Russian tanks

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

In a contempo printing briefing held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime number Government 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] principal task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could depict u.s.a. into some kind of armed disharmonize 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, gear up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by forcefulness, and all the same draw u.s. into an armed conflict."

Putin connected:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is blimp with weapons and in that location are land-of-the-art missile systems merely like in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, allow alone Donbass? Allow united states imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat performance. Do nosotros accept to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation about it? It seems not."

But these words were dismissed by White Business firm spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the top of the hen house that he'southward scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not exist reported as a argument of fact."

Psaki'due south comments, even so, are divorced from the reality of the situation. 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 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 control over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for render is a purely war machine ane, in which Russian federation has been identified as a "armed services adversary", and the accomplishment of which tin only be achieved 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 any offensive military action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine'south membership, if granted, would demand to include some language regarding the limits of NATO's Article 5 - which relates to commonage defence force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a country of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accretion.

The nearly likely scenario would involve Ukraine being rapidly brought nether the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' similar those deployed into eastern Europe beingness formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' force, and modern air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO shipping put in identify to secure Ukrainian airspace.

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would experience emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing anarchistic warfare capability it has caused since 2022 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The idea that Russia would sit down idly past while a guerilla state of war in Crimea was being implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than likely employ its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of grade, would weep foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would exist at state of war with Russia.

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent decision to deploy some iii,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, U.s. President Joe Biden declared:

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

Biden'south comments repeat those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Commodity v of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

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

"Every bit President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its ain hereafter. And we reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Republic of estonia this by September, the president made it articulate that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. Equally he said it, in this brotherhood in that location are no quondam members and at that place are no new members. There are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. At that place are just allies, pure and uncomplicated. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defense force entail? Every bit someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Regular army, I can attest that a war with Russia would be dissimilar annihilation the United states military has experienced - ever. The U.s. military is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does information technology possess doctrine capable of supporting large-scale combined arms disharmonize. If the Usa was to be drawn into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would observe itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American armed forces 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 virtually the results of a written report - the Russia New Generation Warfare - he had initiated in 2022 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 arms firepower, meliorate combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated utilize of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

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

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America'south 20-yr Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria produced a military that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battleground. This reality was highlighted in a study conducted by the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'south Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that United states of america military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face military aggression from Russia. The lack of feasible air defense and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would issue in the piecemeal destruction of the US Army in rapid gild should they confront off against a Russian armed services that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s.a./NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but likewise quantitative - even if the United states war machine could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US military waged in Republic of 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 can receive life-saving medical attention in equally brusque a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the U.s.a. was in command of the surroundings in which fights were conducted. Information technology is, notwithstanding, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot downwardly. At that place won't be field ambulances - fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in short society. In that location won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured past Russian mobile forces.

What there volition exist is decease and destruction, and lots of it. 1 of the events which triggered McMaster's written report of Russian warfare was the devastation 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 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 United states of america Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will exist aught like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American military in its operations in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will exist contested by a very capable Russian air forcefulness, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defence force umbrella the likes of which neither the U.s. nor NATO has always faced. There will exist no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the footing will exist on their own.

This feeling of isolation will exist furthered by the reality that, because of Russian federation's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare adequacy , the U.s.a. forces on the ground will exist deaf, dumb, and bullheaded 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. Dorsum in the 1980s, we routinely trained to accept losses of xxx-forty percent and go along the fight, because that was the reality of modern gainsay confronting a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to effectively friction match the Soviets in terms of strength size, construction, and capability - in brusque, we could give equally good, or meliorate, than we got.

That wouldn't be the case in any European war against Russia. The US will lose nigh of its forces earlier they are able to close with any Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Fifty-fifty when they close with the enemy, the advantage the United states enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when there is close combat, it will be extraordinarily vehement, and the US will, more times than not, come out on the losing side.

But even if the U.s. manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, it merely has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia will bring to bear. Fifty-fifty if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US ground troops were effective confronting modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably non), American troops will simply exist overwhelmed by the mass of combat forcefulness 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 US Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a U.s.a. Regular army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around ii in the morning time. Past 5:30am it was over, with the US 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 merely inevitable.

This is what a state of war with Russia would expect like. It would not exist express to Ukraine, just 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 United states and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

Almost the Author:
Scott Ritter is a erstwhile U.s.a. Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: 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