NATO’s current strategy of degrading Russia’s conventional military capabilities risks provoking a dangerous future confrontation that may lead to rapid nuclear escalation.
Since at least February 2022, numerous voices in the West have clamored for the strategic defeat of Russia, or at minimum, the degradation of its conventional military capabilities, by prolonging the war in Ukraine and providing extensive military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv. These calls pursue short-term, illusory gains while significantly increasing the long-term risk of dangerous nuclear escalation. This risk grows more plausible when one considers that weakening Russia’s ground and air forces will reduce its conventional options in future conflicts, effectively shortening the escalation ladder and making nuclear response a more likely alternative to capitulation. This paper does not primarily focus on the moral or ethical questions surrounding efforts to inflict a strategic defeat on a nation that has not directly harmed us; those important issues lie beyond the scope of this discussion and can be addressed elsewhere. Here, the emphasis is on the policy, strategic, and geopolitical consequences of undermining Russia as a coherent nation-state.
What was the purpose of arming Ukraine with Western weapons?
Since the 2014 coup in Kiev, Western military aid (to the tune of no less than $100 billion) has poured into Ukraine. The West has helped transform Ukraine into a veritable armed camp with no plausible or defensible explanation for why a nation such as Ukraine needed a military of approximately 200,000 active-duty personnel and 900,000 reservists as of 2021. In recent years it has become increasingly clear that the purpose of arming Ukraine to the hilt with Western weapons was to use the men of Ukraine to try to grind down Russia and degrade Russia’s conventional capabilities, through the sacrificing of Ukrainian blood and American tax dollars.
The truth now appears obvious, Ukraine was armed up for the purpose of backing Russia into a corner and forcing Russia to either accept a permanent armed host of 1,000,000+ soldiers situated on its doorstep, or accepting open battle and the consequences of casualties and loss of war material that would naturally follow. The Western powers would be content with either situation, especially as either would mean the continued sale of weapons and weapons systems to Ukraine, while a war would mean the opportunity to degrade Russian conventional capabilities.
While the precise scope of Russia’s conventional military losses is not publicly documented, credible estimates suggest substantial attrition. Ukrainian losses are likely approaching 1,000,000 and represent perhaps the bulk of their pre-war military. Russian losses, while significant, are at least 10 times smaller. The numbers do not tell the full story of the human tragedy of Eastern European Slavic cousins and Christian brothers fighting against each other in a conflict that is still raging primarily because Kiev has agreed to allow itself to be used by Western interests to degrade Russian capabilities in the pursuit of inflicting a strategic defeat upon Russia.
The humanitarian scope of the tragic disaster that has resulted from the 2014 Soros-NATO instigated coup in Kiev is staggering and horrific, but it is ultimately outside the scope of this paper to discuss the particulars or the immediate consequences of the Maidan 2014. Suffice to say, the quicker Kiev and NATO agree to end the war, the better the situation will be for everybody concerned, Ukrainians, Russians, Americans, and Europeans.
As said, the exact extent of the degradation of Russian conventional capabilities is uncertain, although it is known to be significant, particularly in regards to ground personnel, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks, and helicopters. Russia’s conventional military forces have seen overall increases in numbers due to surges in enlistment from partial mobilization and contracting new soldiers as well as recruitment of private contractors, mostly famously the inmate recruitment program pursued by the Wagner Group then under the leadership of the since deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Attacks on early warning systems are extremely irresponsible
It merits mention that some of Ukraine’s attacks on Russia, at least backed by NATO or made with the tacit approval of NATO if not actually outright coordinated or conducted by NATO technicians personally operating the missiles or drones, have deliberately targeted Russian early-warning radar systems, such as those at Armavir and Orsk. The deliberate targeting of Russian early-warning radar systems that are crucial for the nuclear decision-making process, is perhaps one of the most dangerous aspects of the drive to degrade Russia’s capabilities in the pursuit of infliction of a strategic defeat upon Russia.
The attacks upon Russia have not been limited to trying to degrade its conventional capabilities, but have sometimes been direct attacks upon its nuclear early warning systems and even its nuclear delivery assets such as strategic bombers. Attacks upon early warning systems are highly irresponsible to the extent they hinder the Russian government’s ability to gain correct and timely information to determine as to whether some sort of nuclear attack is under way which would require a nuclear response. If a nuclear armed power has to guess if their potential adversaries have launched nuclear missiles, because of the degradation of their early warning network, it may very well formulate a response that is nuclear, even in the face of a situation where their adversaries were not launching nuclear strikes. The degradation of Russian early warning systems through direct Ukrainian or NATO strikes is profoundly irresponsible and may one day prove strategically catastrophic, a grave folly with consequences that could imperil global security.
