Posted on 05/05/2016 3:40:16 AM PDT by SJackson
During one of my recent research trips to Germany, among a small discussion group, a colonel in the German Bundeswehr raised a few eyebrows with an off-the-record observation: If Russian President Putin, he posited, ever unleashed his large and powerful mechanized forces across the North European Plain – through Belarus, Poland, Germany and beyond – nothing would be able to stop them. While such a grim prospect surely centers the mind, it also begs the question: Why would Putin, no matter how aggressive his behavior in recent years has become, ever commit such a staggering and calamitous act?
Setting that question aside for the moment, it is sobering to acknowledge that the Bundeswehr colonel was on the mark – given Western Europe’s alarmingly poor state of military preparedness, it would be unable to mount a meaningful challenge to a major Russian conventional attack, short of escalating to nuclear weapons. And since the latter option is, well, no option at all, and considering that any conventional resistance put up by NATO alliance members such as Germany, Belgium and France would amount to little more than token resistance, one wonders: Would these countries, and their countrymen, fight to save Berlin, Brussels and Paris, or simply bow to the inevitable and capitulate?
Of course, if Putin were to send his tanks rumbling westward, U.S. forces in Europe would contribute to its defense, but these forces do not signify the imposing threat they once did, having been reduced to a tiny fraction of their Cold War order of battle. Today (2016), there are barely 65,000 U.S. troops permanently based in Europe, and the value of even this small force was seriously compromised in 2012 and 2013, when the Obama Administration deactivated the U.S. Army’s two heavy brigade combat teams stationed in Germany – effectively eliminating Europe’s primary heavy armored force.
More significantly, due to the troubling state of preparedness of U.S. military forces, in part the result of the Obama Administration’s deep cuts to personnel, equipment and training – cuts which are hard to fathom in our increasingly precarious world – there is reason to doubt that the U.S. could make a serious contribution to the defense of Europe against a future Russian ground attack without resorting to all out nuclear war. In its annual report for 2016 on U.S. military strength, the conservative Heritage Foundation changed its overall assessment of the U.S. Army from “marginal” (2015) to “weak,” largely the result of a “drop in capacity,” for the Army now has fewer brigade combat teams ready for deployment overseas.
In June 2015, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that the U.S. would preposition heavy weapons, including some 250 M1-A2 tanks, in Poland and the Baltic states as a counter to Putin’s aggressive moves. (Implementation of this plan is not to begin until early 2017.) Yet to employ an idiom from the “Cold War,” this proposed force will not be large enough to be anything more than a token “trip wire,” which in 1956, 1962 or 1968, could have triggered a U.S. nuclear response – a response which today would be inconceivable.
In other words, due to the inadequate strength of U.S. personnel and heavy weapons now (or soon to be) stationed in Europe, as well as the burgeoning shortfalls of America’s military in general, the Europeans would be left largely to their own devices to face Russia’s 775,000 active military personnel (two million active reserves), 2600 main battle tanks (MBT) (with 17,500 in storage!), 4200 artillery pieces (self-propelled, towed and multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS); with thousands more in storage), 11,000 armored personnel carriers (APC) and infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), 1200 combat-capable aircraft (including 140 bombers and about 1000 fighter, interceptor and ground attack planes), several hundred attack helicopters, and naval assets including 35 major surface combatants and 59 submarines. Given this grim reality, what conventional military forces could the strongest Western European “powers” – Germany, France and England – muster for a major war against Russia’s conspicuously superior military might?
The answer to this query is troubling at best. Germany’s post-war Bundeswehr, once one of the largest and best-equipped armed forces in the world, was reduced to simulating heavy machine guns with broomsticks in a recent NATO exercise; since the end of the Cold War it has axed 90 percent of its armor and now possesses slightly more than 200 main battle tanks, while in recent years many of its fighter planes have been grounded for the want of spare parts. Germany’s NATO ally, France, Western Europe’s sole strategic military power (with its own nuclear arsenal), has a professional army that is tough and capable, but with only 100,000+ troops and 200 tanks it is no match for the much larger forces Russia could field, even if its forces are combined with those of Germany. As for Great Britain, the disgraceful dismantling of its military power has reduced its once formidable blue-water navy to a mere 19 major surface combatants; until completion of two Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, it possesses no operational aircraft carriers. The British Army is small (less than 100,000 regulars), much smaller than in Operation DESERT STORM (1991), when it contributed to the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In other words, the force structures of these once great European powers are not keeping President Putin awake at night.
