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 by Hungarian Prime number 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 Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw u.s. into some kind of armed conflict and forcefulness their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked almost in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, prepare upwardly strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems merely similar in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, allow solitary Donbass? Let usa imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat functioning. Practise nosotros have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about information technology? It seems non."

But these words were dismissed past White Firm spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a pull a fast one on "screaming from the top of the hen house that he'south scared of the chickens," adding 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 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 Russian federation 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 1, in which Russia has been identified as a "military antagonist", and the accomplishment of which can only be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using war machine means has not been spelled out. Every bit an ostensibly defensive brotherhood, the odds are that NATO would not initiate whatsoever offensive military activeness to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would demand to include some language regarding the limits of NATO's Commodity five - which relates to collective defense force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a land of state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The near likely scenario would involve Ukraine being 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' force, and modern air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

One time this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the easily 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 force under Commodity 5. In brusk, NATO would be at war with Russia.

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

"As long as he'south [Putin] interim 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's comments echo those fabricated during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 concluding year. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat downwards with NATO Secretarial assistant-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America'south delivery to Commodity 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Article 5 we take every bit a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is there."

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own time to come. And we reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this by September, the president made it articulate that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian assailment is unwavering. Equally he said it, in this alliance there are no old members and in that location are no new members. There are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. In that location are just allies, pure and unproblematic. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every unmarried ally."

Only what would this defense entail? As someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a state of war with Russian federation would be unlike anything the US military has experienced - ever. The U.s. military machine is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does information technology possess doctrine capable of supporting large-scale combined artillery conflict. If the US was to be drawn into a conventional basis state of war with Russia, it would discover itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In curt, information technology would be a rout.

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

"Should US forces observe themselves in a country war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, common cold awakening."

In brusk, they would get their asses kicked.

America's 20-year Centre Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian arab republic 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'southward 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'due south Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The report establish that Us war machine forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face up military 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 upshot in the piecemeal destruction of the US Army in rapid lodge should they face off against a Russian war machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s./NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the US military 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 entrada. The depression-intensity conflict that the Usa armed forces waged in Iraq and Afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built around the idea that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be made to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attending in as short a timeframe equally possible. This concept may accept been viable where the Usa was in command of the surroundings in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in big-scale combined arms warfare. In that location won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot down. There 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 - even if they were established, they would be captured past 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 arms in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatsoever similar Usa gainsay 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 exist able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battleground, at that place will be cypher similar the full air supremacy enjoyed past the American armed forces in its operations in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace volition be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian footing troops will be operating nether an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the U.s. nor NATO has ever faced. There will exist 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 will be furthered past the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the Us forces on the ground will exist 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 function.

Any war with Russia would find American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to accept losses of thirty-forty pct and go along the fight, because that was the reality of mod combat against a Soviet threat. Dorsum then, we were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of force size, construction, and adequacy - in short, we could requite every bit good, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't exist the instance in any European war against Russia. The US will lose well-nigh of its forces before they are able to close with any Russian adversary, due to deep arms fires. Even when they shut with the enemy, the advantage the US 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 combat, it will be extraordinarily trigger-happy, and the US will, more times than non, come out on the losing side.

But even if the US manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, it only 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 footing troops were effective against modern Russian tanks (and feel suggests they are probably not), American troops volition simply be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians will face up them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-way assail carried out past particularly trained The states Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where 2 Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a U.s.a. Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at effectually two in the morning. Past 5:30am information technology was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'southward something nearly 170 armored vehicles bearing downward on your position that makes defeat all merely inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would await similar. It would non be 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 adhere the "sacred obligation" of Commodity 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in brusk, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a onetime US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America's 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 equally a Un weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter