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 by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic brotherhood. He said:

"Their [NATO's] primary chore is to contain the development of Russian federation. Ukraine is only a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed disharmonize and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the U.s. today. Or they could describe Ukraine into NATO, set strike weapons systems in that location and encourage some people to resolve the result of Donbass or Crimea past force, and still draw usa into an armed conflict."

Putin connected:

"Permit us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems just similar in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Allow us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a gainsay operation. Practise we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea anything nearly it? It seems not."

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a play a joke on "screaming from the top of the hen house that he'south scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fearfulness over Ukraine "should not be reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, still, 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 Russia to negotiate the return of our peninsula," Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining command over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for return is a purely war machine one, in which Russia has been identified as a "military antagonist", and the achievement of which can simply be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using armed forces ways has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive brotherhood, the odds are that NATO would not initiate whatsoever 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 commonage defence - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The most probable scenario would involve Ukraine beingness apace brought nether the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil every bit a 'trip-wire' force, and modernistic 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 begin a hybrid conflict against what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

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

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent conclusion to deploy some 3,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, United states of america President Joe Biden alleged:

"Equally long as he's [Putin] acting aggressively, nosotros are going to make certain we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're there and Article five is a sacred obligation."

Biden's comments repeat those fabricated during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June xv concluding yr. At that time, Biden sat downward with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America'south delivery to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is there."

Biden's view of NATO and Ukraine is fatigued from his experience as vice president under Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretarial assistant of Defense Bob Work told reporters:

"Every bit President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own future. And we refuse any 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 old members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. In that location are simply allies, pure and uncomplicated. 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 Regular army, I can adjure that a war with Russia would be different anything the US military 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 large-scale combined artillery disharmonize. If the US was to exist drawn into a conventional ground state of war with Russian federation, it would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In short, information technology would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking about the results of a report - the Russia New Generation Warfare - he had initiated in 2015 to examine lessons learned from the fighting in eastern Ukraine, told an audition at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians have superior arms firepower, amend combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated utilise of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should The states forces discover themselves in a land war with Russia, they would exist in for a rude, cold enkindling."

In curt, they would get their asses kicked.

America's twenty-twelvemonth Center Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria produced a military that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a study conducted by the US Regular army'due south 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'south Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study institute that U.s. military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face up military machine aggression from Russia. The lack of feasible air defense and electronic warfare adequacy, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would result in the piecemeal destruction of the US Army in rapid order should they face off against a Russian war machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the United states armed services could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity disharmonize that the US military waged in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan has created an organizational ethos congenital effectually the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts volition be made to evacuate the wounded then that they can receive life-saving medical attention in every bit brusque a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been feasible where the U.s. was in command of the environs in which fights were conducted. It is, withal, pure fiction in large-calibration combined artillery warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - even if they launched, they would exist shot downwards. At that place won't exist field ambulances - fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in brusk order. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will be is expiry and devastation, and lots of information technology. 1 of the events which triggered McMaster's study of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade by Russian artillery in early on 2015. This, of grade, would be the fate of whatsoever similar Us combat formation. The superiority Russia enjoys in arms fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of artillery systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the US Air Force may exist able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will exist nothing like the total air supremacy enjoyed past the American military machine in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will exist contested past a very capable Russian air strength, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defence umbrella the likes of which neither the United states nor NATO has ever faced. There will be no shut air back up cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground will be on their own.

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

Whatever war with Russia would find American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to accept losses of xxx-40 per centum and continue the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat confronting a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to finer lucifer the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in curt, we could give as good, or ameliorate, than nosotros got.

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

Only even if the US manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, information technology simply has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia will bring to bear. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US basis troops were effective against modernistic Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably non), American troops will merely be overwhelmed by the mass of combat forcefulness the Russians will confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style assault carried out by specially trained US Ground forces troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Preparation Center in Fort Irwin, California, where 2 Soviet-way Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off confronting a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning. By five:30am information technology was over, with the United states of america Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There's something about 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russian federation would look like. It would non be express to Ukraine, but extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. Information technology would involve Russian strikes confronting NATO airfields, depots, and ports throughout the depth of Europe.

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

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former U.s.a. Marine Corps intelligence officeholder and author of 'SCORPION Male monarch: America's Suicidal Comprehend of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Matrimony equally an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf State of war, and from 1991-1998 as a United nations weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter