Can the President Use Air Force One for Personal Use

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

"Their [NATO'southward] main task is to incorporate the development of Russia," Putin said. "Ukraine is simply a tool to reach this goal. They could describe united states 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 United States today," he noted. "Or they could depict Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by strength, and still describe us into an armed disharmonize."

Putin continued, "Let u.s.a. imagine that Ukraine is a NATO fellow member and is blimp with weapons and in that location are country-of-the-fine art missile systems just similar in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let solitary Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a gainsay performance. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought annihilation about it? It seems non."

But these words were dismissed past White Firm spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox "screaming from the meridian of the hen firm that he's scared of the chickens," adding that whatsoever Russian expression of fear over Ukraine "should not be reported as a statement of fact."

Psaki'south comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The master 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 i, in which Russia has been identified as a "war machine adversary", and the accomplishment of which can just exist achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has non been spelled out. Equally an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would non initiate any offensive armed forces action 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's Article 5 – which relates to collective defense force – when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

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

In one case this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict confronting what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has caused since 2022 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to "kill Russians."

The thought 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, Russia would more than than likely employ its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for commonage defense under Article five. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

This is not idle speculation. When explaining his recent determination to deploy some 3,000 US troops to Europe in response to the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, US President Joe Biden declared, "Equally long equally he's [Putin] acting aggressively, we are going to make sure we reassure our NATO allies in Eastern Europe that we're there and Article 5 is a sacred obligation."

Biden'south comments echo those made during his initial visit to NATO Headquarters, on June fifteen final year. At that fourth dimension, Biden sat down with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and emphasized America's commitment to Commodity v of the NATO charter. "Article 5 nosotros take equally a sacred obligation," Biden said. "I want NATO to know America is there."

Biden'due south view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his experience every bit vice president nether 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 cull its ain future. And we reject whatever talk of a sphere of influence. And speaking in Republic of estonia this past September, the president made it clear that our commitment to our NATO allies in the face of Russian assailment is unwavering. Every bit he said information technology, in this brotherhood there are no old members and there are no new members. In that location are no inferior partners and in that location are no senior partners. There are just allies, pure and uncomplicated. And we volition defend the territorial integrity of every single ally."

Just what would this defence entail? Every bit someone who once trained to fight the Soviet Army, I can attest that a war with Russian federation would be unlike anything the U.s.a. military has experienced – ever. The US military machine is neither organized, trained, nor equipped to fight its Russian counterparts. Nor does it possess doctrine capable of supporting big-scale combined arms disharmonize. If the US was to be fatigued into a conventional footing war with Russia, information technology would notice itself facing defeat on a scale unprecedented in American armed forces history. In short, information technology would be a rout.

Don't take my word for it. 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 2022 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 arms firepower, better gainsay vehicles, and take learned sophisticated use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for tactical effect. "Should US forces find themselves in a state war with Russia," McMaster said, "they would exist in for a rude, cold awakening."

In brusque, they would get their asses kicked.

America's twenty-year Centre Eastern misadventure in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria 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 Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, the central American component of NATO's Rapid Deployment Force, in 2017. The study institute that US military forces in Europe were underequipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized to face military aggression 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 effect in the piecemeal destruction of the U.s. Army in rapid order should they confront off against a Russian military that was organized, trained, and equipped to specifically defeat a US/NATO threat.

The result isn't only qualitative, but also quantitative – even if the Usa armed services could stand toe-to-toe with a Russian adversary (which it tin't), it but lacks the size to survive in any sustained boxing or campaign. The low-intensity conflict that the US military 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 fabricated to evacuate the wounded so that they tin receive life-saving medical attention in as short a timeframe as possible. This concept may have been viable where the US was in command of the environs in which fights were conducted. It is, even so, pure fiction in large-scale combined artillery warfare. At that place won't be medical evacuation helicopters flying to the rescue – even if they launched, they would be shot downwards. There won't be field ambulances – fifty-fifty if they arrived on the scene, they would exist destroyed in short order. At that place won't be field hospitals – fifty-fifty if they were established, they would be captured by Russian mobile forces.

What there will exist is death and destruction, and lots of it. Ane 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 on 2015. This, of course, would be the fate of any similar US combat germination. The superiority Russia 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 United states of america Air Forcefulness may be able to mount a fight in the airspace in a higher place any battlefield, there will be nix like the total air supremacy enjoyed by the American military in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The airspace will be contested by a very capable Russian air force, and Russian ground troops will be operating under an air defense umbrella the likes of which neither the U.s. 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 footing will be on their own.

This feeling of isolation will be furthered by the reality that, because of Russian federation's overwhelming superiority in electronic warfare capability, the U.s.a. forces on the ground volition be deaf, dumb, and blind to what is happening around them, unable to communicate, receive intelligence, and even operate as radios, electronic systems, and weapons cease to function.

Any war with Russia would find American forces slaughtered in large numbers. Back in the 1980s, we routinely trained to accept losses of thirty-40 percent and go along the fight, because that was the reality of modern combat against a Soviet threat. Back and then, we were able to effectively lucifer the Soviets in terms of forcefulness size, structure, and capability – in brusque, nosotros could requite as good, or better, than we got.

That wouldn't be the case in any European war against Russia. The US will lose most of its forces before they are able to close with any Russian adversary, due to deep artillery fires. Even when they close 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 there is close combat, it will be extraordinarily violent, and the US will, more than times than non, come out on the losing side.

But fifty-fifty if the U.s. manages to win the odd tactical engagement against peer-level infantry, information technology merely has no counter to the overwhelming number of tanks and armored fighting vehicles Russia volition bring to behave. Even if the anti-tank weapons in the possession of United states of america basis troops were effective confronting modernistic Russian tanks (and experience suggests they are probably not), American troops will simply be overwhelmed past the mass of gainsay 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 ii Soviet-style Mechanized Infantry Regiments squared off against a US Army Mechanized Brigade. The fight began at around ii in the forenoon. By v:30am it was over, with the United states of america Brigade destroyed, and the Soviets having seized their objectives. In that location's something virtually 170 armored vehicles bearing down on your position that makes defeat all but inevitable.

This is what a war with Russia would look like. It would non be express to Ukraine, simply 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 will happen if the United states of america and NATO seek to attach the "sacred obligation" of Article 5 of the NATO Charter to Ukraine. It is, in curt, a suicide pact.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and practice not necessarily represent those of RT.

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Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/548322-war-russia-us-nato/