Russian tanks

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

In a contempo 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 alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO's] primary task is to contain the development of Russian federation. Ukraine is but a tool to accomplish this goal. They could depict us into some kind of armed disharmonize and strength their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are existence talked nearly in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set upwards strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and even so draw united states into an armed conflict."

Putin connected:

"Permit u.s.a. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and in that location are state-of-the-fine art missile systems just similar in Poland and Romania. Who will stop information technology from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Permit us 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."

But these words were dismissed past White Business firm 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," calculation that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not be reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The master 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 force 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 ane, in which Russia has been identified as a "armed services adversary", and the achievement of which tin merely be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using armed forces ways has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive military action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine'southward membership, if granted, would need to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO's Article 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 accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine being 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 modern air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in identify to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would experience emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict against what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has caused since 2015 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 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 under Article 5. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent determination to deploy some iii,000 The states troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, Usa President Joe Biden declared:

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

Biden's comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last yr. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-Full general Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America'due south commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

Biden'south view of NATO and Ukraine is fatigued from his experience equally vice president under Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretarial assistant of Defense Bob Work told reporters:

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own futurity. And we reject whatever 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. As he said it, in this brotherhood at that place are no sometime members and there are no new members. At that place are no inferior partners and there are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and uncomplicated. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single marry."

Just what would this defence force 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 U.s. military has experienced - ever. The US armed forces is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does it possess doctrine capable of supporting big-scale combined arms conflict. If the U.s.a. 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 be a rout.

Don't accept my give-and-take for information technology. In 2016, so-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 audition at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and accept learned sophisticated utilize of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical result.

"Should United states of america forces discover themselves in a country war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, cold awakening."

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America'due south 20-twelvemonth Heart 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 written report conducted by the United states Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'south Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The report institute that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront military assailment from Russian federation. The lack of feasible air defense and electronic warfare adequacy, 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 society should they face off confronting a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s.a./NATO threat.

The result isn't just qualitative, just also quantitative - even if the Us war machine could stand up toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or campaign. The depression-intensity conflict that the United states of america 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 volition be fabricated to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attention in as short a timeframe every bit possible. This concept may have been viable where the US was in control of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, notwithstanding, 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 be shot down. In that location won't be field ambulances - fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in short order. In that location won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What in that location will exist is death and destruction, and lots of information technology. One of the events which triggered McMaster'due south 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 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 US Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace to a higher place any battlefield, at that place will be naught like the full air supremacy enjoyed by the American military in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested past a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defense force umbrella the likes of which neither the United states nor NATO has e'er faced. There will be no shut air back up cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the footing will be on their ain.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the The states forces on the ground volition 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 cease to function.

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

That wouldn't exist the case in any European war confronting Russia. The Usa will lose almost of its forces before they are able to close with whatsoever Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Fifty-fifty when they close with the enemy, the reward the United states enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the by. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when at that place is shut gainsay, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the US will, more times than not, come up out on the losing side.

But even if the The states manages to win the odd tactical date 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 ground troops were effective against modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply exist overwhelmed past the mass of combat force the Russians will confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-mode attack carried out by particularly trained US Regular army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Middle in Fort Irwin, California, where 2 Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off confronting a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around ii in the morning. By v:30am it was over, with the U.s.a. Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. In that location's something about 170 armored vehicles begetting downward on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

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

This is what will happen if the Us and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. Information technology is, in curt, a suicide pact.

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