Sky in Coloarado Baby Lips Pressed Against the Bottle

© AP
Russian tanks in drills at the Kadamovskiy firing range in the Rostov region in southern Russia
Jan. 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 nigh connected NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to bring together the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO'south] primary task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could depict usa into some kind of armed disharmonize and forcefulness their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked well-nigh in the U.s. today. Or they could depict Ukraine into NATO, gear up strike weapons systems at that place and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and however depict u.s. into an armed disharmonize."

Putin continued:

"Let u.s. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is blimp with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Let usa imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat performance. Do nosotros have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea anything near it? It seems not."

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the peak of the hen house that he's scared of the chickens," adding that whatever Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not be reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki'south comments, nonetheless, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The main goal of the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is what he terms the " de-occupation" of Crimea. While this goal has, in the by, been couched in terms of diplomacy - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must force Russian federation 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 one, in which Russian federation 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. Every bit an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive armed services activeness to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would need to include some linguistic communication regarding the limits of NATO's Commodity 5 - which relates to collective defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of state of war would de facto be upon Ukrainian accession.

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

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting 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 down idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was beingness implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than than likely employ 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 five. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

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

"Equally long as he's [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to make certain we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're there and Article v is a sacred obligation."

Biden's comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 final yr. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO lease. Biden said:

"Commodity v we take every bit a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is in that location."

Biden'due south view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his experience equally vice president under Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretary of Defence 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 made information technology articulate that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. As he said it, in this alliance there are no old members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and in that location are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and uncomplicated. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every unmarried ally."

Just what would this defense entail? As someone who one time trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a war with Russia would exist unlike annihilation the United states of america 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 find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American war machine history. In short, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, so-Lieutenant Full 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, better gainsay vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical outcome.

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

In short, they would go their asses kicked.

America'south 20-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 battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a report conducted by the United states Army'southward 173rd Airborne Brigade, the fundamental American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that U.s.a. military machine forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront 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 devastation of the The states Army in rapid order should they face up off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The event isn't only qualitative, but also quantitative - even if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which information technology can't), it just lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US armed forces 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 volition be fabricated to evacuate the wounded and then that they can receive life-saving medical attending in as curt a timeframe equally possible. This concept may accept been feasible where the US was in control of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-calibration combined arms warfare. There won't exist medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot downward. At that place won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in short guild. In that location won't exist field hospitals - even if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there volition be is expiry and destruction, and lots of it. Ane of the events which triggered McMaster's report of Russian warfare was the devastation of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade past Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatsoever 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 mount a fight in the airspace to a higher place any battlefield, there will be nothing like the total air supremacy enjoyed past the American military in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace volition be contested past a very capable Russian air forcefulness, and Russian ground troops volition be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the U.s. nor NATO has ever faced. There will be no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the footing will be on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, considering of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the US forces on the basis will exist 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 large numbers. Dorsum in the 1980s, we routinely trained to have losses of thirty-40 percentage and go on the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Dorsum then, we were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of forcefulness size, structure, and capability - in short, we could give as good, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the example in whatever European war confronting Russia. The US volition lose most of its forces before they are able to shut 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 there is close combat, it will exist extraordinarily violent, and the U.s.a. will, more than times than not, come out on the losing side.

Only even if the US manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, it but has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia will bring to conduct. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of Us basis troops were constructive confronting mod Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably non), 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 especially trained Us Regular army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Heart in Fort Irwin, California, where ii Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off confronting a U.s. Ground forces Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around 2 in the morning. Past five:30am it was over, with the Usa Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There's something almost 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would look like. Information technology 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 attach the "sacred obligation" of Commodity 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in brusk, a suicide pact.

Most the Author:
Scott Ritter is a onetime Us Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of 'SCORPION Rex: America's Suicidal Cover of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Matrimony as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf'southward staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a United nations 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