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 press briefing held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime number Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke nearly continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic brotherhood. He said:

"Their [NATO's] main task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is only a tool to achieve this goal. They could depict us into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are existence talked well-nigh in the U.s.a. today. Or they could describe Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the event of Donbass or Crimea by forcefulness, and even so draw us into an armed disharmonize."

Putin continued:

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

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the top of the hen business firm that he's scared of the chickens," adding that whatsoever Russian expression of fearfulness over Ukraine "should not be reported equally a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, still, are divorced from the reality of the state of affairs. The principal goal of the authorities of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is what he terms the " de-occupation" of Crimea. While this goal has, in the by, been couched in terms of diplomacy - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must strength 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 Russian federation has been identified as a "military adversary", and the accomplishment of which can only be accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate whatever offensive armed forces action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine'south membership, if granted, would need to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO'southward Commodity v - which relates to commonage defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto be upon Ukrainian accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine being quickly 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 modernistic air defenses combined with forwards-deployed NATO shipping put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to brainstorm a hybrid conflict against what information technology 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 beingness 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 collective defense nether Article five. In short, NATO would exist 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 alleged:

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

Biden'southward comments echo those fabricated during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June xv concluding year. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat downwardly with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Article 5 nosotros accept as a sacred obligation. I desire NATO to know America is there."

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

"Equally President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own hereafter. And we reject whatsoever talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president made it articulate that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. Every bit 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. There are just allies, pure and uncomplicated. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defense entail? Every bit someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Regular army, I can attest that a war with Russian federation would exist dissimilar anything the US military has experienced - ever. The U.s. 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 state of war with Russia, it would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military machine history. In curt, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking most 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 audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical issue.

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

In short, they would go their asses kicked.

America's 20-year Middle Eastern misadventure in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, Republic of iraq, and Syrian arab republic produced a military machine 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's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront armed forces aggression from Russian federation. The lack of viable air defense and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would outcome in the piecemeal devastation of the US Army in rapid order should they confront off confronting a Russian armed forces that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s./NATO threat.

The consequence isn't simply qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the U.s.a. military could stand up toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which information technology can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in whatever sustained boxing or entrada. The low-intensity conflict that the Usa military waged in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan has created an organizational ethos congenital around the idea that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be fabricated to evacuate the wounded and then that they tin 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, even so, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would exist shot downwards. There won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in brusk club. At that place won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured by 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 U.s.a. combat 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 U.s. Air Force may exist able to mountain a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will be zippo like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American military in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will exist contested past a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops volition exist operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the Us nor NATO has always faced. There will be no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground volition exist on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare adequacy , 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 cease to role.

Whatsoever war with Russia would observe American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Back in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to accept losses of 30-40 percent and go along the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Back so, we were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of strength size, construction, and capability - in curt, we could requite as adept, or better, than nosotros got.

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

But fifty-fifty if the U.s. manages to win the odd tactical appointment confronting peer-level infantry, it but has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russian federation volition bring to bear. Fifty-fifty if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of The states ground troops were effective against mod Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops volition simply be overwhelmed past the mass of gainsay forcefulness the Russians will confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-mode assail carried out by specially trained United states of america Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Preparation Centre in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-manner Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a Usa Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the forenoon. By 5:30am it was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'southward something nigh 170 armored vehicles begetting down 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, 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 US and NATO seek to adhere the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

Near the Writer:
Scott Ritter is a onetime US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION Male monarch: America's Suicidal Encompass of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Spousal relationship as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in Full general Schwarzkopf'south staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a Un weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter