﻿Going into war isn’t always a choice - more often than not it’s a necessity, and even with
NATO’s support of Ukrainian independence it seems like Putin is leaving the US less and less choice
in the decision of whether or not to get more actively involved in the war in Ukraine.
But if the US had to suddenly engage in a full-scale war against Russia,
how would it fare? What plans is it making for such an eventuality?
One thing is for sure, Putin had better buckle up. The US military keeps its M1 Abrams oiled up,
its Tomahawks loaded and its star-spangled hero’s capes nearby all year round. It is always prepared
and has kept a particularly close watch on the former Soviet Union ever since the 1940s.
During the Cold War, the West had it easy: Despite communist coups and the proxy wars,
the Americans and their NATO allies always knew exactly who the real threat was—the foe pulling
the strings behind the scenes if you will. It was, of course, the Soviet Union. For forty-five years,
the West had prepared, strategized, and planned for the ultimate eventuality—an
all-out military confrontation with the Soviet superpower. Whether the Cold War conflict went
hot by spiraling into the nuclear realm, or if kinetic operations remained firmly
moored in the familiar bounds of conventional warfare made little difference. What mattered
most was that the enemy and its intentions were clear. Knowing that is half the battle.
But what happened next changed everything. The Soviet collapse in the early 1990s
kick-started three-decades of self-discovery as the US spread its wings as the world’s sole
superpower. Combating terrorists, genocidal dictators, and non-state tyrants became the
order of the day; NATO members drifted apart, the alliance’s mission and purpose suddenly cast into
doubt; then came a two-decade forever war in the Middle East. We all know how that turned
out. After a decade of strategic revision, the US finally embarked on a wholesale pivot to Asia,
now hoping to contain a Chinese threat which had for decades grown
stronger almost in plain sight. And then, February 2022 happened.
Russia invaded Ukraine. Geopolitical clarity, it seemed,
was restored. The aggressive Russian bear whose foreign policy since the Soviet collapse
had vacillated somewhere between bitter Western resentment and surprising Western rapprochement
showed its true colors. America, firmly committed to bolstering its presence in the Indo-Pacific,
nevertheless seized the opportunity in Europe. For years it had been nursing its wounds,
trying to restore European partnerships and alliances which had slowly atrophied under
the pressure of populist politics. The invasion recast these relationships in stone. Everyone in
the Western world suddenly saw the reflection of their own histories in Ukraine’s existential fight
for its independence. The US and its Western allies pledged collective action—sanctions,
hybrid warfare, material donations, refugee support, and military training—everything
short of entering the fight themselves. This Western support coalition has shown no signs
of weakening now more than a year into the war. If Finland’s recent accession to NATO says anything,
it has only grown stronger. What is this all leading to?
For the Americans who for a decade could not drum up the political unity required to deal
with Russian revisionism, the Russian threat is credible once-more. The pivot to Asia will
continue apace. But now, with Eastern European sovereignty under threat once more, America must
continue to do everything in its power to prepare it and its European allies for the ultimate
eventuality: A full-scale war with Russia. We know… you’re probably laughing right about now.
“War with Russia?” you’re saying, “The same Russia that can barely make inroads against a
country twenty-eight times smaller and with a hundred million fewer people than itself? The
same Russia that has allegedly already suffered a quarter-million casualties in a single year of
fighting? More than ‘the entire number of Russian soldiers killed in every war the Soviet Union and
Russia fought in since World War II combined’?” Well, yeah…that Russia.
As counterintuitive as it now seems, Russia still poses a grave threat to Eurasian security and
Western values the world over. Western analysts are contemplating a number of
contingencies that could result from the war in Ukraine, which fortunately for us all has thus
far remained contained to a single country. The major one is the potentiality that Russia
and its fuming dictator, Vladimir Putin, finally recognizing the futility of winning a long-term
victory in Ukraine go absolutely rogue. Russia has all but burned its remaining capital with
the West. Politically, Putin is a global pariah. Economically, Russia has been cut off
from Western markets; its once profitable natural gas left with virtually nowhere to go. Sanctions
continue to cut into its ability to supply its military and civilian population with the
specialized industrial and technological parts it needs to function effectively. Militarily,
there’s little evidence the latest round of mobilization will provide the tactical
momentum Russia needs to win over the long term. Rather, it’s more likely that untrained Russian
conscripts or mobiks will continue to be fed into the meat grinder to little effect.
