RT, 7/27/22
The US and its NATO allies need to take a series of steps to avoid a direct conflict with Russia over Ukraine, the Pentagon’s foremost think-tank advised in a report published on Tuesday. Sanctions against Russia have created conditions for one of the escalation pathways already, while the continuing flow of weapons and volunteers to Ukraine may trigger others, the RAND Corporation warned.
Concerns that the conflict in Ukraine will “escalate to a Russia-NATO clash” are “warranted,” said the outfit, which has been doing research and analysis for the US military since 1948. While plausible, such escalation is not inevitable if the US and its allies take some steps to fend it off, according to the report.
RAND researchers laid out “four plausible horizontal escalation pathways,” starting with the anti-Russian sanctions already implemented by the US and its allies. The other three possibilities involve Moscow coming to believe a direct NATO involvement is imminent; that weapons delivered to Ukraine are making a major difference on the battlefield; or that unrest within Russia is threatening the government.
“Moscow has yet to respond directly in any substantial manner,” to Western actions, from sanctions to arming Ukraine, which RAND assumes have “immiserated Russia and led to the death of many Russian soldiers.” The researchers explain this by offering up speculation that the “Kremlin’s preoccupation with its faltering campaign in Ukraine might be consuming senior leaders’ limited bandwidth.”
They also assume that Russia is running out of long-range missiles, a claim Western intelligence agencies have been making since March – and therefore may feel pressured to strike NATO territory if it feels the US-led bloc might get directly involved.
The most acute risk of a Russian decision to escalate directly to a kinetic strike on NATO allies would result from Moscow perceiving that large-scale, direct NATO attacks on Russian military forces in Ukraine are imminent.
Deploying long-range strike capabilities in the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania, or having volunteers from NATO member states take part in the fighting – which has already happened – would promote this conclusion, RAND warns, adding that this pathway may lead to “plausible” use of nuclear weapons.
“Continue to signal that the United States and NATO allies have no plans to directly enter the conflict,” RAND advised Washington, as this is needed to counter public statements by “current or former government officials” about Russian “atrocities” and calls for regime change.
NATO should still “increase force presence in the east” but focus on “defensive” capabilities and re-evaluate activities such as drills “to avoid creating a false impression of preparation for offensive action,” the researchers said.
If Western weapons flowing into Ukraine begin to “turn the conflict dramatically against Russia,” Moscow might target their supply nodes, the report claims. Such attacks could start out as “covert or non-kinetic” and escalate from there; one example given is the 2014 explosion at the Czech ammunition depot, which Western media and the intelligence-adjacent outfit Bellingcat blamed on Russia, without evidence.
One proposed countermeasure is to keep NATO training and supply facilities used to aid Ukraine “dispersed and covert, wherever possible.”
Another admission, buried deep in the report, is that Western weapons assistance has not managed to “turn the conflict dramatically against Russia.”
The last scenario envisions Moscow interpreting large-scale protests as “a non-kinetic NATO attack.” While mass demonstrations are yet to take place in Russia, “the dramatic economic contraction that has resulted from the war might well be the spark for such broader popular unrest once economic pain is felt over the medium to long term,” the RAND report said.
The trouble is that Moscow might perceive such protests as “evidence of a coordinated Western campaign to topple the Russian government,” so NATO needs to “maintain the message discipline” that its objective is “the cessation of conflict, not the end of the Putin regime.”
At the very end, the report cautions that the US and its allies “could be the engine of escalation as easily as Russia could,” and that any escalation spiral is as likely to start with their actions. As the report focused on possible Russian actions, however, that warning was left unexplored.
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RAND Corporation
July 26, 2022
Pathways to Russian Escalation Against NATO from the Ukraine War
by Bryan Frederick, Samuel Charap, Scott Boston, Stephen J. Flanagan, Michael J. Mazarr, Jennifer D. P. Moroney, Karl P. Mueller
Does all of this not seem like simple common sense? I mean, really, guys? You are pulling down 6-figure salaries coming up with nothing more than this?
I would suspect there’s more to the report. There must be classified appendices to which we are not privy.
If the rumors of an August escalation by the Russians are true and look to be expansive and successful, how about suing for peace before all the young and middle aged Ukrainian men are dead.
appears to be one of those technocratic studies with rather limited breadth of imagination. No word of states outside NATO sphere. No word of non-military solutions (which are the only ones that eventually will materialize.) May the limited perspective be prerequisite for a RAND study of this small scale it seems to convey little understanding of the Russian perception (only in the end one phrase does say it “From the Russian
leadership’s perspective, the theater itself could not
be of greater significance”. Why not develope a strategy from that assessment) . E.g. uprisings are as unlikely to happen as in Ukraine. Both populations in their majority see history on their side. Russia even more so, as seen to be the one pushed into the corner, equipped with only scarce alternatives. Unlike the Kiev government which with a stroke of a pen could end the war. The main problem with RANDs thinking: Eventually every scenario leads to a prolongation of the status que ante bellum. What´s the sense of that? If the war ended now nothing would have changed. NATO is not willing to back off. Russia demands its “cordon sanitaire” as much as the USSR did after 1945. No inch of progress. The Western ideology is still in full swing: Russia is as ever the dangerous and EXPANSIVE aka imperalistic power. Beast in the East. Historically no evidence for this. Never was. Neither pre-1945, neither since. The simple truth, the Kremlin struggles and has been struggling to keep the nation intact (just look at a map). But thats not fit for a foe. And cyberwarfare against NATO members? just sounds so fairy-tale-ish. Or to quote the spy-flick “U.N.C.L.E.” “A Russian spy would never take a piss without a plan”. Capriciousness was never a Kremlinian treat. – however thx for the material!
My, oh my, Rand gets top dollar and this is what they produce? It seems everyone has gotten so fat on the corruption train that they are living it up in the Bahamas and outsourced the actual report writing to a sweat shop in India or Philippines. If only my Uncle who was an Admiral in the USN was still alive, I could get in on this sweet racket.
The World is an extension of the Capitalist State and everyone gets their ‘rocks off’ anticipating the next point of conflict. After all, one has to do something with all that free time. So, to plot the next course of conflict seems a logical perspective…