The attacks on Russia’s strategic bombers are also an ill-conceived attempt to gain a short-term advantage which may cause long-term problems. Bombers as a nuclear delivery system are easily recalled mid-flight or at any time prior to their dropping their payload. The loss of bombers will cause an increased reliance on ICBMs and SLBMs, neither of which can be recalled after they are launched. Thus far it appears that the Ukrainians and their NATO handlers have avoided direct attacks on actual Russian nuclear warheads, such as ICBM silos, SSBN pens, and TEL bases, although there is no guarantee such irresponsible actions will not be undertaken by an increasingly desperate Ukraine or the European NATO members in the future.
Western taxpayers continue to bear the financial burden of the war
What has transpired over the course of the war in Ukraine is a concerted effort by Western elites to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia through the use of Ukrainian lives and Western equipment, sacrificed on the altar of liberal internationalism in a campaign to weaken Russia. The costs have been borne by Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who have died, and by Western (particularly American) taxpayers who continue to shoulder the financial burden of a war many likely do not support. The internal politics of the so-called democracies in the West lie beyond the scope of this paper, and no further comment will be made on the relationship between their leaders and electorates.
Possible consequences of rash actions and decisions
Assuming that Western commentators and analysts are correct regarding the significant degradation of Russian conventional forces, specifically among the VDV (airborne troops) and the 1st Guards Tank Army (Russia’s premier ground-based army formation), the degradation removes crucial tools from the Russian utility belt for decision-making to resolve conventional threats or tensions. If an ultra-nationalist revanchist government rose to power among the Eastern European NATO member states and decided to attack Kaliningrad or Belarus, or if a Western color revolution caused a civil war to erupt in Minsk, the reduced availability of conventional options for a Russian response might cause Russian decision-makers to rapidly move up the escalation ladder to outright nuclear utilization, at least in the form of tactical nuclear weapons against hostile enemy troop concentrations.
Once a tactical nuclear weapon is used, a rapid escalation to strategic nuclear weapons and a general exchange becomes far more likely. The United States would do well to carefully consider whether supposed short-term gains against Russia are worth the long-term risk of a possible general nuclear exchange due to Russia having been left with fewer conventional options to rely on when formulating a response to some developing situation.
The US prefers to work with Russia on joint projects
Another often overlooked consideration is whether it benefits the long-term interests of the United States to conventionally weaken Russia and cause it to drift further into the orbit of China as an increasingly dependent junior partner whose ability to sustain war production depends on shipments from Beijing. Russia and the United States have no fundamentally opposed or competing core interests, while the same can hardly be said for the United States and China. There are no core interests of the Russian Federation that the United States cannot ultimately agree and concede to or at least accommodate and work around. Policy-makers and decision-makers should be carefully considering how the weakening of Russia’s conventional abilities pushes Russia further to China and leaves Russia exposed to long-term Chinese machinations in Far Eastern and Siberian Russia and the geo-political tragedy that would likely result from China gaining those territories at the expense of Russia. At a minimum China would seek to gain advantage in Siberia against Russia’s best interests, and may even seek outright transfer of territory or access to Arctic routes and resources through a land corridor in the Russian Far East, particularly as China believes it has historical claims to much of that land.
In this context the United States would actually benefit from a strong Russia that can properly stand on its own as a credible great power with sufficient conventional capabilities. If relations were not so poisoned, the US could be working with Russia on joint collaboration and exploration/extraction/exploitation of resources in Siberia, as opposed to allowing Russia to slide further into the Chinese orbit and allowing China to gain those resources to fuel their own build-up. Policy-makers in the USA are presently unable to see beyond their noses, seeing only opportunities to weaken Russia, rather than opportunities to collaborate and cooperate from a position of mutual benefit and perhaps friendship.
A conventionally weakened Russia is only a benefit to those elites who covetously seek to gain at the expense of Russia and who will trade long-term instability and insecurity for their own short-term profits and advantage (whether they are motivated by malice, greed, or acting through ignorance). A truly secure and stable global order requires a strong Russia which can exercise conventional action in the pursuit of its legitimate core interests as befitting a great power operating among other great powers. The alternative is to seek to strip Russia of much of its conventional capabilities and back it into a corner where its main tool of response becomes its nuclear arsenal, and then the world will either live (or die) by the consequences of such a situation.
Bryan Anthony Reo is a licensed attorney based in Ohio and an analyst of military history, geopolitics, and international relations
Follow new articles on our Telegram channel
