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Polish Foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorksi said a victory against Vladimir Putin’s forces would be swift due to the “overwhelming superiority” of its air forces, even without support from the United States.
“If Russia attacked us and we took our gloves off, I think we would defeat Russia quite quickly. We have overwhelming superiority over Russia in air power. General, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s something like 2,500 aircraft,” he said during a discussion at the Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kyiv on Saturday.
“Even without the US it’s still overwhelming, and I haven’t checked recently how many F-35s and JASSMs and all the deep-strike capabilities we have.”
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He went further to say that Poland could knock out half of Russia’s refining capacity in a matter of weeks. The comments were in relation to a potential conflict between Russia and Nato and not about the prospect of a direct war between Russia and Poland.
“But if the Ukrainians have knocked out half of Russia’s refining capacity in six months, we could do it in six weeks and take out the other half,” he continued.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Sikorski of “Russophobia of the brain” in discussing the conflict.
Speculation has abounded that Moscow is plotting to attack Nato, claims that the country has denied.
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Last month CIA director John Ratcliffe made a short trip to Moscow - the last time that a CIA chief visited the country personally was in the weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Several sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News that Ratcliffe had made the visit to warn Russia against an attack on Nato.
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In war you can have all the advantages you can think about and still lose. Overconfidence about military supremacy has a huge cost if the war proceeds.
Germany in WW1 entered it avoiding attempts at deescalation, because it was overconfident it would overwhelm France and Russia. Both France and later USA had to withdraw from Vietnam. For recent example Russo-Ukranian war had Russia at clear advantage in manpower and industry, but we know now in retrospect, that it was not a couple of week pacification campaign as even myself was convinced it would be.
I guess that statement was likely a diplomatic posturing, but keep in mind that military conflicts very rarely go according to plan. The only certain thing that happens is human suffering inherent to military conflicts.
Give me a break. Explain how Russia would defeat all of NATO after depleting their military for the past decade.
It’s one thing to be overconfident, it’s another to say vacuous contrarianisms like this.
NATO losing is not necessary Russia winning. Vietnam did not really defeat NATO in conventional sense. Afghanistan neither did defeat NATO nor USSR. Algeria successfully resisted against France. Ethiopia pushed back Italians in their first war. The weaker countries did not occupy the stronger ones nor destroy their military. Hovewer these conflicts impacted deeply the stronger countries, and not for the best and they are still considered losers by history. Also Russia is way stronger proportionally than those previous examples and in same way to defeat NATO they would not necessary need to obliterate their military or even occupy much territory. Actually it can also work the opposite way, NATO itself could win in a similar way, but war politics as always are unpredicted, aside from death and destruction of course.
So, let’s speculate on a full scale conflict if it goes to that. First, the most obvious: nukes. You will kill millions at minimum (in practice mostly civilians) Russians. Same will happen to westeners, the devastation would be massive if not apocalyptic.
But let’s imagine nukes do not exist or are not used. What makes you so sure a large bombing campaign would make Russia surrender (they historically sustained having cities destroyed to dust and rebuilt them later) or an advance deep into Russian territory would be successful? What if military demands are not accepted, what if the population and government resists. What if men from central and western Europe massively dodge draft? I would avoid going to die thousands of kilometers away personally, would you? What if USA/Canada/Australia, other NATO countries… abstain from conflict? What if Russia also launches a massive bombing campaign and Europeans pressure their governments to sue for peace rather than hiding underground counting their dead and without electricity? It can go either way, you can never now.
Russians advancing deep into European territory is extremely unlikely, yes, but what makes you think the advance into Russia would be so different? Would you call a “frozen for years” conventional conflict with enormous economic damages, poverty and hundreds of thousands or millions of your fellow countrymen dying there, a win?
Then imagine all goes perfectly, you push all the way to the Siberia or whatever (no one in history has accomplished this before), you bomb the factories (and inevitably schools and hospitals). Guerilla warfare will be present, that will be a black hole for military personell and finances. Russia has way more territory and population than Vietnam or Afganistan. Russians, even liberally minded ones will rightfully mostly see westerners as occupiers. And all for what? So you can leave a failed state there later.
Maybe my response was not wholly coherent (English not my first language) and is too long, however my point is than especially in 21 century soft economical and cultural power is what makes your country or alliance strong and prosperous, it is how true geopolitical victory is archieved.
I think you can safely add Israel/USA - Iran war to the list of fuckups. WWI should be lesson for everyone that overconfidence can kill tens of millions.
it’s way more easy to assemble a list of military campaigns that were no fuck up and even made political sense in the first place.