Is It True That if You Arw Struck by Lightening Once

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

In a contempo printing conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow past Hungarian Prime number Government minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to bring together the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said:

"Their [NATO's] master task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could describe us into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are beingness talked about in the Usa today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by forcefulness, and nonetheless describe us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and is stuffed with weapons and in that location are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will end information technology from unleashing operations in Crimea, permit lone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat performance. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea anything near information technology? Information technology seems not."

Merely these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a play a trick on "screaming from the top of the hen firm that he's scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not be reported equally a statement of fact."

Psaki's comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. 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 Russian federation 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 military 1, in which Russia has been identified equally a "armed forces adversary", and the accomplishment of which tin can just be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military machine means has non been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive brotherhood, the odds are that NATO would not initiate whatever offensive war machine activity to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine'southward membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO'southward Article v - which relates to collective defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a country 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' like those deployed into eastern Europe beingness formed on Ukrainian soil equally a 'trip-wire' force, and modern air defenses combined with frontward-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to brainstorm a hybrid conflict against what information technology 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 "impale Russians."

The idea that Russia would sit down idly by while a guerilla state of war in Crimea was being implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than than likely employ its ain unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of form, would weep foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Article v. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

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

"As long as he's [Putin] interim aggressively, we are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that nosotros're there and Article 5 is a sacred obligation."

Biden'southward comments repeat those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last year. At that fourth dimension, Biden saturday downward with NATO Secretary-Full general Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

"Commodity v we accept equally a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is there."

Biden'south view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his feel every bit vice president under Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretarial assistant of Defense Bob Work told reporters:

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its ain future. And we decline any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president fabricated it clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression is unwavering. As he said it, in this brotherhood there are no old members and in that location are no new members. There are no junior partners and at that place are no senior partners. There are but allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every unmarried ally."

Just what would this defense entail? Equally someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Army, I tin can attest that a war with Russia would be dissimilar anything the US 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 big-scale combined arms conflict. If the US was to exist drawn into a conventional ground war with Russian federation, information technology would find itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In brusk, information technology would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. In 2016, then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking virtually the results of a report - 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 take superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

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

In short, they would get their asses kicked.

America's 20-twelvemonth Centre Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, 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 report conducted by the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that US war machine forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront military assailment 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 devastation of the U.s.a. Army in rapid society should they confront off against a Russian war machine that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The effect isn't merely qualitative, but too quantitative - fifty-fifty if the The states military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian antagonist (which it can't), it but lacks the size to survive in whatsoever sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity disharmonize that the Usa 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 volition be made to evacuate the wounded so that they can receive life-saving medical attending in as brusk a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the US was in control of the surroundings in which fights were conducted. It is, notwithstanding, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. There won't exist medical evacuation helicopters flight to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot down. At that place won't exist field ambulances - fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would be 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. One of the events which triggered McMaster's written report 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 whatever similar U.s. combat formation. 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 Usa Air Strength may exist able to mountain a fight in the airspace above any battlefield, at that place volition be zip like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American military 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 under an air defence force umbrella the likes of which neither the US 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 ground will exist on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russia'south overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the United states forces on the ground will exist deafened, dumb, and bullheaded to what is happening effectually them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and fifty-fifty operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to part.

Any war with Russia would notice American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Back in the 1980s, nosotros routinely trained to take losses of 30-40 pct and go along the fight, because that was the reality of modernistic gainsay against a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and capability - in curt, we could give as good, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the case in any European war against Russia. The US will lose nearly of its forces before they are able to close with whatsoever Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Fifty-fifty when they close with the enemy, the reward the The states enjoyed confronting 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 combat, information technology will be extraordinarily trigger-happy, and the U.s. will, more times than not, come out on the losing side.

But fifty-fifty 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 acquit. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of U.s.a. basis troops were effective against modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will merely be overwhelmed past the mass of combat force the Russians volition confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style assault carried out by specially trained US Regular army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training 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 forenoon. By v:30am it was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'southward something about 170 armored vehicles bearing downwardly on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would wait like. Information technology would not be 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 United states and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Commodity five of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officeholder and writer of 'SCORPION Rex: America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Wedlock as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's 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