When Are They Giving the Arkansas Real Estate Exam Again

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

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

"Their [NATO's] master task is to incorporate the evolution of Russian federation. Ukraine is just 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 almost in the United States today. Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, ready up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the outcome of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw us into an armed conflict."

Putin continued:

"Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and at that place are land-of-the-art missile systems merely like in Poland and Romania. Who volition stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, permit alone Donbass? Allow united states of america imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat functioning. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone idea annihilation almost 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 house that he'south scared of the chickens," adding that any Russian expression of fright over Ukraine "should not be reported equally a statement of fact."

Psaki'southward comments, yet, 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 affairs - "[t]he synergy of our efforts must strength Russia to negotiate the return of our peninsula," Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining command over Crimea - the reality is his strategy for render is a purely military one, in which Russian federation has been identified as a "military machine adversary", and the accomplishment of which can but exist achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using war machine ways has not been spelled out. Equally an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive military activeness to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russian federation. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine'south membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO's Article 5 - which relates to collective defence force - when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The about probable scenario would involve Ukraine existence 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 mod air defenses combined with forrard-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 confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing anarchistic warfare capability information technology has acquired since 2015 at the easily 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 utilize its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would exist at war with Russian federation.

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

"Equally long as he'south [Putin] interim aggressively, we are going to brand sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're at that place and Commodity 5 is a sacred obligation."

Biden's comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June 15 last yr. At that time, Biden sat downwards with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's delivery to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Biden said:

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

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

"As President Obama has said, Ukraine should ... be able to choose its own future. And we turn down any talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Estonia this past September, the president made it clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the confront of Russian assailment is unwavering. Equally he said information technology, in this alliance at that place are no one-time members and there are no new members. At that place are no junior partners and at that place are no senior partners. There are merely allies, pure and simple. And nosotros will defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Merely what would this defense entail? As someone who in one case trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can adjure that a state of war with Russia would be unlike anything the U.s.a. 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 United states was to exist drawn into a conventional ground state of war with Russian federation, information technology would detect itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American military history. In short, it would exist a rout.

Don't have my word for it. In 2016, and then-Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, when speaking nearly the results of a written 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 have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated utilize of unmanned aeriform vehicles (UAVs) for tactical issue.

"Should U.s.a. 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 20-yr Middle Eastern misadventure in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian arab republic 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 Regular army'southward 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO'southward Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study found that US military machine forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to confront military assailment from Russian federation. 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 destruction of the US Army in rapid lodge should they face off confronting a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a Usa/NATO threat.

The consequence isn't just qualitative, but besides quantitative - even if the US military could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which information technology tin can't), it merely lacks the size to survive in any sustained battle or campaign. The depression-intensity conflict that the The states war machine 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 volition be made to evacuate the wounded and then that they can receive life-saving medical attending in as brusk a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the United states was in command 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 flight to the rescue - fifty-fifty if they launched, they would be shot down. In that location won't be field ambulances - even if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in brusque order. There won't be field hospitals - even if they were established, they would exist captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will be is death and devastation, and lots of it. One of the events which triggered McMaster'southward written report of Russian warfare was the destruction of a Ukrainian combined arms brigade past Russian artillery in early 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of whatsoever similar United states of america gainsay formation. The superiority Russian federation enjoys in arms fires is overwhelming, both in terms of the numbers of artillery systems fielded and the lethality of the munitions employed.

While the Usa Air Forcefulness may be able to mount a fight in the airspace above whatsoever battlefield, there will exist nothing similar the full air supremacy enjoyed by the American military machine in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will exist contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian footing troops will be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the United states nor NATO has e'er faced. There will exist no close air support cavalry coming to the rescue of beleaguered American troops. The forces on the ground volition exist 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 Usa forces on the ground volition be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening effectually 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, nosotros routinely trained to accept losses of 30-forty pct and continue the fight, considering that was the reality of modernistic combat confronting a Soviet threat. Back then, we were able to effectively match the Soviets in terms of strength size, construction, and capability - in short, we could give as adept, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the example in any European war confronting Russia. The US will lose virtually of its forces before they are able to close with any Russian antagonist, due to deep artillery fires. Fifty-fifty when they close 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 upward to par - when at that place is close combat, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the United states of america 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, it just 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 US ground troops were effective against modern Russian tanks (and feel suggests they are probably not), American troops will just be overwhelmed by the mass of combat strength the Russians volition confront them with.

In the 1980s, I had the opportunity to participate in a Soviet-style attack carried out by specially trained US Ground forces troops - the 'OPFOR' - at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, California, where two Soviet-way Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around 2 in the morning. Past 5:30am information technology was over, with the U.s.a. Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. There'south something about 170 armored vehicles bearing downward on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a state of war with Russia would wait like. Information technology would not be limited to Ukraine, merely 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 of america and NATO seek to adhere the "sacred obligation" of Article v of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in short, a suicide pact.

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

sollarspontme1937.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.sott.net/article/464018-A-war-with-Russia-would-be-unlike-anything-the-US-and-NATO-have-ever-experienced