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 conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow past Hungarian Prime number Government minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke well-nigh continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic brotherhood. He said:

"Their [NATO's] main task is to contain the evolution of Russian federation. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw u.s.a. into some kind of armed conflict and strength their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the United states today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, fix up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the result of Donbass or Crimea by forcefulness, and still draw us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems merely like in Poland and Romania. Who volition finish it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Let u.s.a. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a gainsay functioning. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about it? It seems not."

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a trick "screaming from the top of the hen firm that he's scared of the chickens," calculation that whatsoever Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should non be reported equally a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, all the same, are divorced from the reality of the state of affairs. 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 diplomacy - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must force Russia to negotiate the render of our peninsula," Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining control over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for render is a purely armed services one, in which Russia has been identified as a "military adversary", and the accomplishment of which can just be accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has non been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, 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 need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO'southward Article 5 - which relates to commonage defence force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The about likely scenario would involve Ukraine being chop-chop brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil equally a 'trip-wire' force, and modern air defenses combined with forrad-deployed NATO shipping 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 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 use its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would exist confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defence under Article v. In curt, NATO would be at state of war with Russia.

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

"As long every bit he'southward [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to make sure nosotros reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that nosotros're there and Article five is a sacred obligation."

Biden'southward comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June xv final year. 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:

"Article 5 we take equally a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is there."

Biden'southward view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his feel as 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 pass up any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president fabricated information technology clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. Equally he said it, in this alliance there are no old members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. At that place are just allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

But what would this defense entail? Every bit someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a war with Russia would be unlike anything the United states 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-calibration combined arms disharmonize. If the US was to be drawn into a conventional ground state of war with Russia, it would discover itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In curt, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant Full general H.R. McMaster, when speaking nigh the results of a report - the Russian federation 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, ameliorate combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated utilise of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical result.

"Should Us forces find themselves in a land state of war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, common cold awakening."

In brusk, they would get their asses kicked.

America's xx-year Middle Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, 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's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the key American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that U.s. military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront military aggression from Russia. The lack of viable air defence 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 Us Army in rapid order should they face off against a Russian military machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s.a./NATO threat.

The event isn't simply qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the Usa military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian antagonist (which information technology can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in whatever sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US armed forces waged in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan has created an organizational ethos built around 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 every bit short a timeframe every bit possible. This concept may take been feasible where the US was in control of the surround in which fights were conducted. It is, nevertheless, pure fiction in large-calibration combined arms warfare. At that place won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying 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 curt order. There won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured past Russian mobile forces.

What there will be is expiry and destruction, and lots of it. I of the events which triggered McMaster'southward study of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade past Russian arms in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatever similar US combat 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, in that location will be naught like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American armed forces in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian basis troops will be operating nether an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the US nor NATO has always faced. There will exist no close air back up cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground will be on their ain.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered past the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the US forces on the footing will be deaf, impaired, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons stop to function.

Any war with Russia would find American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to take losses of xxx-40 percent and continue the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of strength size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give as good, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the case in whatever European war against Russia. The The states volition lose most 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 reward the US enjoyed against Iraqi and Taliban insurgents and ISIS terrorists is a matter of the past. Our tactics are no longer upwardly to par - when there is close gainsay, it volition be extraordinarily violent, and the US volition, 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 US ground troops were effective against mod Russian tanks (and feel suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed by the mass of combat forcefulness the Russians will confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-manner assail carried out by especially trained US Army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Grooming Middle in Fort Irwin, California, where ii Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around two in the morning. By v:30am it was over, with the U.s.a. Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There's something well-nigh 170 armored vehicles begetting downwards on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would look like. It would not be limited 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 US and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. Information technology is, in brusque, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a sometime United states of america Marine Corps intelligence officeholder and author of 'SCORPION KING: America'due south Suicidal Cover 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