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

In a contempo press conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about connected NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO'due south] main task is to contain the evolution of Russia. Ukraine is merely a tool to reach this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed conflict 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 describe Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw u.s. into an armed disharmonize."

Putin continued:

"Permit us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and at that place are country-of-the-art missile systems merely similar in Poland and Romania. Who will finish it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let lone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat operation. Exercise we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea anything near it? It seems not."

Only these words were dismissed by White Business firm spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the pinnacle of the hen firm that he's scared of the chickens," calculation that whatever Russian expression of fearfulness over Ukraine "should not be reported as a argument of fact."

Psaki'south comments, still, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The chief goal of the authorities 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 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 armed forces one, in which Russia has been identified every bit a "armed forces antagonist", and the achievement of which tin but be accomplished through NATO membership.

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

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine beingness rapidly brought nether the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe beingness formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' force, and modernistic air defenses combined with frontwards-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once 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 adequacy 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, Russian federation would more than likely utilize its own anarchistic capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense nether Commodity 5. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

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

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

Biden'due south comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that time, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-Full general Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America'due south commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Article 5 nosotros take equally a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is at that place."

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... exist able to choose its ain future. And we reject any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this by September, the president made information technology clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face up of Russian assailment is unwavering. Equally he said it, in this brotherhood there are no erstwhile members and there are no new members. At that place are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. In that location are just allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defense entail? Equally someone who one time trained to fight the Soviet Army, I tin can adjure that a war with Russia would be dissimilar anything the U.s. military has experienced - e'er. 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 US was to be drawn into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would detect itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In short, it would be a rout.

Don't have my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking about 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, amend combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated utilize of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

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

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America'south twenty-yr Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria produced a war machine that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a study conducted by the United states of america Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Forcefulness, in 2017. The study establish that US armed forces 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 adequacy, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would result in the piecemeal destruction of the US Regular army in rapid gild should they face off against a Russian armed services that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The event isn't just qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the The states military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it can't), information technology only lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The depression-intensity conflict that the United states of america military machine waged in Republic of iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built around the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts volition be made to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attending in equally curt a timeframe every bit possible. This concept may have been viable where the US was in control of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, nonetheless, pure fiction in big-scale combined arms warfare. There won't exist medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot downwardly. In that location 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 exist captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there volition be is death and destruction, and lots of it. Ane of the events which triggered McMaster's written report of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined artillery brigade by Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any similar U.s. combat formation. The superiority Russian federation 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 U.s. Air Force may exist able to mount a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, there will be cypher similar the full air supremacy enjoyed by the American armed forces in its operations in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace volition exist contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian basis troops will exist operating nether an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the US 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 exist on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, considering of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare adequacy , the US forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate every bit radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to role.

Any war with Russia would observe American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Dorsum in the 1980s, we routinely trained to have losses of xxx-xl percent and go on the fight, because that was the reality of mod combat against a Soviet threat. Dorsum then, we were able to effectively friction match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give as adept, or amend, than nosotros got.

That wouldn't be the instance in whatever European war against Russian federation. The US will lose most of its forces before they are able to close with any Russian antagonist, due to deep artillery fires. Even when they shut with the enemy, the reward the US enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a matter of the by. Our tactics are no longer upwards to par - when there is close combat, it will exist extraordinarily violent, and the US will, more times than not, come out on the losing side.

Merely 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 behave. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of United states of america ground troops were effective against modern Russian tanks (and feel suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed by the mass of gainsay 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 U.s. Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a The states Regular army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at effectually 2 in the forenoon. By v:30am it was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There's something about 170 armored vehicles begetting down on your position that makes defeat all simply inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would expect like. It would not be express to Ukraine, just 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 Usa and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. Information technology is, in short, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former U.s. Marine Corps intelligence officeholder and writer of 'SCORPION Male monarch: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Spousal relationship every bit an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf'south staff during the Gulf State of war, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

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Source: https://www.sott.net/article/464018-A-war-with-Russia-would-be-unlike-anything-the-US-and-NATO-have-ever-experienced