A conventional war in Eastern Europe
This is the other scenario that never happened in the Cold War. Now, the possibility of scenario one (nuclear Armageddon) makes this one almost equally unlikely. But for the sake of argument, let's assume this hypothetical U.S.-Russia war breaks out in Ukraine, and that other NATO forces are supplementing U.S. troops, ships, and aircraft. Unlike in the Asia-Pacific, where the U.S. keeps China in check (and vice versa,
as Eugene Chow explained), NATO provides the United States with a robust military alliance set up specifically to take on Soviet Russia.
The first dynamic is that Russia would have home field advantage: The Russian navy has long called Crimea its home, and whatever troops Russia doesn't already have in Ukraine are right next door, one border-crossing away. The other big starting point is that the U.S. and its NATO allies have Russia effectively surrounded. By its own public count, the U.S. has
598 military facilities in 40 countries, along with the 4,461 bases in the U.S. and U.S. territories.
Along with its large number of bases in Germany, the U.S. has major military installations in Qatar and the Diego Garcia atoll to Russia's south and Japan and South Korea to its east. NATO allies France and Britain are even closer, as
this map from Britain's The Telegraph shows:
On top of that,
NATO has bases around Russia's western perimeter and in Turkey, right across the Black Sea from Ukraine. What about Russia? "They have a presence in Cuba," more a way station than a base,
NYU professor Mark Galeotti tells The Washington Post. And Russia has a naval base in Tartus, Syria. But otherwise "they have no bases outside the former Soviet Union."
Russia has an estimated
845,000 active-duty troops, with as many as 2.5 million more in reserve. NYU's Galeotti isn't very impressed. Russia's military is "moderately competent,"
he tells The Washington Post. "It's not at the level of the American or British or German military, but it's better than in the 1990s." The Russian troops, especially the Spetsnaz special forces, are "good at bullying small neighbors, but it would not be effective against NATO. It would not be able to defeat China." Galeotti is even more brutal about Russia's Crimea-based Black Sea Fleet:
As a war-fighting force, it's not particularly impressive. Its main vessel was basically built to fight other ships and so is only useful in fighting a naval war. It's got the Moskva, an aging guided-missile cruiser; a large anti-submarine warfare cruiser — very dated; a destroyer and two frigates, which are more versatile; landing ships; and a diesel attack submarine. It's not a particularly powerful force. The Italian navy alone could easily destroy it. [
Washington Post]
The U.S. military's
1.4 million active duty troops and 850,000 reservists, but it can't just throw all of them at Russia — somebody has to maintain those 598 bases around the world, as well as defend the U.S.
NATO's Response Force (NRF), which would probably be the first armed unit to engage the Russians, has
13,000 troops at the ready and thousands more in reserve. Here's NATO describing its first-response team, right before NRF war games last fall:
If Russia would have the advantage at sea — Sevastopol is its home port, and the U.S./NATO would have to dislodge its navy — the U.S. would have an edge in the skies, mostly. "The U.S. planes have better radar, missiles, and electronic warfare equipment, while the Russian planes are judged to have superior handling and thrust-to-weight ratio, which would give them an edge in a classic dogfight,"
says Charles Clover at the Financial Times.
But classic dogfights are at least as dated as
Top Gun, Russian defense analyst
Ruslan Pukhov tellsFT. "Ever since Soviet days we have been lagging behind the U.S. in military aviation." Because of that gap, he adds, Soviet and Russian military planners have invested heavily in air defense systems, and the S-300 and S-400 systems are the best in the world. "It's like boxing," Pukhov says. "If you have a weak right arm, you need to compensate by a strong left arm. Soviet strategists made up for a weakness in aviation by investing heavily in air defense systems."
A U.S.-Russia war probably wouldn't end up a draw, but it would be a bloody mess. The site
Global Firepower ranks the U.S. the most powerful conventional military in the world, and that's without NATO, but Russia is a pretty close second (here it differs with Galeotti). If you look down the list of military assets, the U.S. beats Russia in almost every category — Russia has more tanks, ground artillery, and mine warfare craft.
There's a wild card, though: Since 2010, the U.S. and Russian militaries have been
increasingly cooperating, including engaging in joint military exercises. Unlike in Soviet times, or even the 1990s, U.S. and Russian military commanders know one another and are familiar with each other's armaments and strategies. Until the U.S.
put all U.S.-Russian military engagements on holdMonday, the relationship was good and improving.
There's "a very robust, cooperative effort between our militaries," Rear Admiral Mark C. Montgomery, deputy director for plans, policy, and strategy at U.S. European Command (EUCOM),
told Foreign Policy in 2012, as Russian officers were in NORAD headquarters in Colorado, practicing counterinsurgency tactics.
The naval exercises "tend to be fairly deep in their level of technical engagement,"
Montgomery said, "where say, the ground ones and [special operations forces] ones are still fairly young exercises that do a lot more walk-thru than detailed exercising. But as they go year to year, they get more complicated."
So basically the U.S. would win as expected but would end up taking most likely the heaviest lumps its ever taken in history if this shyt drags out more than a year, which of course it would
.
status but Putin just sitting in the cut, waiting