Will Putin back down? You can almost guarantee he won’t.
He’s already raised the stakes too high. His people—his propagandists, at least—expect too
much of him. He’s paranoid. He must deliver on his promises. The Ukrainians, as long as they
live and breathe, will never accept the Russian occupation on any scale. As a final recourse,
Putin still has his nuclear umbrella, something he “knows the West won’t gamble on.”
From our vantage point today, it seems as though Putin’s Russia, if it continues its
present course, will almost have to go rogue. It won’t end the war with a negotiated settlement
unless something drastic changes. But as attrition whittles down its once-vaunted military power,
it will be forced to engage in its antebellum tactics, only far more aggressively. It will
rely on asymmetric warfare and hybrid operations to destabilize the West. It will “increasingly act
like a global version of its now closest remaining ally of consequence, Iran,” completely “decoupled”
from the international community, pursuing a revanchist foreign policy using drones,
proxy wars, missile strikes, espionage, and more—all while using its nuclear
umbrella to deter Western retaliation. Nuclear threats will grow in intensity;
cyber operations will increase in kind. Putin will target vulnerable pipelines and
transoceanic fiber optic cables. Russia will continue to fund and sponsor disinformation
and misinformation campaigns. Russian Bots named Peter and Frank will enter your feeds
at election time in the hopes of trolling you into voting for their candidate of choice.
The bloodletting in Ukraine will continue. The threat of escalation
will remain omnipresent. And that isn’t good. Because,
as one think tank put it, “a rogue Russia [still] represents a geopolitical crisis
of the highest order. It’s a threat to global security, Western political systems,
the cybersphere, space, and food security…not to mention every Ukrainian civilian.”
Let’s be clear: Ukraine has blunted, if not outright neutered Russia’s conventional
military power over the past year. That feat alone is remarkable. But this war won’t end
anytime soon. Russia remains a dangerous foe, and elsewhere, especially outside Ukraine,
the bear can still bite—make no mistake. So where—outside Ukraine—could the US see itself
fighting Russia? And how would it do so? One of the geopolitical hotspots for a possible
confrontation between Russia and the US is in a random chunk of territory wedged between Lithuania
and Poland known as the Kaliningrad exclave. This sparsely populated patch of land is Russia’s
gateway to the Baltic—a heavily defended former German port city ceded to the Soviets in the
aftermath of World War II. Kaliningrad’s geography is tricky. The port is literally surrounded by
NATO countries. Strategically, it is an A2/AD, or Anti-Access, Area-Denial nightmare for NATO;
home to thousands of Russian forces, advanced fighter jets, and nuclear-capable Iskander-M
missiles, the exclave is connected to Belarus by a narrow forty mile land bridge known as
the Suwalki Gap—which, itself, cuts into the only two highways and lone railroad connecting
Poland to NATO’s exposed Baltic states. Since NATO assets cannot traverse the Suwalki
gap without coming under the guns of Russia’s military in Kaliningrad, the “wide-open rural
region” is a crucial chokepoint that Russia would almost certainly exploit if it ever
sought to cut off the Baltics from NATO. Finland’s accession to NATO has caused tensions
in this region to flare once more. In a matter of one year, NATO’s border with Russia has doubled,
adding over 800 miles of densely wooded, difficult to patrol tundra. The Baltic Sea
has come firmly under NATO’s protection, with Kaliningrad the only Russian outpost in an
otherwise Western-friendly sea of states. Putin has had grievances against the West for
years, and nobody, certainly not now, should bother trying to predict his next move. But
prediction and preparation is the express job of America’s military strategists; were Putin
to try to secure the Suwalki gap to Kaliningrad or gain a foothold in Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, or
any of its past satellites, the US and its allies must try to discern his regional capabilities
and prepare for an open conflict. But what would this look like? How does
the Russian way of war differentiate from the American approach?