. But just what would a conventional ground war in Europe against Putin’s Russia look like? To answer this question we need look no further than Russia’s two Chechen wars (1994-96 and 1999-2000). In late 1999, Russian forces entered Chechnya and laid siege to its capital of Grozny. Russian artillery and missiles meted out indiscriminate destruction on the city; in general, observers were shocked by the brutality of the Second Chechen War and, in 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth. Anyone viewing photographs of Grozny from that period will be struck by its resemblance to Stalingrad in 1943, or Berlin in 1945, so thorough was the obliteration of the city. The Russian invasion put an end to Chechnya’s de facto independence, restoring Russian federal control; but the bitter conflict witnessed wide-spread human rights violations by both sides, while a guerrilla war against Chechen insurgents went on for years.
Russia’s recent intervention in the Syrian civil war – following an official request from the Syrian government for military support against rebel and jihadist groups – has witnessed the same brutal and deadly pattern of indiscriminate bombing and civilian deaths. Indeed, the Russians, it seems, never got the post-modern message that “War is Never the Answer” and no longer a legitimate tool of national policy, as revealed not only by their behavior in Chechnya and Syria but by their aggression in Georgia (2008), the annexation of the Crimea (2014), and the stealth invasion of the Donbas region of Ukraine (2014).
It can be argued that Vladimir Putin is the most successful Russian leader since Joseph Stalin; he is also one of the most dangerous. He views the break up of the Soviet Union as the most catastrophic geo-political event of the past century and is determined to reestablish as much of that empire as his growing strength, and Western weakness, will permit. So he pokes and probes along the periphery of the NATO alliance, thumbs his nose at a distracted and weakened America, and threatens his neighbors with potential military or economic sanctions. Angered by the expansion of NATO up to the very borders of Russia, Putin could risk precipitating a major crisis in an effort to divide, or even dismantle, the NATO alliance.
Which leads us back to my query about President Putin himself – to wit, would he ever risk loosing the “dogs of war” on Western Europe? Perhaps simply revealing his contempt for his adversaries Putin, in September 2014, boasted that “he could, at will, occupy any Eastern European capital in two days.” The implication being that his greatly superior mechanized forces could seize Berlin, Brussels or Paris in just a few more days’ time? And yet, given the collective weakness and lack of will he acutely senses in Obama’s America and NATO in general, one can only surmise that Putin remains confident he can reach his geo-political and military objectives without having to resort to all-out war. He will simply continue to ratchet up the pressure (military and economic), intimidation, and the bullying behavior to achieve his goals. In short, a massive Russian offensive across the North European Plain is out of the question.
Thus, even if this article signifies little more than an “academic” exercise – inspired by the deliberations of an anonymous Bundeswehr colonel – it remains a sobering thought indeed that, given the existing “correlation of forces” between Russia and Western Europe, the latter, in a very real sense, remains captive to the mind and machinations of one Vladimir Putin.
I think if Putin did send his Armies into Europe it would be to save them from the muslims invaders.
It is not a question if there will there be a war in Europe because that war has already begun, and only one side if fighting.
The question is will the Europeans wake up in time to save themselves
Side effect of the welfare state.
But they won't really leave.
And we will not have been in ANY position to save them at EITHER point.
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the cold war has been over for 20 years.”
-Barack Obama
-PJ
I oppose ANY use of American troops in Europe. Get out of NATO. Bring those troops home for good.
If Russia invaded Western Europe would he stop the Muslim invasion? Yes, I think so.
Won't it be something if the eastern European nations invited the Russians to stop the EU from dumping those pesky invaders on them?
That would cost the Russians a ton of money. And since oil prices are down, I don’t think he has the resources.
His army would get there. And then they would run out of gas.
And...we are not much more capable.
The direct military invasion threat from Putin and Russia is microscopic compared to the threat of all-out jihad civil war across Europe with their moslem invaders.
Tet, Take Two: Islam’s 2016 European Offensive
http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/11/tet-take-two-islams-2016-european-offensive/
One of Hussein’s major missions is to dump significant numbers of Muslim invaders into the west. The Muslim terrorists know they can win the game of numbers as they can dump millions of Muslims into any country
Husseins effort of Muslim victory by numbers is going well in Europe but not so good in the US. But Putin being a wild card in Europe should give hope to the civilized world as he will exterminate the Muslim invasion if he feels that is necessary
Obama and the Muslim terrorists thought they had won the war but it looks like Putin can stop the pro Muslim insanity.
