Russian tanks

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

In a recent printing conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime number Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke most connected 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 the states into some kind of armed conflict 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, prepare strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by strength, and still depict us into an armed disharmonize."

Putin continued:

"Let u.s. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who volition stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Allow us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat operation. Practice nosotros take to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about it? It seems not."

But these words were dismissed past White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a flim-flam "screaming from the elevation of the hen firm that he'southward scared of the chickens," calculation that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not exist reported every bit a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal goal of the regime 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 1, in which Russia has been identified as a "military adversary", and the accomplishment of which 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 non initiate any offensive armed forces activity to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would demand to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO'south Article 5 - which relates to collective defense - when addressing the Crimea state of affairs, or else a state of war would de facto be upon Ukrainian accession.

The virtually likely scenario would involve Ukraine beingness rapidly brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' similar those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' force, and modern air defenses combined with forrard-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 anarchistic warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The thought that Russia would sit down idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was existence implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than 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 commonage defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would exist at war with Russia.

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent determination to deploy some 3,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, US 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's comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June fifteen last year. At that time, Biden sabbatum downwardly with NATO Secretarial assistant-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

Biden'due south view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his experience as vice president under 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 future. And we reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president fabricated it articulate that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face up of Russian aggression is unwavering. As 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. 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 once trained to fight the Soviet Army, I tin attest that a state of war with Russian federation would be unlike anything the Us military machine has experienced - always. The The states 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 ground war with Russia, it would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American war machine history. In brusque, it would exist a rout.

Don't take my give-and-take for it. In 2016, so-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking most 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 have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have 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 be in for a rude, common cold awakening."

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America's 20-year Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian arab republic produced a armed forces that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a written report conducted past the Usa Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The written report found that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face up military aggression from Russia. The lack of viable air defense force and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would result in the piecemeal devastation of the United states of america Army in rapid club should they face off against a Russian war machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The effect isn't merely qualitative, but also quantitative - fifty-fifty if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin 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 Iraq and Transitional islamic state of 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 and so that they can receive life-saving medical attending in every bit brusk a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been feasible where the Usa 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 - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot down. At that place won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would be destroyed in short order. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will exist is death and destruction, and lots of information technology. 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 on 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any similar United states combat formation. The superiority Russia 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 U.s.a. Air Forcefulness may be able to mountain a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will be cypher like the total 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 forcefulness, and Russian ground troops volition be operating under an air defence umbrella the likes of which neither the United states of america nor NATO has ever faced. At that place will be 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 exist furthered by the reality that, considering of Russian federation'due south overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the U.s. forces on the basis will be deafened, impaired, and bullheaded to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to part.

Any state of war with Russian federation would detect American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to accept losses of 30-40 percent and proceed the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat confronting a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in curt, we could give equally good, or improve, than nosotros got.

That wouldn't be the case in any European state of war confronting Russia. The US will lose most of its forces before 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 US enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when at that place is close combat, it will be extraordinarily tearing, and the US will, more times than non, come up out on the losing side.

But even if the US manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, it simply 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 Usa ground troops were effective against modernistic Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians will confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style attack carried out by specially trained Usa Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off confronting a US Ground forces Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning. By 5:30am information technology was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'due south something about 170 armored vehicles begetting down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would look like. It would not exist limited to Ukraine, but extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. It 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 Article v of the NATO Lease to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officeholder 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'due south staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 equally a Un weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter