy because they're extremely racist little dogs and have to bark loudly to feel important. But the bigger members who actually matter like Poland, Germany, UK are kind of waffling on what they want. They haven't backed Macron and in fact downplayed this when he first suggested it. The US almost certainly has little interest in getting directly involved at this point. They're saving their stuff for China. Whether they allow, impede, or indifferently shrug at their European vassals expending themselves on Russia in this fight is another matter.

Things could of course evolve. All bets are off if the French send tens of thousands of troops pouring in there and the Russians respond. Anything could happen at that point and the US would rather not lose its European vassals so it could be WW3.