Observation 1: Nothing over the past twenty years has shown the Russian military to be capable of handling much more than a very limited military action against a far smaller military force. At best, they pick and choose situations where they know they can come out with a better-than-average military conclusion.
Observation 2: To be any threat across Europe....you’d have to maneuver a tank-force over a 500 km-plus of trip-wire (Poland, Belarus, Bulgaria, etc). If you figure up all the TOW’s available (US, NATO, etc)...at least 2,000 of the Russian tanks won’t be on the scoreboard after the fifth day of this operation.
Observation 3: If you line up the top 1000 Russian Oligarchs....who exactly thinks this is a wise idea and would let Putin do this? Rome, Paris and Berlin is their playground where they spend weekends with their ‘honey’ and spend tens of millions on fake fashion.
Observation 4: If you took out these idiot rich Europeans and replaced them with Russian underlords and doomed their economy....what idiot would pay the obscene prices for natural gas and oil that Russian currently sells European dimwits?
Maybe this is a decent “what-if” discussion one night....with a decent bottle of Czech-made Becherovka...but there are five hundred better what-if discussions in my humble opinion.
Jan Becher ping...
“If Russia invaded Western Europe would he stop the Muslim invasion? Yes, I think so.”
Flawed logic for sure. The so called Muslim invasion is already well underway. But, it’s happening from the inside out. Muslims are emigrating to Europe both legally and illegally and embedding themselves within the local populations. Hence, no army, any army, will be able to ferret them out. And, a Muslim majority won’t be necessary for them to gain power. All that’s required is a population of perhaps 5% or thereabouts concentrated within major population centers and they’ve got it. France has already lost its country. The U.K. and Germany are next.
The American taxpayer has paid for the defense of Western Europe for since 1945. The European economy has been capable of funding its own defense since the late 1960’s. It is long past time for the USA to let Europe choose its own fate.
The US taxpayer not only saved Europe from the Nazis, the US poured billions into rebuilding the European economy after WWII through the Marshall Plan.
How many Euros did the EU send to the US to rebuild lower Manhattan after 9/11?
Pull all of the troops out of Europe and let them decide their fate.
I wouldn’t do it Russia, this time the roads/highways are nice and solid and the Germans have wider tank tracks.
I agree, I find Islam to be the biggest threat we face. They are all smiles and charming here right now. It won’t be too long before they show their true colours. To speak of it though gets you branded a racist. If you point out that Islam isn’t a race, you get the deer in the headlights look right back at you.
First Putin will put back his Russian Empire, with all of the old soviet union satellite states. Europe and NATO will not do anything meaningful, when Putin’s consolidation starts, thus sending him a signal.
Second, Europe will be embroiled within with their own civil wars. Since it is not a foreign force invasion, American sentiment will be hard pushed to get involved.
Third, large scale Russian invasion of western Europe will be in the name of ‘stabilization’. Nobody knows how it will end.
To your Obs #2, I will say that I want to agree, but as we saw with what happened in the Crimea, the world powers do little more than wag their finger at aggressors anymore. Putin marched across that stretch of land with little resistance, and the world powers watched as the Ukraine basically ceded its land back to Russia. I understand that this area historically is a hotbed of activity, and that its been an area of contention for centuries; but if the world powers, and NATO, wanted to do anything, they missed their chance by a long shot.
One additional observation I’d like to add: European youth have degraded to the same point of sloth as American youth. They want their TV, Internet, their phones, their booze and drugs, and they want everything subsidized. They don’t want to work. If Russia barrelled through eastern Europe, aside from a likely very heated front through Poland, most fighting-age Europeans would be in shock and curled up in a ball under their beds. Nationalism is all but dead across most of Europe, and a sense of self-worth and pride in one’s country has been replaced with the idea that diplomatic pollyannas are going to make everything better.
Meanwhile, most of Europe is under attack by Muslim invaders, and you hear nary a peep from the media about it. You can read social media such as Twitter and Reddit lament the rapes happening across Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium at the hands of Muslim “refugees,” but many just make excuses for the behavior and dismiss it.
We have a serious problem across the world, and it has to do with the emasculation of society. The left is right to worry about fascists coming to power. One saber rattler in Moscow is one thing, but putting several of them in a room together, measuring their military penises, could lead to war. In light of all that’s happening and the abject failure that has been multiculturalism, I believe that war may be the only thing left to right society and put it back to the point where we can be relatively peaceful.
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