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 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'due south] main chore is to contain the development of Russian federation. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could depict usa into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are existence talked about in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, fix strike weapons systems in that location and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw u.s.a. into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Allow united states of america imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is blimp with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems only similar in Poland and Romania. Who will stop information technology from unleashing operations in Crimea, let lonely Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat functioning. Do nosotros have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation well-nigh it? It seems not."

Merely these words were dismissed past 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 fright over Ukraine "should not be reported equally a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal 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 affairs - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must strength 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 armed services ane, in which Russia has been identified every bit a "military adversary", and the achievement of which can only be accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military machine means has not been spelled out. Every bit an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive armed forces activity to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO's Article 5 - which relates to collective defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto be upon Ukrainian accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine being apace 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.

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 adequacy it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The idea that Russian federation 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 probable apply its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of grade, would weep foul, and NATO would exist confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would exist at war with Russian federation.

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent decision to deploy some 3,000 Usa troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, US President Joe Biden declared:

"As long equally he'south [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to brand 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 made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 final twelvemonth. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Commodity 5 we take as a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is at that place."

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own future. And we reject whatever 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 up of Russian aggression is unwavering. Equally he said it, in this alliance there are no old members and there are no new members. At that place are no junior partners and at that place are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and simple. And we volition defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defense entail? As someone who one time trained to fight the Soviet Ground forces, I tin attest that a war with Russia would be unlike annihilation the United states armed services 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 arms conflict. If the The states was to be drawn into a conventional basis war with Russia, information technology would notice itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In brusque, it would be a rout.

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

"Should US forces find themselves in a country state of war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, cold enkindling."

In brusque, they would go their asses kicked.

America's twenty-year Middle Eastern misadventure in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, Republic of 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 past the The states Regular army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the primal American component of NATO'southward Rapid Deployment Forcefulness, in 2017. The study institute that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face up war machine aggression from Russia. The lack of viable air defense and electronic warfare adequacy, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would issue in the piecemeal destruction of the US Ground forces in rapid order should they face off against a Russian war machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, but also quantitative - fifty-fifty if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin't), it but lacks the size to survive in whatsoever sustained boxing or entrada. The low-intensity conflict that the United states of america armed forces waged in Iraq and Afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built effectually the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be made to evacuate the wounded so that they tin receive life-saving medical attention in as short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the US was in command of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot down. There won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in short society. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What at that place will exist is death and devastation, and lots of it. I 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 grade, would be the fate of any like U.s. gainsay germination. 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 The states Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace higher up whatsoever battlefield, there will exist nothing similar the full air supremacy enjoyed by the American military in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace volition be contested past a very capable Russian air strength, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the US nor NATO has ever faced. There will be no shut air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the basis 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 capability , the US forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and bullheaded to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate equally radios, electronic systems, and weapons terminate to role.

Any war with Russia would notice American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to accept losses of thirty-40 percentage and go along the fight, considering that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Back then, nosotros were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of forcefulness size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give every bit skillful, or improve, than we got.

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

But even if the US manages to win the odd tactical date against peer-level infantry, it merely 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 confronting modernistic Russian tanks (and feel suggests they are probably non), American troops will but exist overwhelmed by the mass of combat forcefulness the Russians will face up them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style attack carried out past specially trained US Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Preparation Center in Fort Irwin, California, where ii Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a U.s. Ground forces Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at effectually ii in the morning time. By v:30am it was over, with the United states Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There's something about 170 armored vehicles begetting downwards on your position that makes defeat all simply inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would wait similar. It would non be express to Ukraine, but 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 Us and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Commodity 5 of the NATO Lease to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former Usa 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 Marriage equally 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