War: What Would a US-Russia Conflict Look Like

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Did you ever wonder what war between Russia and the US would look like?  Will it be all about nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction, or would it be a more limited, conventional weapon/ground troops war?  Before the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 the chances of war over Moscow’s possible invasion of Ukraine were very, very slim, and they probably still are, but still, in this ever changing, volatile world one never knows.

ukraine

By  on March 5, 2014 at TheWeek.

The chances that the U.S. and Russia will clash militarily over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine are very, very slim. Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO, and President Obama isn’t likely to volunteer for another war. But many of Ukraine’s neighbors are NATO members, including Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary. And so are the the Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — further north and right on Russia’s border.

If any of those countries come to Ukraine’s aid and find themselves in a war with Russia, NATO is obliged to intervene. That’s also true if Russia comes up with some pretext to invade any of those countries, unlikely as that seems. If we learned anything from World War I, it’s that huge, bloody conflicts can start with tiny skirmishes, especially in Eastern Europe.

Again, the U.S. and Russia almost certainly won’t come to blows over Ukraine. But what if they did?

If you asked that question during the Cold War it would be like those fanciful Godzilla vs. King Kong, or Batman vs. Superman match-ups: Which superpower would prevail in all-out battle? But Russia isn’t the Soviet Union, and military technology didn’t stop in 1991. Here, for example, is a look at U.S. versus Russian/USSR defense spending since the end of the Cold War,from Mother Jones.

The U.S. is much wealthier than Russia and spends a lot more on its military. That doesn’t mean a war would be easy for the U.S. to win, though, or even guarantee a victory: As Napoleon and Hitler learned the hard way, Russia will sacrifice a lot to win its wars, especially on its home turf.

So, what would a war between the U.S. and Russia look like? Here are a few scenarios, from awful to merely bad:

Nuclear Armageddon
Even with the slow mutual nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia each have thousands of nuclear warheads at the ready. As Eugene Chow noted earlier this year, the entire stockpile of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) — 448 active — is essentially aimed squarely at Russia. Russia’s hundreds of ICBMs are probably returning the favor.

In all, the U.S. has about 7,700 nuclear warheads, including 1,950 warheads ready to deploy via ICBM, submarine, and airplane, plus thousands more in mothballs or waiting to be dismantled, according to the latest tally by the Federation of American Scientists. Russia has slightly more warheads overall — about 8,500 — but a slightly fewer 1,800 of them operational. China, in comparison, has about 250 nuclear warheads, a bit less that France (300) and a bit more than Britain (225).

Nuclear war with Russia is still mutually assured destruction. Hopefully, that’s still deterrent enough.

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:

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Professor Mike

Professor Mike is a left-leaning, dog loving, political junkie. He has written dozens of articles for Substack, Medium, Simily, and Tribel. Professor Mike has been published at Smerconish.com, among others. He is a strong proponent of the environment, and a passionate protector of animals. In addition he is a fierce anti-Trumper. Take a moment and share his work.
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9 years ago

I’m not sure what it would look like but I bet it would sound like BOOM!!! 😉

Personally I think we Brits should have never gone anywhere close to Afghanistan nor Iraq. We should have stayed home and stayed out of it.

Then we could have sent the SAS into Eastern Ukraine – with the Ukranian Presidents consent of course – blown the shit out of the rebels, come home and stuck two finger up at Putin with our Big Brother the USA stood behind us grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I’d make a great diplomat!!!

Bill Formby
9 years ago

This is a really good analysis except for one thing, Putin. Like all previous Russian strong men he is a bully who will push as far as he can unless someone actually smacks upside the head with a 2×4, or at least until he is quite sure they are about to do so. The Russians in the past, and seemingly now, have a swagger about them that says they can do as they damn well please and screw you if you don’t like it. In other words, they see themselves as fighting people and the rest of the world as soft targets. They truly believe that with their equal balance of nukes no one is going to challenge them and to a large degree they are right. The rest of the world prefers to try to live a normal life and not be nutters. However, and I say this in terms of a hand of Hold’em poker, Putin is sitting there betting his ass with a four card flush and hoping like hell that neither NATO nor the US calls his hand. If Russia pushes this far enough to get into a war NATO, thanks to advances in a missile defense system that would work more often than not, would probably discourage Moscow from going nuclear. In any case, should they lose, it would take many, many decades for them to ever recover because NATO would likely divide up Russia’s few resources, especially the oil and gas, and leave in a very weakened state,

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