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 briefing held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime Government minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke almost continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to bring together the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO's] main job is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could describe us into some kind of armed disharmonize and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked virtually in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set up up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the outcome of Donbass or Crimea by force, and even so draw u.s.a. into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Permit usa imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems simply like in Poland and Romania. Who will finish it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Permit united states imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat operation. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation nearly information technology? It 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's 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, still, 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 command over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for return is a purely military i, in which Russia has been identified as a "military adversary", and the accomplishment of which tin can only exist achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military ways has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive armed services 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'south Commodity v - which relates to commonage defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accretion.

The most probable scenario would involve Ukraine being speedily brought nether the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' similar those deployed into eastern Europe beingness formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' forcefulness, and modern air defenses combined with forrard-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 confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare adequacy it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "impale Russians."

The idea that Russian federation would sit down idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was existence implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russian federation would more than likely apply its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of form, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Commodity 5. In brusk, NATO would be at war with Russia.

This is non idle speculation. When explaining his recent decision to deploy some 3,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, The states President Joe Biden declared:

"As long equally he'south [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to make certain we 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 saturday down with NATO Secretarial assistant-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's delivery to Commodity five of the NATO lease. Biden said:

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

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own futurity. And nosotros decline any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president made it articulate 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 inferior partners and in that location are no senior partners. There are merely allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

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

Don't take my give-and-take for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking about the results of a written report - 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, improve combat vehicles, and take learned sophisticated use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical result.

"Should US forces find themselves in a land war with Russian federation, they would exist in for a rude, cold enkindling."

In short, they would become their asses kicked.

America's xx-year Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Republic of 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 by the US Army'southward 173rd Airborne Brigade, the primal American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that US armed forces forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face military machine aggression from Russian federation. The lack of viable air defence and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would upshot in the piecemeal devastation of the U.s.a. Army in rapid club should they face off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a United states of america/NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the U.s. military could stand up toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin't), it merely lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or campaign. The depression-intensity conflict that the U.s.a. military waged in Iraq and Afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built around the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be fabricated to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attention in equally short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the United states was in control of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined artillery warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot downwards. At that place 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 exist captured by Russian mobile forces.

What in that location will be is decease and destruction, and lots of it. One of the events which triggered McMaster's written report of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade by Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of form, would be the fate of any similar US gainsay formation. The superiority Russian federation enjoys in artillery fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of arms systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the US Air Force may be able to mountain a fight in the airspace above whatever battlefield, there volition be nothing similar the total air supremacy enjoyed past the American armed forces in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace volition be contested past a very capable Russian air forcefulness, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defence umbrella the likes of which neither the The states nor NATO has ever faced. In that location volition be no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the footing volition be 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. forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and bullheaded to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and fifty-fifty operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons stop to role.

Any state of war with Russia would find American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Back in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to accept losses of 30-xl percent and go on the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Dorsum so, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in brusk, we could give equally good, or improve, than we got.

That wouldn't be the example in any European war confronting Russia. The United states of america volition lose nearly of its forces earlier they are able to close with whatsoever Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Even when they close with the enemy, the reward the US enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a affair of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when there is shut combat, it will exist extraordinarily violent, and the US volition, more than times than not, come out on the losing side.

Simply fifty-fifty if the Usa manages to win the odd tactical engagement confronting peer-level infantry, information technology only has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia will bring to behave. Fifty-fifty if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US ground troops were effective against mod Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will but be overwhelmed past the mass of gainsay force the Russians will face up them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style assault carried out by specially trained U.s.a. Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Centre in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a U.s. Ground forces Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning time. By v:30am information technology was over, with the U.s.a. Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. At that place'southward something near 170 armored vehicles begetting down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would look similar. It would non exist limited to Ukraine, but 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 v of the NATO Lease to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

Virtually the Author:
Scott Ritter is a sometime United states Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Comprehend of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Wedlock as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a Un weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter