I doubt that Putin or Lukashenko would give the green light for such an attack, but let’s say they’re crazier than they seem, and the Wagner forces launch an attack on a NATO country. What do you all think would happen? Would NATO limit itself to repelling the invaders, or would we invade Belarus? How difficult would the fight be? My assumption is that things would be over quickly, similar to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq during the War on Terror. Of course I’m not a military expert, have no inside knowledge, etc., and maybe things will be a lot more difficult than that. What do you all think?
This is a really interesting (if not scary) question and probably based on the extent to which NATO decided that Wagner would be considered a non-state actor or not.
Wagner is a Russian military force, and it doesn’t do any good for anyone to pretend they’re not.
That’s where the comparison to Afghanistan comes in. The relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban government Is basically the same as Wagner and the Belarussian government. The fact that the Taliban didn’t have anything to do with 9/11 didn’t mean they were safe from reprisals for harboring those who did. If Wagner attacks a NATO country, presumably the same reasoning should apply.
AIUI, technically/legally it is a military services provider/contractor (or mercenary company) for the sake of plausible deniability, however useful or unrealistic that is.
But the deniability isn’t plausible. It’s a Russian military force. Maybe saying otherwise helps Putin with his internal propaganda, but the rest of the world pays it no heed.
It would look like a pitiful, pathetic incursion that would be quickly demolished by NATO airstrikes (and mopped up by NATO ground forces), followed by devastating punitive strikes on Russian forces in Ukraine (including Crimea) and the Black Sea. Maybe also strikes in Belarus, but Belarus really doesn’t matter.
It sorta reminds me of a Three Stooges episode.
An attack against a NATO nation is an indirect attack against the United States. It would warrant a full non-nuclear response from the United States and its NATO allies. We would be on the edge of WW3. We would have to utterly crush them or admit that NATO is a sham and Europe is unprotected.
Right. Part of my question is this. How easy it would it be to crush them? Would it be similar to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions of the early '00s? Would NATO face similar struggles to what Ukraine is facing taking back territory from Russia? My assumption is that it would be pretty easy, but I don’t have any kind of factual basis to assume that. I’m also guessing that the reason Putin and Belarus are even making noises is because they have reason to believe that a NATO invasion of Belarus wouldn’t be a cakewalk. If they are in fact thinking that, then I think they are mistaken, but that’s my best guess as to why they are even making threats.
What does “crush them” mean? If you mean crush any invaders into NATO territory, I think that would be extremely easy (I think the vast majority would be “crushed” within days, if not hours, of NATO engagement).
If you mean crush the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I think that would be harder, but still probably close to as easy as, say, the first Gulf War (or the first part of the second Gulf War). In concert with the Ukrainian military, I think that would take weeks, maybe a few months, depending on the time of year, to expel the vast majority of Russian forces from Ukraine (including Crimea).
If you mean crush Putin, that would be very difficult if it required fighting in Russia. But I’d be hopeful that humiliating all of Putin’s forces outside of Russia, which would be relatively easy, would be enough to weaken Putin within Russia such that he might fall.
All my opinion, of course. And all based on the principle that war is almost entirely about logistics and morale. NATO would have a massive advantage in both in the first two scenarios, but in the last scenario (fighting in Russia), the logistics advantage would be much smaller and there may not be much if any of a morale advantage, since Russians would be fighting to hold their own country rather than pointlessly taking another.
I would say no because there is one super critical difference in the two scenarios. Ukraine is NOT a NATO nation, so we can only support them indirectly with arms. A NATO response would be a direct military response.
I don’t think NATO would invade Belarus itself, but it would be basically a much bigger version of the 2018 Battle of Khasham, the one where 400 Syrians and Wagner got slaughtered by American airpower in a few hours while the Americans suffered zero casualties.
I think NATO would easily crush the Wagner invasion, and do some airstrikes on Wagner forces in Belarus itself as need be to help quell the nonsense, but wouldn’t try to land-invade Belarus itself at all.
But we can choose to act like it’s plausible. We really don’t want a direct conflict between NATO and Russia if we can plausibly avoid one. But we would want to send a message, so:
We would wipe out whatever forces actually crossed the border, period. We’d probably individually target any artillery or missile launchers that actually fired across the border with precision strikes, just to emphasize that we can do that.
Then I imagine the Belarusians would get a phone call from someone in NATO, asking them, “Give us one good reason why we shouldn’t saturate your country with cruise missile strikes in the next 12 hours.” What happens then depends on the response.
Oh, and if we’re going to start down the road of what Wagner “technically, legally” is, it definitely isn’t legally a mercenary company, because those are illegal in Russia. Legally, it’s a… catering company, I think?
“Combat Catering. We specialize in delivering borsht to people in warzones, whether they want it or not!”
I’ll go INTO a warzone if the borsht is good enough.
It might be pink and gooey and cooling quickly, but I’m pretty sure that stuff isn’t borscht. I think it’s … people!
Former people actually, but war is like that.
Shortly after the mutiny Putin said that Wagner’s budget is entirely funded by the Kremlin. The deniability doesn’t even rise to the level of implausibility anymore.
There would be a fine line between getting Wagner out of Poland, and giving Putin an excuse to use nuclear weapons. Attacking anything inside Russia would be such an excuse.