Members of the G7 ratify wide-ranging security agreement with Ukraine at Nato summit
www.theweek.co.uk
Nato vs. Russia: who would win?
Members of the G7 ratify wide-ranging security agreement with Ukraine at Nato summit
THE WEEK STAFF
14 JUL 2023
Illustrated / Getty Images
When Russian troops crossed into Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Nato was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s sudden military campaign.
As Vladimir Putin’s troops laid siege to cities across
Ukraine last year, the Western military alliance scrambled to avoid a repeat performance.
Nato member states have plied Kyiv with “lethal aid”, as well as hitting Russia with the most punishing economic sanctions ever imposed on a major economy.
With Russia showing no signs of relenting, Western nations have been urged by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to commit to the battle for the long term. At the same time other nations that border Russia remain fearful that without the right deterrents in place, Putin could turn his ire on them next.
The latest
Zelenskyy said he was leaving this week’s Nato summit in Lithuania with a “significant security victory” after a G7 declaration of long-term security guarantees. The announcement came after Rishi Sunak assured Ukraine’s leader that “real progress” had been made on the security guarantees, and said he belonged in Nato.
But the agreement stopped short of offering a full timeframe for Ukraine’s accession to the security alliance. The pact does provide for significant military equipment, training and intelligence sharing and, according to the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, there are likely to be “more British troops in Ukraine after this conflict than before”.
Nato’s suggestion that Ukraine could join the alliance after the conclusion of the war will only “encourage Putin to keep fighting”, according to the
Carnegie Institute’s Judy Dempsey.
Yet the alternative, admitting Kyiv immediately, would immediately drag Nato into a direct conflict with Russia.
0 seconds of 30 secondsVolume 0%
Nato’s capability
A mutual assistance clause sits at the heart of the security alliance, which was formed in 1949 with the express aim of countering the risk of a Soviet attack on allied territory.
“This is regarded as one of the main reasons why Ukraine cannot join Nato while in conflict with Russia,”
Reuters said, “as this might immediately draw the alliance into an active war”.
The clause in question, Article 5 of Nato’s Washington Treaty, says that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all member states.
Fortunately for countries such as Montenegro, which spent around $98m on defence last year, there are some military big hitters in the alliance. A
Nato pledge asks members to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defence. And though less than a third of members meet this target, Stoltenberg has said it is “increasingly considered a floor, not a ceiling”.
The US spends more on defence than the next ten big spenders in the world combined. Its total in 2022 was estimated to be $877bn, according to
Trading Economics. In second place was China with estimated spending of $292bn, while Russia was in third place, on £86bn, The UK sits in sixth place, below India and Saudi Arabia, with spending of £68.5bn.
As well as being the biggest defence spender in the world, the US has a powerful arsenal and a huge amount of manpower. According to World Population Review figures, it has 1.39 million active troops, beaten only by India and China.
In total, Nato has around 3.36 million active military personnel,
Statista data indicates.
Russia’s capability
Despite Russian forces’ well-publicised struggles in Ukraine, their overall military capability is considerable. The country went from the fifth largest defence spender in the world in 2021 to the third in 2022, with a jump of more than £20bn.
It has 1.33 million active military personnel, according to Statista, but only around 4,182 military aircraft compared with Nato’s combined 20,633, and 598 military ships compared to Nato’s 2,151.
“Russia’s ground combat vehicle capacity is more competitive, however, with 12,566 main battle tanks, to 12,408,” said Statista. “The combined nuclear arsenal of the United States, United Kingdom, and France amounted to 5,943 nuclear warheads, compared with Russia's 5,977.”
Nato vs. Russia
Nato’s biggest player, the US, has an overwhelming advantage over Russia in conventional forces.
But Russian journalist and military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer told
DW that open warfare often comes down to far more than the inventories that each side of the conflict can call upon.
“It’s like predicting the result of a soccer match: yes, basically, Brazil should beat America in soccer, but I have seen Americans beat Brazil in South Africa, at the Confederations Cup,” said Felgenhauer. “You never know the result until the game is played.”
Retired Air Vice Marshal Sean Bell told
Sky News that another consideration was that Russia is not fighting by international rules of war. The Kremlin will do whatever it takes to win, without being bogged down by politics or the media, he argued.
“They’re not constantly looking over their shoulders about, ‘Oh, if we hit a civilian, if we hit a building…’,” said Bell. “They just get on with it.”
Despite this, many experts believe Russia’s military effectiveness has been dented by the
disbanding of the Wagner Group after its abortive mutiny last month.
Putin “may try to compensate for the loss of Wagner forces by adding additional Chechen soldiers or finding other ways to integrate new forces”, said
Time. But, according to Andreas Krieg, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, Russian forces are still likely to suffer a setback in the long run from the loss of the highly trained group.
Writing for
The Conversation, James Horncastle, an assistant professor in international relations, noted that Wagner Group soldiers “were responsible for many of Russia’s early successes, such as the Battle of Sievierodonetsk”.
Whether the loss of Wagner fighters would impact a hypothetical conflict between Russia and Nato is unclear, but for Horncastle, the short-lived insurrection “could still be a turning point” in the war in Ukraine itself.
www.deutschlandfunk.de
How is the Ukraine counterretreat going?
