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 conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow past Hungarian Prime 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] principal task is to incorporate the evolution of Russian federation. Ukraine is only a tool to reach this goal. They could draw united states 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 upwardly strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the result of Donbass or Crimea by forcefulness, and nevertheless describe us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let u.s.a. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and is stuffed with weapons and in that location are country-of-the-art missile systems merely like in Poland and Romania. Who volition stop information technology from unleashing operations in Crimea, permit lone Donbass? Let u.s. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat functioning. Exercise nosotros have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation virtually it? Information technology 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 house that he'due south scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not exist reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki'due south comments, nevertheless, 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 forcefulness Russian federation to negotiate the render 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 armed forces ane, in which Russia has been identified as a "military adversary", and the accomplishment of which tin can merely exist accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using armed forces means has not been spelled out. Every bit an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive military machine action 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's Commodity v - which relates to collective defense force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine existence rapidly brought under 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 modern air defenses combined with frontwards-deployed NATO shipping put in identify to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would experience emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability information technology has caused 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 likely use its own anarchistic capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would exist confronted with its mandatory obligation for commonage defense force under Article five. In curt, NATO would be at state of war with Russia.

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

"Equally long equally he's [Putin] interim aggressively, nosotros are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're at that place and Commodity v is a sacred obligation."

Biden'southward comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat downwards with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO lease. Biden said:

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

Biden'southward view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his experience as vice president under Barack Obama. In 2015, so-Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Piece of work told reporters:

"Equally President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to cull its own future. And we reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president made it clear that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. As he said information technology, in this brotherhood there are no sometime members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. There are merely allies, pure and simple. And we volition defend the territorial integrity of every single marry."

Just what would this defense entail? As someone who in one case trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can adjure that a war with Russia would be unlike anything the U.s.a. military has experienced - ever. The United states military is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does information technology possess doctrine capable of supporting large-calibration combined arms disharmonize. If the Usa was to be drawn into a conventional basis war with Russia, information technology would find 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 about the results of a study - the Russian federation 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 artillery firepower, improve combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated employ of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should Usa 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'due south twenty-twelvemonth Middle 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 past the United states Army'due south 173rd Airborne Brigade, the key American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Strength, in 2017. The report found that US war machine forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront armed services assailment 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 consequence in the piecemeal devastation of the US Regular army in rapid order should they face off confronting a Russian military machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The event isn't merely qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the US armed services could stand up toe-to-toe with a Russian antagonist (which information technology tin't), it but lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The depression-intensity conflict that the Us military 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 be made to evacuate the wounded then that they tin receive life-saving medical attending in as short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the U.s. was in command of the environment in which fights were conducted. Information technology is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. At that place won't exist medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot down. In that location won't exist field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in short order. In that location won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will be is death and destruction, and lots of it. Ane of the events which triggered McMaster's study of Russian warfare was the devastation of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade by Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any similar US combat formation. The superiority Russian federation 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 U.s. Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, in that location will be aught like the total air supremacy enjoyed past the American military in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested past a very capable Russian air strength, and Russian footing troops will be operating under an air defence umbrella the likes of which neither the Us nor NATO has ever faced. At that place 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, because of Russian federation's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare adequacy , the US forces on the ground volition be deaf, impaired, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and fifty-fifty operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to function.

Any war with Russian federation would find American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to accept losses of 30-forty percent and continue the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in curt, we could give as good, or improve, than nosotros got.

That wouldn't be the case in whatsoever European war against Russia. The The states will lose well-nigh of its forces before they are able to shut with any Russian antagonist, due to deep artillery fires. Even when they shut with the enemy, the advantage the Usa enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a matter of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when there is close combat, it will be extraordinarily tearing, and the Usa will, more than times than not, come up out on the losing side.

Simply 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 footing troops were effective against modern Russian tanks (and feel suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians volition confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style assault carried out by specially trained U.s. Regular army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Centre in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-way Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a Usa Ground forces Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning. By 5:30am it was over, with the United states of america Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. In that location'due south something nearly 170 armored vehicles bearing 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, only 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 volition happen if the United states of america and NATO seek to adhere the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in brusk, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a sometime US Marine Corps intelligence officer and writer of 'SCORPION Rex: America'due south Suicidal Cover 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 War, and from 1991-1998 as a Un weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter