The West will no doubt win because they have a superior navy, air force, and have the U.S. with the nuclear monopoly at this period but it will be a costly victory since Europe will be a wasteland. Countries like Britain would be plunged into a recession as they were still reeling from the World War II.
Not within the US’s capabilities at the start of this war. They only have 32 atomic capable B-29s, 12 poorly trained crews certified to fly them, and no prepared bases in Europe with the infrastructure to deploy atomic weapons. Not to mention the Soviets have overwhelming air superiority in Central/Western Continental Europe on the order of 5:1.
More the opposite: those forces would be withdrawn. The prevailing war plans at this time, the Pincher-series, called for a wholesale abandonment of continental East Asia and the assumption of a strategic defensive in Japan and Taiwan throughout the war.
Nah, they won't. Why? Because why the fuck would they WANT to fight another total war? The last one was 3(!) years before, and left most of Europe bombed so much that it is resembling a lunar landscape, broke and more or less hopeless, and even if US is overtaken in a coup(it won't be) by people insane enough to go for it what they can possibly gain from winning? A Vietnam the size of half of Eurasia that will be impossible to pacify and any attempt to do so would lead to US's own collapse? Or what, you unioronically think that people of SU will greet them with flowers? Yeah, just like they did Hitler 5 years before(there literally won't be any difference between US and Hitler ITTL, none at all), or maybe global economic crash will benefit US somehow? Notice that I write "US", not "West" all the time because it's the only western country still in shape to fight a war at this point, others are too deep in shit after WWII still. And SU obviously has no reason to attack either. So the only way through wich such a war may break out is through some freak accident during Berlin crysis or something, but if that is so the reaction on both sides will be not "this is a chance to crush the enemy once and for all" but rather "oh fuck, we gotta stop it before the real shit starts" and so Stalin and Truman sign a ceasefire couple of weeks later before losses became too big, that's how it ends because, AGAIN, NOBODY HAS ANYTHING TO GAIN FROM IT
But no real history of dealing with a determined Strategic Bombing campaign, not to take away from that the USAF couldn't do one in 1948, anyway.
The few USAF bomber raids in Korea which flew far enough north to be detected and intercepted by Soviet air defense posts established in Manchuria from 1951 on generally suffered 90%+ loss rates, heavy enough that the USAF abandoned raids in these regions altogether by 1952. Given that these posts were using technologies and techniques already in widespread service in 1948, that rather says it all.
On just one mission for that rate, and didn't stop the B-29s from destroying everything of value from the 38th to the Yalu.
Multiple missions, actually, which is why the USAF ultimately suspended operations that close to the Yalu. And of course they didn't stop the rest of those B-29s, since those B-29s didn't have to worry about encountering Soviet planes at all, much less dealing with concerted efforts at Soviet interception at all. Not a luxury they'll have in the aforementioned WW3 scenario and thus basically amounts to a non-sequitor that proves nothing.
Which given that said sets were operating in Manchuria, beyond Mig Alley, tells us quite well how well the much larger and thicker network of sets in Europe and the USSR itself would perform, especially since unlike in Korea the US would have to fly past them to get to their targets, as opposed to MiG alley where the defense posts were beyond the targets.
Many Russians welcomed the Germans in 1941.If they'd treated the Russian people decently, the Germans would have won in a few months.
If they weren't virulently racist against Slavs they wouldn't be Nazis.
The link leaves out that it took another year for the B-50 to work it's way up to operational status.
