I agree with your conclusions, but I don't buy your argument.

Oh, Russia would not use nukes, and for the very reasons you list. No one - no one - wants thermonuclear armageddon.

But even though no one has broken the space treaty yet, the reverse reasoning will hold. NATO is not going to risk starting an atom war just because Putin knocked some billionaire's satellites out of the sky.

And picking Musk as a potential target is pretty clever. A lot of people are sick of Musk. Any losses he takes don't come out of anyone's taxes.

So do I think Putin will knock Starlink down?

Unlikely. It's hard to believe that Russia could reliably do it. We've repeatedly seen their failure to execute, particularly on technical matters, and of course space travel is a very technical thing.

Putin's upside is small - he knocks down some private satellites owned by a sociopath, who cares? His downside is a significant possibility of yet another public humiliation, and Vovo has to be pretty sick of being publicly humiliated.

So it ain't gonna happen anyway.

Thanks for a thought-provoking article!