Russian tanks

© AP
Russian tanks in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia
Jan. 12, 2022

In a recent printing briefing held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow past Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke almost continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to bring together the trans-Atlantic brotherhood. He said:

"Their [NATO'due south] primary job is to comprise the evolution of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed conflict and strength their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked near in the United states today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea past strength, and still describe us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let usa imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat operation. Practice we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation about information technology? It seems not."

Only these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a play a trick on "screaming from the height of the hen house that he's scared of the chickens," adding that whatever Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should non be reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal goal of the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is what he terms the " de-occupation" of Crimea. While this goal has, in the past, been couched in terms of diplomacy - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must force Russian federation to negotiate the return of our peninsula," Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining control over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for return is a purely military one, in which Russian federation has been identified as a "armed services adversary", and the accomplishment of which can only be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive brotherhood, the odds are that NATO would non initiate any offensive military action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO's Article 5 - which relates to collective defence - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a war would de facto be upon Ukrainian accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine being rapidly brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' forcefulness, and mod air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to brainstorm a hybrid conflict against what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare adequacy information technology has acquired since 2015 at the easily of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The idea that Russian federation would sit down idly past while a guerilla war in Crimea was being implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russian federation would more than likely use its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of grade, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for commonage defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent decision to deploy some 3,000 U.s.a. troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, US President Joe Biden declared:

"As long as he'due south [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to brand sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that nosotros're there and Article 5 is a sacred obligation."

Biden's comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June xv final year. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretarial assistant-Full general Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America'due south commitment to Commodity v of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Commodity five nosotros take equally a sacred obligation. I desire NATO to know America is there."

Biden'southward view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his experience equally vice president under Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work told reporters:

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its ain future. And nosotros reject whatsoever talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president made information technology clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian assailment is unwavering. As he said it, in this brotherhood at that place are no erstwhile members and there are no new members. At that place are no junior partners and in that location are no senior partners. There are simply allies, pure and elementary. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defense entail? As someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a state of war with Russia would be dissimilar anything the U.s.a. military machine has experienced - ever. The US military is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does it possess doctrine capable of supporting big-scale combined arms conflict. If the US was to be fatigued into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American armed forces history. In short, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for information technology. In 2016, then-Lieutenant Full general H.R. McMaster, when speaking about the results of a study - the Russia New Generation Warfare - he had initiated in 2015 to examine lessons learned from the fighting in eastern Ukraine, told an audience at the Eye for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians have superior arms firepower, better gainsay vehicles, and take learned sophisticated apply of unmanned aeriform vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should US forces detect themselves in a land war with Russia, they would exist in for a rude, cold awakening."

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America'south 20-twelvemonth Middle Eastern misadventure in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, Republic of iraq, and Syria produced a armed services that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a report conducted by the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the cardinal American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The report plant that Usa military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face military aggression from Russian federation. The lack of viable air defence force and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would consequence in the piecemeal destruction of the U.s.a. Army in rapid order should they face off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a Us/NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but as well quantitative - fifty-fifty if the United states military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US armed services waged in Iraq and Afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built around the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be made to evacuate the wounded then that they can receive life-saving medical attending in as short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the US was in command of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined artillery warfare. In that location won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot down. There won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in curt order. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured past Russian mobile forces.

What in that location volition be is death and destruction, and lots of information technology. I of the events which triggered McMaster's study of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined artillery brigade by Russian artillery in early on 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any similar US gainsay formation. The superiority Russia enjoys in artillery fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of arms systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the US Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, in that location volition exist nothing like the full air supremacy enjoyed past the American military in its operations in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. The airspace volition be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the US nor NATO has e'er faced. In that location will be no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground will be on their ain.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the Usa forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to role.

Any war with Russia would notice American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to have losses of 30-forty percent and continue the fight, because that was the reality of modernistic gainsay against a Soviet threat. Back and so, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of strength size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give as good, or meliorate, than we got.

That wouldn't exist the case in any European war against Russia. The US will lose most of its forces before they are able to shut with any Russian adversary, due to deep arms fires. Even when they close with the enemy, the advantage the US enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a affair of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when there is close gainsay, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the U.s. will, more times than not, come out on the losing side.

But even if the US manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, it simply has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russian federation will bring to bear. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US ground troops were effective confronting modernistic Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will only exist overwhelmed by the mass of gainsay strength the Russians will face up them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style assail carried out by specially trained US Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning. By 5:30am it was over, with the The states Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'due south something almost 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all just inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would await like. It would not be limited to Ukraine, merely extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. It would involve Russian strikes against NATO airfields, depots, and ports throughout the depth of Europe.

This is what will happen if the U.s.a. and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Lease to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

Nearly the Writer:
Scott Ritter is a former Us Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America'south Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a Un weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter