Guns in Home More Likely to Kill Family

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

In a recent press conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow past 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 brotherhood. He said:

"Their [NATO's] master task is to comprise the evolution of Russia. Ukraine is just 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 about in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, fix strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the event of Donbass or Crimea by strength, and yet draw us into an armed disharmonize."

Putin continued:

"Let united states of america imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and is stuffed with weapons and at that place are state-of-the-fine art missile systems simply like in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, permit alone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat functioning. Exercise we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea annihilation about it? It seems non."

Simply these words were dismissed past White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a play tricks "screaming from the acme of the hen house that he's scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fearfulness over Ukraine "should not exist reported every bit a statement of fact."

Psaki'south comments, nevertheless, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal goal of the authorities 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 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 one, in which Russia has been identified as a "armed services antagonist", and the accomplishment of which can only be accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate whatsoever offensive military machine activity to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine's membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO'south Commodity v - which relates to commonage defense force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accretion.

The well-nigh likely scenario would involve Ukraine being rapidly brought nether 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 forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in identify 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 Russian federation would sit 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 likely apply 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 under Article 5. In brusk, NATO would be at war with Russia.

This is non idle speculation. When explaining his recent conclusion to deploy some three,000 The states troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, The states President Joe Biden declared:

"As 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 Commodity 5 is a sacred obligation."

Biden'due south comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June xv last year. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat downwardly with NATO Secretarial assistant-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America'southward commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

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

"Every bit President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own hereafter. And nosotros pass up any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Republic of estonia this by September, the president fabricated it articulate that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. Every bit he said it, in this alliance there are no sometime members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and there are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and unproblematic. And we volition defend the territorial integrity of every unmarried ally."

Merely what would this defense entail? Equally someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Ground forces, I can adjure that a war with Russia would be different annihilation the U.s.a. military has experienced - ever. The United states military is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does it possess doctrine capable of supporting large-calibration combined arms conflict. If the US was to exist drawn into a conventional ground war with Russia, it would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In short, it would be a rout.

Don't take my word for information technology. In 2016, and so-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking well-nigh 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 audition at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians accept superior arms firepower, improve combat vehicles, and take learned sophisticated use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should The states forces discover themselves in a land war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, cold awakening."

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America'due south 20-yr Eye 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 battleground. This reality was highlighted in a study conducted by the U.s.a. Regular army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Forcefulness, in 2017. The report found that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront war machine aggression from Russian federation. The lack of feasible air defense and electronic warfare capability, when combined with an over-reliance on satellite communications and GPS navigation systems, would event in the piecemeal destruction of the US Regular army in rapid guild should they face off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a United states/NATO threat.

The result isn't just qualitative, simply also quantitative - fifty-fifty if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which information technology can't), it simply lacks the size to survive in whatsoever sustained boxing or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the U.s. 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 will be made to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attention in as short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been feasible where the US was in control of the environs in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in big-scale combined arms warfare. There won't be medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - even if they launched, they would exist shot down. There won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in short order. There won't be field hospitals - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will be is death and destruction, and lots of it. I of the events which triggered McMaster's study of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade by Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatsoever similar Usa 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 US Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace to a higher place whatever battleground, there will exist nothing similar the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American war machine in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace volition be contested by a very capable Russian air forcefulness, and Russian basis troops will exist operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the US nor NATO has ever faced. There will be no shut air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground will be on their own.

This feeling of isolation volition be furthered by the reality that, because of Russian federation'southward overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the The states forces on the ground will be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and fifty-fifty operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons end to part.

Any war with Russian federation would observe American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to have losses of 30-forty percent and continue the fight, because that was the reality of mod gainsay against a Soviet threat. Dorsum then, nosotros were able to finer match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in curt, we could give as good, or meliorate, than we got.

That wouldn't exist the case in any European war against Russian federation. The U.s. will lose near of its forces before they are able to shut with whatever Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Fifty-fifty when they shut 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 in that location is close combat, it volition be extraordinarily violent, and the US volition, more times than non, come 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 volition bring to conduct. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of US ground troops were constructive against mod Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably non), American troops volition simply be overwhelmed past the mass of combat forcefulness 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. Regular army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Preparation Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-fashion Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a Usa Ground forces Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at effectually two in the morning. By 5:30am it was over, with the U.s.a. Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'due south something nearly 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would expect like. It would non be limited to Ukraine, merely extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. Information technology would involve Russian strikes against NATO airfields, depots, and ports throughout the depth of Europe.

This is what volition happen if the US and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in brusque, a suicide pact.

Virtually the Author:
Scott Ritter is a quondam 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 Spousal relationship as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's 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