I don’t think they will try something like nuclear war, not even the MIC can profit off a nuclear wasteland. Nukes will likely be their very last resort. All we need to do is be not stupid, not corner the nuclear armed wild animal, and ensure that they understand that surrendering to socialist revolution is an option. We’re going to have to work with the bourgeoisie to re-industrialize the US and Canada anyways so we just need to get them to understand that before they nuke the world out of spite (“I’m gonna die anyways, why not go out in a blaze of ‘glory’?”).

I don’t even think WW3 would go nuclear. China and Russia combined have the industrial capacity to sustain a war against the US and NATO for at least a decade, so all they’d need to do is not lose long enough for revolution to come to the core. Not win, because the US would certainly go nuclear if they were threatened existentially, just not lose.

Perhaps the American Revolution/Second Civil War/whatever would in the first few years take control of vast parts of the US (maybe Canada too), and then there could be a long ‘detente’ of sorts to prevent the bourgeoisie from nuking everything. Along with this ‘Cold Civil War’ the American revolutionaries could make something similar to the NEP or SWCC to slowly bring the bourgeoisie to their side. Eventually the remains of the US would collapse by itself. When this happens the bourgeoisie will be left with a choice: nuke everything and try to profit inside a bunker, or profit inside a far more stable socialist economy?

I doubt thinks will play out anything like in the above paragraph, I am not educated enough to predict the course of a revolution or the conditions in place when in happens, but the things to note is that: 1. it is possible for the US to be destroyed without the US nuking everything even if WW3 starts, 2. this is likely only possible with a strong socialist movement, 3. revolution in a nuclear armed country will require a radically different approach to all previous revolutions, and 4. we must start seriously considering how to have a revolution inside a nuclear armed power both during WW3 and if WW3 doesn’t happen. We should also probably consider how to revolt in an openly fascist Nazi Germany style state.

Things would be much easier if the UK, France, or Israel have a revolution before the US does, because then we’d have a chance to test various approaches and study them. Israel in particular is ideal as the conditions in the US are more similar to Israel than the UK and France, while not having anywhere near the number of nukes that UK/US/France have.

Of course everything would be much easier if China or Russia found a way to disable the US’s nuclear arsenal (how detectable are hypersonic missiles? is it possible to make them completely undetectable? do China or Russia know where all the nukes are? could a electronic attack (emp or computer virus) disable their arsenal?), because that would simplify things to being a standard socialist revolution instead of one in a paranoid nuclear power. We must operate under the assumption that this will not be the case though.