Realistically, in any scenario that the USSR continued West (ie. operation unthinkable but reversed) the US would have just dropped another nuke... and another nuke... and another nuke... until they won.

Russia had no strategic bombers, very rudimentary (basically zero) nuclear technology, and a very minor navy. The US would have happily deployed more nukes until one hit them back; they only started talking about peace after the Soviets surprised the world with their rapid nuclear weapons program in 1949. Even then, that's 4 years of a head start for American nukes.

I think many anti-imperialist leftists are increasingly coming to that conclusion. I recently finished reading Kyle Ferrana's "Why the World Needs China," and I can honestly say now that it's one of the most insightful leftist books published since Domenico Losurdo and Samir Amin. Before Ferrana goes on to answer nearly every major leftist question about China, its contradictions and the atrocity propaganda against it, the book first goes through an impressively cogent assessment on the material conditions of the contemporary world and where things stand. Ferrana's analysis concluded with the view that the "peace at all costs" principle of leftists and socialist states continuing up to today has been, in many ways, a consequential miscalculation. An excerpt:

Chapters One through Five showed that the United States is the strongest center of capitalist power in the world; Chapters Six through Ten showed that the PRC is the strongest center of proletarian power in the world. Though the super-empire’s mechanisms of exploitation and control have developed since the inter-imperialist rivalry era, financial capital still dominates the West, and its fundamental tendency that Lenin identified a century ago—to ever expand and ever increase its profits—is likewise unchanged. There is indeed a Thucydides Trap—not one determined merely by the military and economic power of states, but also by their class character. In order to grow, the Western bourgeoisie must eventually subdue China. If it cannot do so by subversion, sabotage, and trade manipulation, it will try to do so by force. The super-empire’s reaction can be delayed, if it can profit first by subjugating other victims (such as the Russian Federation and its other national-bourgeois enemies), but the world is finite, and as far as we know, the rate of extraction cannot increase much further; the most efficient paradigm of dispossessive accumulation yet discovered—neocolonialism—is already prevalent nearly everywhere.

A conflict therefore is inevitably coming, a death-struggle between the American financial capitalist and the Chinese peasant/worker that will span the entire planet. If the PRC declines to defend itself, it will be destroyed; but if the financial oligarchy cannot destroy the PRC, it will lose its own control over class society. Were the PRC an empire, the new Cold War would not fundamentally threaten capitalist rule; victory would simply mean one gang of capitalists replacing another, just as new, ascendant empires have absorbed old, decaying ones throughout history. But the Chinese capitalists do not control finance in their own country, the workers do, and they are not required by their class interest to seek profit and exploitation at others’ expense. A Chinese victory thus has the potential to be another paradigm shift—a progression between stages of history. We have been here before. The bipolar world of the original Cold War, dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union, displayed exactly this dynamic, and the Soviet Union was defeated utterly. It would seem wise to avoid the same situation that has historically led to disaster; but this can only happen if the two superpowers cooperate in avoiding kinetic, economic, or proxy conflict, and the United States almost certainly will not. An examination of the Soviet Union’s errors, the errors of contemporary anti-imperialists, and of any qualitative differences between the conditions it faced in the twentieth century and those presently faced by the PRC, is therefore essential to predicting its surest path to victory.

The PRC currently enjoys a relatively better position than the Soviet Union at its height. It has a considerably larger share of the global economy and total world population, as well as far greater international trade leverage. Even more importantly, unlike during the First Cold War, it has pursued close cooperation with the Russian Federation despite the differences in the ruling class of each country. The infamous Sino-Soviet Split, which set the two largest socialist countries at odds with one another, has not continued into the twenty-first century, and the super-empire’s open hostility toward both Russia and China make that chapter of history unlikely to repeat itself in the near future. Political strategy, however, may still ultimately be the most decisive factor in the Second Cold War.

In the first months after the October Revolution, Lenin wrote:

". . . until the world socialist revolution breaks out, until it embraces several countries and is strong enough to overcome international imperialism, it is the direct duty of the socialists who have conquered in one country (especially a backward one) not to accept battle against the giants of imperialism. Their duty is to try to avoid battle, to wait until the conflicts between the imperialists weaken them even more, and bring the revolution in other countries even nearer. . . one must be able to calculate the balance of forces and not help the imperialists by making the battle against socialism easier for them when socialism is still weak, and when the chances of the battle are manifestly against socialism."

