War with Russia

Some will say that the warnings of our most senior American admirals, generals and the author of this book are a predictable response from men with an interest to protect and they are no more than crying “Wolf!” I would remind the naysayers of this: in 2017, it will be a hundred years since the United States committed four million young Americans to the slaughterhouse of Europe, of whom 110,000 gave their lives. Twenty-five years later, America had to do it again—and the cost was much greater in the Second World War. Had it not been for NATO and the determination and sacrifice of a new generation of Americans, the subsequent Cold War could have had a very different outcome.

At a recent top-level convention of senior political, diplomatic and military figures in Europe, an attendee asked, with reference to Russia’s military adventurism and muscle flexing in Europe, was the present situation with Russia more like the slide to world war in 1914, or the failure to stand firm against Hitler that led to the next conflagration of the Second World War. The chilling answer was: “No, this is Europe 2015. With nuclear weapons.”

War With Russia lays out a plausible and startling case of the potential peril ahead—it deserves a serious reading indeed.

Preface

THE WAR WITH Russia began in the Ukraine in March 2014.

At that time I was a four-star British General and the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR), deputy to NATO’s American Strategic Commander (SACEUR), himself double-hatted as commander of America’s European Command. We followed in illustrious footseps: General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first SACEUR with Field Marshal Montgomery the first DSACEUR. Based at NATO’s strategic headquarters (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe or SHAPE in the NATO vernacular) situated just north of Mons in Belgium, I was an experienced NATO man having previously commanded NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.

I had been in post as DSACEUR for three years and I confess that, along with my senior military colleagues, I accepted the received wisdom that, despite the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, NATO should aim to foster a strategic partnership with Russia. I visited Moscow on several occasions to build relationships with the senior Russian military leadership and happily welcomed General Valeri Gerasimov, now Chief of the Russian General Staff and Commander of Russian Armed Forces, into my home.

However, the invasion of Crimea, Russia’s support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, its invasion of that country, and Putin’s self-proclaimed intention in March 2014 of reuniting ethnic Russian speakers under the banner of Mother Russia, has changed my view of Russia’s intentions fundamentally. Russia is now our strategic adversary and has set itself on a collision course with the West. It has built up, and is enhancing, its military capability. It has thrown away the rulebook on which the post–Cold War security settlement of Europe was based. The Russian president has started a dynamic that can only be halted if the West wakes up to the real possibility of war and takes urgent action.

This book is that wake-up call—before it is too late.

Back in March 2014, there was a sense of incredulity among us western military leaders when it became increasingly clear that the “annexation” of Crimea was no less than a Russian invasion. Put bluntly and in context, this was the first attempt to change the boundaries of Europe by force since Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

Not only were we witnessing a brutal return to the power politics of “iron and blood” in Europe, but we were also seeing a new form of state-on-state warfare. Rather than merely applying brute force, Russia instead undermined the integrity of Crimea from within and without the need for a conventional attack. I watched the clips on CNN and BBC News 24 on the widescreen TV in my office in SHAPE. It showed soldiers in green uniforms, with no identifying unit insignia, faces obscured with balaclava helmets, driving similarly unidentified vehicles. As my fellow commanders and I watched, we all knew who those vehicles belonged to and who was operating them—but proving it was another thing. It was highly professional and expertly implemented and we couldn’t even consider doing anything to counter it as Ukraine was not a member of NATO.

In the days that followed we received regular updates from NATO’s Intelligence Fusion Centre, as they listed the Russian tank armies and airborne divisions now preparing to invade the rest of Ukraine. At the same time, we witnessed an unprecedented buildup of Russian forces on the borders of the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Now this was very much our concern, as “the Baltics”—as NATO refers to them—had been NATO members since 2004.

Then President Putin spoke in the Kremlin on 18 March 2014 and formally admitted Crimea into the Russian Federation.