You’re not thinking about things clearly. You can’t live as a hostage. Otherwise “do what we say or nukes” until you wind up a slave. Better off dead.

If Russia doesn’t like it they can stop with the dumb threats.

Happy to suggest some books on how cold War was actually navigated by both parties without destroying the planet. Not to spoil the ending, but at no point in time was "if we do this and then they blow us all up, so be it" a strategy

To be clear Russia is threatening to do things (blow us up) and the result would be them being blown up too (along with the commie Chinese).

So if that’s their strategy, I’ll call their bluff every time. No point in the human race existing if the result is “do what we say, else we nuke you”. Bet

If someone is threatening to end the world over every issue, then at some stage you need to call their bluff or you'll just be taken advantage of.

If the USA threatens to nuke Russia if they don't leave Ukraine tomorrow, would you be giving these same sage warnings to Russia?

The best way to avoid confrontation is to have an irrational adult at the helm, then all calculated escalation bets are off and you tend to just not play.

We’ve got one of those in the US but it turns out the tradeoffs are terrible.