Wonder what the obongo would do...
Contemplating War in Europe
Are the Europeans any match for a Russian assault?
May 5, 2016
Dr. Craig Luther
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.
...
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.
Contemplating War in Europe
Contemplating War in Europe
Are the Europeans any match for a Russian assault?
May 5, 2016
Dr. Craig Luther
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.
...
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.
Contemplating War in Europe