The fledgling Russian Soviet Republic, which at first had controlled only the urban centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg, could not fight the forces of every imperialist power at once; indeed, the key to its survival was not war against them, but extricating itself from the First World War as quickly as it could. For the next two decades, it followed Lenin’s strategy, seeking to make peace and détente with the imperialists while it was still weak and they were still strong. Great sacrifices were made to consolidate and defend the revolution within the Soviet Union, to appear harmless before the capitalist world, and to sow discord between the empires, which were not yet united. The Second World War seemed to vindicate this strategy; as the imperialist governments of France and the UK deliberately “appeased” Nazi Germany in the hopes that it would destroy socialism in Europe for them, the Soviet Union’s maneuvering succeeded in broadening the war, such that even while encircled by Germany and the Empire of Japan, it did not face their might alone. As a result of inter-imperialist conflict, the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence expanded, bringing revolution and proletarian rule to Eastern Europe, China, Mongolia, and Korea.

Yet the Second World War was also the last inter-imperialist war. The Soviet leadership became the victim of its own success, believing that the same strategy would work again under the next stage of imperialism, which at that point had not been identified. In 1952, Joseph Stalin confidently dismissed any objections to the contrary: "[...] the capitalist countries’ struggle for markets and the desire to crush their competitors turned out in actuality to be stronger than the contradictions between the camp of capitalism and the camp of socialism. [...]"

Stalin did not live to correct this error, and his successors also failed to recognize it, even as the Cold War’s imperialist bloc increasingly became not less but more united against socialism. In 1956, the Soviet Union officially adopted the policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist empires. Similarly, Deng advocated a foreign policy of “keeping a low profile”—which, after the collapse of the socialist bloc and the total encirclement of the remaining socialist countries, succeeded in keeping the Party in power at the cost of integration with the capitalist world—and ever since his passing, the PRC has officially forsworn seeking any form of hegemony and has scrupulously followed its self-imposed principles of non-interference in other countries’ internal political affairs. Yet it is now obvious from the remainder of twentieth century history that inter-imperialist war was not inevitable. [...]

[...] The experiences of Japan are the clearest evidence that the inter-imperialist unity that outlived even the Soviet Union is in no danger. There would be no inter-imperialist war in the latter twentieth century, and one is not likely in the twenty-first. The greatest conflict between capitalist empires of the super-imperial era resembled nothing so much as the United States pointing a gun at an unarmed man. There is no reason to believe that the unprecedented unity among empires in the face of a socialist enemy that was a feature of First Cold War will not also be a feature of the Second, especially not now that the super-empire and neocolonialism are fully entrenched throughout the world. The PRC is therefore no more likely than was the Soviet Union to win simply through patience.

As described earlier in Chapter Eleven, the severing of the Nord Stream was in no country’s self-interest but the United States’ (and Norway’s); pipelines, railroads, bridges, ports, and other transport infrastructure of the kind that the PRC has been patiently and methodically building throughout the periphery are all vulnerable. What takes years to build can be destroyed in moments; without its own military and soft-power influence, the PRC’s long-term geopolitical strategy will soon be at a tremendous disadvantage, and it may lose what it has so painstakingly gained. In any war, hot or cold, the advantage usually lies with the side that takes the initiative. Though the PRC is still rising economically, militarily, and in every other respect, the United States has consistently acted first, through trade wars, diplomatic maneuvering, propaganda, and other provocations. It has retained its military outposts in Korea and is expanding them throughout the Pacific, [...] the Cold War blocs are re-forming, and the PRC is the de facto leader of the opposition whether the Party is ready or not. The outcome of the Second Cold War will depend heavily upon whether and in what fashion the PRC will take on this mantle of leadership.

All that, and the US has the perk of not having to fight wars on its own territories. The US fought and lost in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., but never on “American” land.

While these wars have destroyed millions of lives abroad, caused incalculable damage to land and infrastructure, the US public and its ways of life have hardly had a burden to bear

So be it. WW3 would bring about global communism. Instead we get the doomed ending with humanity consuming itself via fascism and climate collapse.

The people generally are for a more aggressive stance, while it's the leaders who are capitulationist. Look at Armenia and Iran right now, there are protests and riots because they are pissed at the governments inaction and cowardice against western aggression. The people demand a stronger stance.