When Did the US and NATO Declare War on Russia?

According to various news reports, the Biden Administration has permitted Ukraine to use US-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia. Predictably, the Kremlin lashed out at the report, claiming that the US had effectively declared war against Russia and warned the US and its NATO allies of the risks, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, of escalation. Is the US at war with Russia? Should it be?

The extent of the permission granted to Ukraine remains a point of contention. Some sources reported that strikes on Moscow, specifically the Kremlin, are off-limits. Other sources suggest that the strikes are confined to the Kharkiv region, while others claim that the operational zone within Russia is more flexible but still well short of Moscow’s environs.

NATO is now in the position that it is training Ukrainian troops, supplying them with offensive weapons, and specifying when and where they can be used. Except for NATO forces actively engaged in combat, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the US and NATO are, for all practical purposes, at war in Russia. That’s precisely what Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed.

I am not a fan of Vladimir Putin. I think he is little more than a thug running a government that is a criminal conspiracy. He and his government are a cancer across the Russian body politic.

On this point, however, I have to agree with Putin. The US and NATO are effectively at war with Russia. At the very least, they are moving inexorably in that direction. 

Let’s put aside the issue of whether NATO should go to war with Russia, a nuclear-armed state, in defense of Ukraine and to preempt Russian aggression against NATO member-states. That question is worth asking, especially if Moscow will ultimately turn its aggression against a NATO member. A war with Russia isn’t inevitable, but it may well be if Moscow pursues its current policy towards its neighbors.

The more pressing issue, however, is whether the US and its allies are ready for war. The answer is no! Militarily, the US and NATO are not in a position to go to war.

Munitions and military supplies are at historically low levels, as are manning levels. Most of NATO’s European members are still spending substantially less than the agreed-upon 2% of GNP. The overall level of preparedness across NATO is far below the level necessary to conduct a war with Russia. Financially, both the US and its allied governments are sitting on unprecedented levels of national debt even before the inevitable military buildup that a war with Russia will entail.

More importantly, it’s a virtual certainty that other bad actors will take advantage of NATO’s growing engagement with Russia to advance their own agendas, militarily or diplomatically. The Taiwan Straits, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East, among other hot spots, will likely see outbreaks of conflict. Over and above the fact that NATO is unprepared for a war with Russia, it’s equally clear that the US and its allies will be hard-pressed to respond to conflicts elsewhere.

Psychologically, neither Europeans nor Americans are prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to successfully prosecute a war with Russia, whether that is paying higher taxes or forgoing some of the benefits of the welfare state. Politically, public opinion in the West has never been more polarized and disunited.

A war with Russia is the wrong war, with the wrong enemy, at the wrong time. It is a war that the US and its allies are wholly unprepared for. More importantly, it’s a war that they show no inclination to prepare for.

Going to war is never a good thing. Sometimes, your hand is forced by an attack, and a country finds itself at war, notwithstanding its reluctance to do so. But going to war, or at the very least moving inexorably toward one without taking even the most rudimentary steps to prepare, is just madness. In the 4th century AD, the Roman general Vegetius famously declared, si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war); the West, it seems, is instead embracing the opposite strategy.