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 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 job is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to reach this goal. They could describe usa into some kind of armed conflict and strength their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are beingness talked about in the Us today. Or they could depict Ukraine into NATO, prepare up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the event of Donbass or Crimea past strength, and withal draw u.s. into an armed conflict."

Putin connected:

"Permit us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and in that location are land-of-the-fine art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who volition stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let lonely Donbass? Let united states imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a gainsay operation. Do we accept to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about it? It seems not."

Only 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, 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 command over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for return is a purely military machine one, in which Russia has been identified as a "military adversary", and the accomplishment of which can 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 brotherhood, 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's membership, if granted, would demand to include some language regarding the limits of NATO's Article 5 - which relates to collective defence - 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 rapidly brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil every bit a 'trip-wire' force, and modern air defenses combined with forrard-deployed NATO aircraft put in identify to secure Ukrainian airspace.

One time this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict against what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the hands 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 utilize its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defence force nether Commodity 5. In short, NATO would exist at war with Russia.

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

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

Biden's comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that time, Biden sat downward with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Commodity 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Commodity 5 nosotros 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 equally vice president nether Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense force Bob Work told reporters:

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its ain hereafter. And we reject whatever talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president made it clear that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. As he said it, in this brotherhood in that location are no old members and there are no new members. In that location are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. There are merely allies, pure and unproblematic. And nosotros 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 tin attest that a war with Russia would be unlike anything the Us military machine has experienced - e'er. The The states 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 arms disharmonize. If the US was to be drawn into a conventional ground state of war with Russia, information technology would discover itself facing defeat on a calibration unprecedented in American armed forces history. In short, it would exist a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking about the results of a written report - the Russia 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 artillery firepower, meliorate combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of unmanned aeriform vehicles (UAVs) for tactical issue.

"Should US forces notice themselves in a land state of war with Russian federation, they would be in for a rude, cold enkindling."

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America'south 20-year Center Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Republic of iraq, and Syria produced a armed forces 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's Rapid Deployment Strength, in 2017. The report institute that The states military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face military machine 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 result in the piecemeal destruction of the The states Ground forces in rapid order should they confront off against a Russian military machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The upshot isn't just qualitative, but besides quantitative - fifty-fifty if the US armed forces could stand up toe-to-toe with a Russian antagonist (which it tin't), it but lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US military 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 tin receive life-saving medical attending in as brusk a timeframe every bit possible. This concept may have been feasible where the United states of america was in control of the surround in which fights were conducted. Information technology is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. There won't exist medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot downwardly. In that location won't exist 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 exist captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will be is expiry and destruction, and lots of it. One of the events which triggered McMaster's study of Russian warfare was the devastation of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade past Russian arms in early 2015. This, of grade, would exist the fate of any similar US combat 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 US Air Strength may be able to mountain a fight in the airspace above whatever battlefield, at that place will be null like the total air supremacy enjoyed past the American military in its operations in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops will exist operating nether an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the U.s. nor NATO has ever faced. There will be no close air back up cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the footing will be on their own.

This feeling of isolation will exist furthered by the reality that, considering of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the Us forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening effectually them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate equally radios, electronic systems, and weapons terminate to office.

Any war with Russian federation would find American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Dorsum in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to accept losses of 30-40 per centum and proceed the fight, because that was the reality of modernistic combat against a Soviet threat. Back and so, we were able to effectively friction match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in brusk, nosotros could give as practiced, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't exist the case in any European state of war against Russia. The US will lose most of its forces earlier they are able to close with any Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Even when they close with the enemy, the advantage the Usa enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a thing of the by. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when at that place is shut gainsay, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the The states will, more times than not, come out on the losing side.

But fifty-fifty if the The states manages to win the odd tactical engagement confronting peer-level infantry, it just 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 ground troops were effective against modernistic Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably non), American troops will simply exist overwhelmed past the mass of combat forcefulness the Russians will face up them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-way attack carried out by specially trained US Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Preparation Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off confronting a US Army 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. In that location'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 expect similar. It would not be limited 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 Article v of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. Information technology is, in brusque, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a quondam US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION Male monarch: America'south 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 War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter