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

"Their [NATO's] master task is to incorporate the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could depict usa into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked nearly in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set upward strike weapons systems at that place and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by forcefulness, and still draw us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let us 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 cease it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let lone Donbass? Permit the states imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat operation. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about it? It seems not."

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

Psaki's comments, nevertheless, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The primary 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 forcefulness Russia 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 Russia has been identified every bit a "military adversary", and the achievement of which can only be accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military ways 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'southward membership, if granted, would need to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO'due south Article 5 - which relates to collective defense force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accretion.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine beingness rapidly brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe existence formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' force, 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 experience emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict against what information technology terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing anarchistic warfare adequacy information technology has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The idea that Russia would sit down idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was existence implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than likely employ its own anarchistic capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would weep foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense force under Article five. In curt, NATO would be at state of war with Russia.

This is non idle speculation. When explaining his recent decision to deploy some 3,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, Us President Joe Biden declared:

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

Biden'southward comments repeat those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June xv last yr. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article v of the NATO lease. Biden said:

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

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own future. And nosotros decline any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president fabricated it clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the confront of Russian aggression is unwavering. Equally he said information technology, in this alliance there are no erstwhile members and there are no new members. In that location are no inferior partners and at that place are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every unmarried ally."

But what would this defense entail? As someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Ground forces, I can attest that a war with Russia would be unlike anything the Us military has experienced - ever. The US armed services 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 US was to exist drawn into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would observe itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In short, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking near the results of a written 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 Middle for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians have superior arms firepower, improve combat vehicles, and accept learned sophisticated utilise of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical event.

"Should U.s.a. forces observe 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's 20-year Centre 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 report conducted by the US Ground forces'south 173rd Airborne Brigade, the key American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Strength, in 2017. The study found that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront military 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 result in the piecemeal destruction of the US Army in rapid guild should they face up off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s.a./NATO threat.

The result isn't just qualitative, but as well quantitative - even if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin't), information technology simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or entrada. The low-intensity conflict that the U.s.a. 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 so that they can receive life-saving medical attention in as brusk a timeframe equally possible. This concept may take been viable where the U.s.a. was in command of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-calibration combined arms warfare. At that place won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would exist shot downwards. At that place won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in curt lodge. There won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured past Russian mobile forces.

What there 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 exist the fate of any like US combat germination. The superiority Russia 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 US Air Strength may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will be goose egg like the total air supremacy enjoyed past the American military machine in its operations in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. The airspace will be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops will be operating nether an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the US nor NATO has ever faced. There volition exist no shut air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground will be on their own.

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

Any state of war with Russian federation would observe American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Dorsum in the 1980s, we routinely trained to accept losses of 30-40 pct and continue the fight, because that was the reality of mod combat against a Soviet threat. Dorsum then, we were able to effectively lucifer the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give as good, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the example in any European state of war against Russia. The US will lose most of its forces before 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 against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when at that place is close gainsay, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the U.s. will, more times than non, come out on the losing side.

But 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 Russian federation will bring to bear. Fifty-fifty if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US ground troops were constructive confronting modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably non), American troops volition merely be overwhelmed past 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 especially trained United states 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 morn. By 5:30am it was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. At that place'due south 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. It would not be limited to Ukraine, only 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 volition happen if the United states of america and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Commodity 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

Virtually the Writer:
Scott Ritter is a former U.s.a. Marine Corps intelligence officer and writer of 'SCORPION Male monarch: America's 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