So you will do anything, trade away everything, and capitulate at the slighted provocation to avoid the faintest possibility of war?

If not, where do you draw the line?

Because this isn’t the first time this has been analyzed, and the math is clear: the only winning strategy with terrorists not negotiate under any circumstances. You call their bluff, and you make known that you will always call their bluff in the future, and never back down. Do anything else and the terrorist can manipulate you into anything they want.

No, I certainly would not. You make a lot of assumptions.

However, the idea that a conventional force would obliterate the capital of a nuclear armed power without escalating into full-on nuclear war seems unlikely to me.

I live in a nuclear armed country too.

Exactly. The size of the Russian arsenal is such that - even if 80% of it is broken and entirely useless - it still has about twice as many warheads than the two European nuclear powers, France and the UK, combined.