America is fortunate—at least far more fortunate than Russia in this
hypothetical. Its robust network of military alliances and partnerships throughout Europe
mean it would be far from alone in a war against Russia. Before the war in Ukraine,
both Russia and NATO had respected the terms of the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, committing
both sides to avoid reinforcing or permanently stationing forces “on the territories of the
former Warsaw Pact states” or their neighboring Russian borders. Russia abrogated itself from
these terms when it invaded Ukraine. Now NATO has a clear pathway to bolster its presence in these
critical areas using measured multinational deployments and the increased rotation of
permanently based American troops. The fact America’s force posture would
be complemented by the presence of British, Polish, Italian, Spanish, French, Estonian,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish, and many other allied partners speaks to the logic of the
American way of war—which in the modern era has become multinational and collaborative
to the core. There is strength in numbers, and resolve in collective resilience. These force
multipliers are not something Russia could count on in a direct confrontation with NATO. In fact,
it can only really count on direct, cooperative assistance from Belarus—and amid its attempts to
keep out of the Ukraine War, Belarusian loyalty to Russia is an especially unproven commodity.
While Russia has struggled to coax Belarus to fight alongside it, NATO’s military personnel now
exceed 5.4 million—four times that of Russia. According to Statista, NATO also has “about
five times as many aircraft, four times as many armoured vehicles and three times as many military
ships,” not to mention the backing of the world’s biggest defense spender, the US,
itself with 1.39 million troops alone and a defense budget of $801 billion dollars in 2021,
dwarfing second-place China with a net spend of $293 billion and Russia, who spent
a paltry $65.9 billion that same year. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, each year it
conducted massive multi-day military exercises demonstrating its military power. NATO has done
the same, ramping up its collective exercises over the past year in response to Russian aggression.
While these exercises show little more than NATO’s theoretical military effectiveness, the war in
Ukraine has brought Russia into stark relief—and it has certainly been found wanting.
Russia is in the midst of a “new ‘military reform,’” something its Ministry of Defense
announced at the end of 2022. Most see this as little more than a haphazard attempt to patch a
sinking ship. They’re trying to grow their modern military to the size it was over two decades ago,
but today there remains a lack of “specialists in charge of maintaining military equipment
and vehicles as well as military infrastructure inherited from the USSR which no longer exists
today. Additionally, there were tens of thousands of auxiliary positions like military financial
officers and army construction workers which have also ceased to exist. In other words,”
noted Russian journalist and military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, “the nominal size of the
armed forces cannot be increased in a realistic and meaningful way.” Russia lacks qualified
junior officers. There’s nobody to command the conscripts they’re throwing into battle. The
army of 1.5 million soldiers Russia dreams of is little more than “a bureaucratic fantasy.”
Still, Russia is frantically trying to restore its depleted forces to the numbers it boasted prior to
the invasion of Ukraine. It isn’t working. Its armed forces today “are lacking in some areas
of modern military technology, including drone capability, electronic components, and radar
and satellite reconnaissance,” Felgenhauer told the media, “Yes, we have weapons...but
our reconnaissance capabilities are weaker than our attack capabilities…so we have long-range,
sometimes precision guided weapons, but we don’t always know where the target is.”
But what if Russia went into a full scale war with the West despite these obvious weaknesses?
Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that Putin goes rogue. He sees Finland’s
NATO membership as the final straw. He still doubts the west will risk starting World War III,
and he is desperate for a quick victory in Europe. He throws everything into the Ukrainian cauldron,
and it all goes wrong. Armed with Western tanks and, eventually, aircraft, Ukraine mounts a series
of counter offensives that all but push Russia back to its own borders. Decisively defeated
on the battlefield, the enemies of Lukashenko’s pro-Russian faction in Belarus stage a coup and
oust the leader from power. In the cascading crisis, weathered Belarusian volunteers which
for years had fought in Ukraine return home and help throw the Russians out of their homeland.
