Christ this is dumb.
"I'm not sure if we can avoid WW3, so let's guarantee it happens". Look, let's be quite clear, if the US and Russia fight, nukes will happen. No other way about it. You are competing for the dumbest post on the-sietch right now.
They might.
Which is also why we leave the Russians the option of withdrawing troops, or seeing military hardware removed by force.
I didn't want something like this to become what might be a 'least bad option' but the world we live in today is such a clusterfuck it might actually be one of the least bad possibilities.
Even the notion of threatening to retake the islands by force might be enough to bog down Moscow, because the amount of local firepower the JSDF can bring far outweighs what Russia can bring short of nukes.
And Russia is unlikely to start tossing strategic nukes over the Kuril's; that is a fight where they might be used against naval formations or beachheads if Russia really goes stupid, but are unlikely to be tossed at any nation's homeland.
It's about forcing a cost-benefit analysis on Moscow where the pain is enough to humiliate, but not enough to endanger the function of the state, and where there is a low/no causality out. Using nuke's over the Kuril's, and harming the local fisheries, might also piss off North Korea and China, not just the west.
It can also be used as a carrot-n-stick with Ukraine. Unless Russia wants a 2-front conflict, it'll either give the islands back to Japan or withdraw from Ukraine. If it wants to fight for those islands, it'll also be doing so while something like 60% of it's conventional forces are tied up in Ukraine getting Bayaktar'd and Javelin'd.
If Putin makes a play for the Baltics, like they've been talking about a bit in Russia recently, then we probably won't avoid nukes flying as is.
A fight over the Kuril's however is small scale and localized enough maybe the conflict could be kept non-nuclear, and might cause Russia to reevaluate if it actually has the forces to take the Baltics, keep fighting in Ukraine, and possibly be engaged in the Far East as well.
Nah, Japan is liked by to many.
Thr US also has a defense treaty woth them so.
The US will nuke back.
Your starting to sound like me
Let's just that if that's the case, it's because I have little hope of WW3 being averted anymore, and am having to figure out how to make it as bloodless and short as possible.
Best way to do that is try to have the fight happen in such a way it does not endanger any major powers homelands or nuclear arsenals, but helps settle some of the issues that have been lingering on.
If we can contain WW3 to 2 fronts in Ukraine and possibly the Kuril's, instead of nuclear devastation of good chunks of the planet, that is a win in my book.