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 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 alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO's] main task is to contain the development of Russian federation. Ukraine is simply a tool to reach this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw usa into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are land-of-the-art missile systems merely like in Poland and Romania. Who will cease it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Permit us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat operation. Do we take to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea anything well-nigh it? It seems non."

Simply these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the elevation of the hen firm that he's scared of the chickens," calculation that whatever Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not be reported every bit a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, however, 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 past, been couched in terms of affairs - "[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 render is a purely military machine one, in which Russia has been identified as a "war machine antagonist", and the accomplishment of which tin can only exist achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using armed forces means has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive armed forces action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would need to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO's Commodity 5 - which relates to collective defence 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 being formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' strength, and modern air defenses combined with frontward-deployed NATO aircraft put in identify 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 "impale Russians."

The idea that Russia would sit 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 than likely use its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of form, would weep foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense force nether Article five. In short, NATO would exist at war with Russia.

This is non idle speculation. When explaining his contempo decision to deploy some three,000 U.s. troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, The states President Joe Biden declared:

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

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

"Article 5 we have as a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is at that place."

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

"Every bit President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its ain future. And we 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 aggression is unwavering. As he said it, in this alliance there are no old members and there are no new members. There are no junior 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 single ally."

Just what would this defense entail? As someone who one time 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 The states armed services is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does information technology possess doctrine capable of supporting big-scale combined arms conflict. If the US was to be drawn into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In short, it would exist a rout.

Don't have my give-and-take for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant 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 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 consequence.

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

In short, they would go their asses kicked.

America's twenty-yr Heart Eastern misadventure in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian arab republic 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 U.s. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Forcefulness, in 2017. The study plant that U.s. 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 result in the piecemeal destruction of the Usa Army in rapid order should they face up off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The consequence isn't only qualitative, simply likewise quantitative - even if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it can't), it only lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US war machine waged in Iraq and Afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built effectually the idea that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will exist made to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attention in every bit short a timeframe every bit possible. This concept may have been feasible where the United states of america was in control of the surroundings in which fights were conducted. It is, nonetheless, pure fiction in big-scale combined arms warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would exist shot downwards. There won't be field ambulances - fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in short society. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured past Russian mobile forces.

What in that location will exist is death and destruction, and lots of it. 1 of the events which triggered McMaster's report of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade past Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any similar US combat formation. The superiority Russia enjoys in artillery fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of artillery systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the United states Air Force may exist able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battleground, there volition exist nothing like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American armed forces in its operations in Republic of iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. The airspace will exist contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops volition be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the United states nor NATO has ever faced. There 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 volition exist furthered by the reality that, because of Russian federation'south overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the U.s.a. 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 finish to role.

Any war with Russia would observe American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Dorsum in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to take losses of thirty-xl percentage and continue the fight, because that was the reality of mod combat against a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of strength size, construction, and capability - in short, we could give every bit good, or amend, than nosotros got.

That wouldn't exist the case in whatever European war against Russia. The The states 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 U.s.a. enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the past. Our tactics are no longer upwardly to par - when there is close combat, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the Usa will, more than times than not, come up out on the losing side.

But even if the U.s. manages to win the odd tactical engagement confronting peer-level infantry, it simply has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia volition bring to bear. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US ground troops were effective confronting modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops volition simply be overwhelmed past the mass of gainsay strength the Russians will confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-manner set on carried out by specially trained Usa Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Grooming Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a U.s. Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning. By five:30am it was over, with the United states Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There's something about 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 exist 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 Charter to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

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