Russia's military is based on a defense doctrine. This is where their strengths lie. They would never attempt to invade Europe or America as it would most certainly not be successful. Likewise, any attempted invasion of Russia would also end in miserable failure. Russia has some of the best air defense and ballistic missile technology in the world. I guarantee you NATO and the USA would not be able to successfully invade Russia.
Here is a good article on the subject:
http://thesaker.is/the-russia-u-s-conventional-military-balance/Why bean counting makes absolutely no sense
The typical reply to this kind of question resorts to what US force planners call “bean counting”. Typically, journalists use the yearly IISS Military Balance or a source like Global Firepower and tallies of the number of men, main battle tanks, armored personnel carries, infantry combat vehicles, combat aircraft, artillery pieces, bombers, missiles, surface ships, submarines, etc. each side has a presents them in a chart. The reality is that such bean counting means absolutely and strictly nothing. Let’s take a simple example: if a war happens between, say, China and Russia then the fact that China has, say, 1000 thanks in it’s Yunnan province, will make no difference to the war at all, simply because they are too far. When we apply this caveat to the Russian-US conventional military balance we immediately ought to ask ourselves the following two basic questions:
a) What part of the US military worldwide would be immediately available to the US commanders in case of a war with Russia?
b) On how much reinforcements could this force count and how soon could they get there?
Keep in mind that tanks, bombers, soldiers and artillery do not fight separately – they fight together in what is logically called “combined arms” battles. So even the USA could get X number of soldiers to location A, if they don’t have all the other combined arms components to support them in combat they are just an easy target.
Furthermore, any fighting force will require a major logistics/supplies effort. It is all very well to get aircraft X to location A, but if it’s missiles, maintenance equipment and specialists are not here to help, they are useless. Armored forces are notorious for expending a huge amount of petroleum, oil and lubricants. According to one estimate, in 1991 a US armored division could sustain itself for only 5 days , and after that it needed a major support effort.
Finally, any force that the US would move from point A to point B would become unavailable to execute its normally assigned role at point A. Now consider that “point A” could mean the Middle-East, or Far East Asia and you will see that this might be a difficult decision for US commanders.
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