Belarus thus switches sides, leaving the Russian garrison at Kaliningrad entirely surrounded by
enemy forces. The Suwalki Gap is no longer a concern for the West, but it is for Russia.
Over time, Poland, Lithuania, and other NATO countries pressure the Russian garrison to
demilitarize. Morale sinks. They are at the whims of NATO naval forces in the Baltic, Swedish
missiles on the neighboring island of Gotland, and all but blocked from their homeland.
Putin decides the time is ripe to present NATO with a sort of final act—he invades Belarus and,
hoping to regain a foothold in Eastern Europe, Putin decides to test NATO’s resolve,
launching an attack on the Suwalki Gap and small villages along the Estonian, Latvian,
and Lithuanian borders. He uses Kaliningrad’s Iskander missiles and naval missile corvettes
to cover his advance. With the bulk of its reserve forces in Poland and Finland, Putin’s
forces overwhelm the unprepared NATO multinational garrison in Estonia, which is briefly forced into
retreat. Russia immediately begins reinforcing its positions, bracing for the inevitable
counterattack as NATO triggers Article Five. NATO’s tripwire strategy—to place small “forward
presence” battalion-size deployments in the Baltics to absorb a Russian invasion while it
rushed its reserves to the front could not prevent Estonia from coming under Russian control. Latvia
looks like it will hold, but only just. But once Estonia fell, all of NATOs Baltic states,
supported by its European, American, and Canadian allies, converged. The West has war-gamed this
scenario over and over again, and Russian units immediately feel pressure from NATO’s
Response Force and Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, a multinational brigade on constant state
of alert. The initial surge into the Baltics is complicated by Russian missile attacks on roads,
bridges, and railways. The U.S. and NATO respond by establishing air superiority over Estonia at
high risk to itself, beginning with a massive cyberattack and cruise missile strikes launched
by a fleet of B-52s on Russian SAM systems that overwhelms their air defenses. Learning
the lessons of the Ukraine war, NATO targets Russia’s vulnerable logistics infrastructure
supplying its forward Estonian presence. Superior commercial satellites, drone technology, UAVs,
electromagnetic capabilities, and next-generation precision guided munitions fired by interoperable
F-35 fighters enable NATO forces to target the railway hubs supplying Putin’s war in a
way the Ukrainians never could. Once Russian gave up the air to NATO
and the US, it was essentially game over. Kaliningrad, isolated and completely surrounded,
capitulates in a matter of days. NATO continues to pour manpower and material into Estonia at a
rate unmatched by Russia. Its theater assets are better maintained. It has higher morale,
reinforced by a clear sense of mission. It suffers fewer casualties, a result of superior airlift
capabilities and hospital facilities. It engages in full-spectrum multi domain operations—or the
simultaneous attack from sea, air, land, and cyberspace—unleashing “a single symphony of
violence to break down advanced defenses” it has trained for for years. Through it all,
NATO member countries shoulder a fair share of the burden, thus proving the NATO concept.
Russian morale breaks under a withering, round-the-clock assault. The war is over
in a matter of weeks. Russian forces beat a hasty retreat to Moscow, and Putin’s world comes
crashing down as his people, fired up after years of disappointment, global isolation, bloodshed and
military setbacks, finally turn on him. Sure, it’s all hypothetical. And yes, it's fair
to claim that the West has struggled against forces far weaker than the conventional peers
they would face in the Baltics over the past few decades—a fair criticism, but one equally
applicable to nearly every country immersed in counterinsurgencies and irregular warfare.
It’s hard to believe that Russia could ever succeed in an out-and-out military
confrontation against the West all on its own. If the West applies the full weight of its collective
military capabilities on a clearly-defined enemy, the outcome for Putin would be very, very
bad indeed. His only recourse, again, would be to threaten the world with nuclear destruction.
Would he really go that far? What do you think? Let us know in the comments
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