Russian tanks

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

In a recent press conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow past Hungarian Prime Government minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke most continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO's] main task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is merely a tool to reach this goal. They could draw usa 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 Us today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, prepare strike weapons systems in that location and encourage some people to resolve the upshot of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still depict united states into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Allow us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and in that location are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will cease it from unleashing operations in Crimea, allow alone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a gainsay performance. Practice we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything almost it? It seems not."

Merely these words were dismissed past White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the meridian of the hen house that he's scared of the chickens," adding that whatsoever Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should non be reported every bit a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, notwithstanding, are divorced from the reality of the state of affairs. The principal goal of the regime 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 every bit a "military adversary", and the achievement of which can only exist achieved through NATO membership.

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

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

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare adequacy information technology has caused since 2022 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The idea that Russia would sit idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was being implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia 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 commonage defense nether Article 5. In short, NATO would be at war with Russian federation.

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

"As long every bit he's [Putin] acting aggressively, nosotros are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're in that location and Article 5 is a sacred obligation."

Biden'due south comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretarial assistant-Full general Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article v of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own future. And nosotros reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Republic of estonia this past September, the president made information technology articulate that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. As he said information technology, in this alliance at that place are no old members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and in that location are no senior partners. There are merely allies, pure and simple. And nosotros will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defense entail? Every bit someone who one time trained to fight the Soviet Army, I tin can adjure that a state of war with Russia would be dissimilar anything the US military has experienced - e'er. 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 arms conflict. If the United states of america was to be drawn into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would detect itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military machine history. In short, it would exist a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking most the results of a study - the Russia New Generation Warfare - he had initiated in 2022 to examine lessons learned from the fighting in eastern Ukraine, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians accept superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated utilize of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should The states forces find themselves in a country war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, cold enkindling."

In short, they would go their asses kicked.

America's xx-yr Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria produced a armed forces 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 Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'due south Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that United states of america military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront armed forces aggression from Russia. The lack of viable air defense and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would upshot in the piecemeal destruction of the Usa Army in rapid order should they face off confronting 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 - even if the United states of america military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which information technology tin can't), information technology just lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The depression-intensity conflict that the Usa military 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 attention in as short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been feasible where the US was in control of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. At that place won't be medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot down. At that place won't be field ambulances - fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in short order. At that place won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would exist captured past Russian mobile forces.

What at that place will be is death and destruction, and lots of it. One 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 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatever similar US combat germination. The superiority Russian federation enjoys in arms fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of arms systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the U.s.a. Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace to a higher place any battlefield, in that location will be nothing like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American war machine in its operations in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. The airspace will exist contested by a very capable Russian air strength, and Russian ground troops volition be operating under an air defense force umbrella the likes of which neither the United states of america nor NATO has e'er faced. There will be no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground volition be on their own.

This feeling of isolation volition be furthered past the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare adequacy , the United states forces on the footing 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 finish to office.

Any war with Russia would detect American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to take losses of thirty-twoscore percent and go on the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Dorsum then, nosotros were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give every bit good, or better, than nosotros got.

That wouldn't be the example in any European state of war confronting Russian federation. The US will lose most of its forces before they are able to close with any Russian adversary, due to deep arms fires. Fifty-fifty when they shut with the enemy, the advantage the U.s.a. enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the by. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when there is close combat, 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 Russia will bring to bear. Fifty-fifty if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US basis troops were effective against mod Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will merely be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians will confront them with.

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

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

This is what will happen if the The states and NATO seek to adhere the "sacred obligation" of Commodity 5 of the NATO Lease to Ukraine. Information technology is, in brusk, a suicide pact.

Virtually the Writer:
Scott Ritter is a onetime Us Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America'southward Suicidal Encompass of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf'southward staff during the Gulf State of war, and from 1991-1998 equally a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter