Over the last few days, I have held several long-form interviews with past and present NATO senior military officials to get to the bottom of one question: could NATO win a war against Russia?
Sadly, the answers I was given were not encouraging.
I could reach and speak at length with one past and present senior NATO military offical, and both had come to the same conclusion.
I hope to speak to at least three more past or present NATO officials in the coming days.
Who I did speak with told me this: Not only would NATO lose a military conflict with Russia, but, in almost all instances, the war would become a nuclear war.
How a Russia-NATO War Could Begin
In the coming days, I will have multiple articles on this issue.
But as a preface to these reports, I thought I would explain to readers what sparked my interest in this topic: some recent inquiries about a 2022 article I wrote, noting how a NATO-Russia conflict could begin and could go nuclear.
As I said years ago, thinking through how the Ukraine war could escalate:
Here is where things take a turn for the worst. A Russian ballistic missile’s guidance system fails and crash-lands into NATO member Poland, killing 34 civilians as it tragically lands into a populated village along the Polish-Ukraine border. While the missile was not directed at Poland intentionally, pictures on social media show children crying for their mothers and bodies left unrecognizable, and demands for justice and revenge mount.
To its credit, Poland, which has its own tortured history with the Soviet Union and Russia, does its best to show restraint. While not responding with its own military, it leads an effort to see that Moscow pays a steep price for its aggression in Ukraine and actions, even unintentional, in Poland. Warsaw leads a diplomatic and economic boycott of Moscow resulting in Russia being kicked out of SWIFT as well as direct sanctions on Russian banks, similar to what we are seeing today.
In our scenario, Russia’s reaction is also swift. Moscow decides to launch a massive cyber attack on Poland, having based cyber warriors all throughout NATO territory, using their geography and proxy servers to mask the origin of the attack. Russia, in just two hours, takes off-line Poland’s entire electrical grid, banking sector, energy plants, and more — essentially taking Poland back to the stone age.
And this is where the nightmare begins. Even though attribution is hard to achieve, Poland appeals to NATO and starts to privately share its desire to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter, declaring that an attack on one is an attack on the entire alliance. NATO is worried, as there is debate on how far to punish Russia while also feeling as if they do not have a clear military objective amongst the member states as some want to respond to what happened to Poland while others feel they must intervene militarily in Ukraine.
Here is where NATO surprises everyone. The alliance decides to set up a limited no-fly zone around the Ukrainian city of Lviv to protect innocent civilians and refugees that are trapped and have nowhere to go. Russia is warned: NATO is not intervening in the conflict, but will ensure that its planes and the airspace around Lviv are protected. NATO does make clear its jets will be in the skies above Ukraine, but will not operate from Ukrainian territory.
In Moscow, Putin now gets a sense that NATO is destined to intervene on Ukraine’s side. Russia fears NATO will use this protected corridor as a base of operations to send ever more sophisticated weapons. And with its economy now in a tailspin due to sanctions, Putin feels the walls closing in him. Before NATO can impose its no-fly zone, Putin orders strikes on any remaining airfields and military assets around Lviv.
But here is where Putin miscalculates and sets the stage for a NATO-Russia war. Putin orders another massive cyber attack on the Baltic states’ military infrastructure, thinking that NATO will use the Baltics to stage an invasion of Russia.
This ends up being the last straw for NATO, which then decides direct intervention in Ukraine is necessary to push back against Russian aggression. Before even an announcement is made, Russian intelligence sees missile and troop movements that indicate an impending NATO attack and decide to strike first — with tactical nuclear weapons. NATO decides to respond in kind.
Russia then targets European cities with nuclear weapons, with NATO and America also responding in kind. What is left is nothing short of an apocalypse, with what we estimate is billion people dead.
A War No One Wants Could Happen
While it is clear the scenario above is a little dated, consider it my attempt to see the stage for what will come from my reports.
More to come on these issues. But I think it’s good to know the stakes we are talking about first. A NATO-Russia war means World War III, and that means billions of people would perish.
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is a national security expert based in Orlando, Florida. Kazianis was Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC . He also served as Executive Editor of its publishing arm, The National Interest. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies.
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