What Being A Uniformed Officer Is Like Secret Service

Russian tanks

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

"Their [NATO's] principal task is to contain the evolution of Russia. Ukraine is only a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed disharmonize and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are beingness talked about 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 past force, and even so draw u.s. into an armed conflict."

Putin connected:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is blimp with weapons and there are country-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will cease it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let lone Donbass? Let u.s. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and ventures such a combat operation. Do we take to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation about it? Information technology seems not."

But these words were dismissed by White Firm spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the tiptop of the hen house that he's scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fearfulness over Ukraine "should not be reported equally a argument of fact."

Psaki'due south 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 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 adversary", and the achievement of which can only be accomplished through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military ways has not 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's Article 5 - which relates to collective defense - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The most probable scenario would involve Ukraine being rapidly brought under the 'umbrella' of NATO protection, with 'battlegroups' like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil as a 'trip-wire' strength, and mod air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO shipping put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to brainstorm 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, Russian federation would more than than likely utilise its ain unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for commonage defense under Commodity 5. In brusk, NATO would be at war with Russia.

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

"As long equally he'southward [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 fifteen last twelvemonth. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Commodity 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

Biden'south view of NATO and Ukraine is fatigued from his feel as vice president nether Barack Obama. In 2015, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense force Bob Work told reporters:

"Every bit President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own future. And nosotros reject whatever talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this by September, the president made it clear that our delivery to our NATO allies in the face up of Russian aggression is unwavering. As he said information technology, in this alliance at that place are no old members and there are no new members. There are no junior partners and at that place are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single marry."

Just what would this defense entail? As someone who in one case trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a war with Russia would exist unlike annihilation the US military has experienced - ever. The U.s. armed forces is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does information technology possess doctrine capable of supporting large-calibration 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 calibration unprecedented in American war machine history. In brusque, it would be a rout.

Don't take my discussion for information technology. 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 audition at the Middle for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Russians take superior arms firepower, better combat vehicles, and take learned sophisticated utilize of unmanned aeriform vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect.

"Should United states of america forces find themselves in a land war with Russia, they would be in for a rude, cold awakening."

In short, they would become their asses kicked.

America's twenty-year Eye Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian arab republic produced a armed forces that was no longer capable of defeating a peer-level opponent on the battlefield. This reality was highlighted in a study conducted by the Usa Ground forces'southward 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The report found that US armed forces forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face up military aggression from Russian federation. 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 U.s. Army in rapid order should they face off confronting a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a U.s./NATO threat.

The issue isn't just qualitative, simply also quantitative - fifty-fifty if the United states of america military machine could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which information technology can't), information technology simply lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the United states military waged in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan has created an organizational ethos congenital around the thought that every American life is precious, and that all efforts will be made to evacuate the wounded then that they tin can receive life-saving medical attention in every bit short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been feasible where the United states was in control of the environment in which fights were conducted. It is, however, pure fiction in large-scale combined arms warfare. At that place won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue - even if they launched, they would be shot down. There 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 - fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured past Russian mobile forces.

What at that place will be is expiry and destruction, and lots of it. One of the events which triggered McMaster's study of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined artillery brigade past Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatsoever similar US 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 Us Air Force may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above whatever battlefield, at that place will exist null like the full air supremacy enjoyed by the American war machine in its operations in Republic of iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested past a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the The states 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 volition be on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russia's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability , the U.s.a. forces on the footing volition exist deaf, dumb, 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 Russian federation would find American forces slaughtered in big numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to have losses of 30-40 percent and continue the fight, because that was the reality of modern gainsay against a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of force size, structure, and adequacy - in short, we could give as skillful, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the example in whatever European war confronting Russia. The U.s. will lose nearly of its forces earlier 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 affair of the past. Our tactics are no longer up to par - when there is shut combat, information technology will be extraordinarily violent, and the U.s. volition, more times than not, come out on the losing side.

But even if the Usa manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, information technology simply has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia will bring to bear. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of United states of america ground troops were constructive confronting modern Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians will face up them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style assault carried out by specially trained U.s. Regular army troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around 2 in the morning. By 5:30am it was over, with the US Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. At that place's something well-nigh 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a state of war with Russia would look like. It would not exist limited to Ukraine, simply 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 volition happen if the US and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Commodity v of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. Information technology is, in short, a suicide pact.

About the Author:
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officeholder and writer of 'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Comprehend of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in Full general Schwarzkopf's staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 every bit a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter