October 1, 2024: During the 1947-1991 Cold War between the NATO alliance and the Soviet sponsored Warsaw Pact, it was accepted that the United States, the nation with the largest military, would take the lead and the other NATO members would follow. The Cold War threat was real. Until 1989 Russia had massed several hundred thousand troops in East Germany along with several thousand tanks, most of them T-72s. There were thousands more tanks waiting in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Starting in 1989, when the wall dividing Russian controlled east Berlin from the NATO controlled west Berlin came down, the situation began to change.

Back then Russia was called the Soviet Union with more territory and twice as many people as the current Russian Federation. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed into 14 independent nations. Two of the largest were the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Russian leader Vladimir Putin always wanted to put the Soviet Union back together and he began doing that in 2022 when he invaded Ukraine. Putin justified this attack because of Ukrainian plans to join NATO. Russia considers NATO an obstacle to Russian expansion plans. Russia also fears attacking NATO because the United States military accounts for nearly half the troops and weapons in NATO. Moreover, the American force is united and able to apply more military pressure than any other NATO nation. While the other 31 NATO nations are supposed to supply forces if called on, the problem is that all the NATO members have armed forces with different weapons, tactics, and languages. Then there is the political angle. The governments of the 32 members are not united in how to proceed. Their military commanders and staffs are more certain of what to do as NATO members, but each of these countries’ NATO military forces answers to local politicians. All these nations are democracies that ultimately control the use of their military forces. That’s why the United States, with about half the available NATO armed forces, is so important. The other NATO countries cannot be expected to operate in unison because that’s not how politics in these nations work.

The Americans and a few other NATO countries have sought reforms of how NATO operates as a military coalition. This is difficult to do because the major militaries in NATO Europe, like Germany, Italy, Spain and France, can contribute substantial forces on their own. But using all these national forces in combat is something that has not been tried in practice. The idea of coalition warfare worked during World War II because the nations then allied, mainly the United States and Britain, each waged separate efforts against the Germans.

Currently Poland and the four Baltic States are NATO members bordering Russia. These countries have a long history of fighting Russian invaders and losing. After the 1990s, with the Soviet Union gone, all these new East European NATO members rearmed and prepared for the worst. These nations are more effective because they have a long history of Russian invasions and are determined to defeat the next one. For example, Poland now has the largest tank force in Europe. Only the United States has more tanks. American officers visiting Poland to observe the Polish preparations came away impressed by the professionalism and determination of the Polish troops. The Americans and Poles believe that another Russian invasion of Poland would not just roll over the defenders but would be stopped with heavy losses. The Polish military plans to emulate what the Ukrainians did but with a larger force than the Ukrainians possessed when Russia invaded.

Meanwhile there are more mundane matters NATO members must tend to, like synchronizing the many different weapon systems the 31 smaller members use. Ukraine had to acquire Western tanks and warplanes because NATO is about all members using similar weapons, not Russian ones. The Ukrainians were in the process of converting when Russia attacked. That was because Russia wanted Ukraine to be part of the new Russian Empire, not the NATO alliance that defended members from Russian aggression.

The Russian attack did not go well, with their initial attack force losing most of their tanks and half a million soldiers dead, wounded, missing or taken prisoner. This was largely due to the massive weapons shipments NATO members sent to Ukraine after the invasion began.

The impact of all those weapons sent to Ukraine was a startling revelation to NATO and a major disappointment to Russia. NATO had long amassed substantial forces to defeat a Russian attack and that attack eventually came, in early 2022, against potential NATO applicant Ukraine. This clarified the long unanswered question of what would have happened if Russia had attacked NATO forces during the Cold War. The Russian attack against Ukraine was not as massive as the one the Soviet Union forces in Eastern Europe were prepared to make against NATO forces in West Germany and beyond. Nevertheless the Russians were revealed to be sloppy and often disorganized attackers.

Ukrainians halted the Russian attack and inflicted heavy casualties on the Russians while doing so. After a year of fighting the Russians had lost most of their modern tanks along with nearly half a million troops killed, wounded or missing. A growing number of Russian soldiers preferred desertion or surrendering to Ukrainian forces to dying in Ukraine. Over a million military age Russian men left the country legally or otherwise to escape military service and the possibility of death or disabling wounds in Ukraine.

Russian tank losses were so heavy that Russia is currently using 1950s - 1960s Cold War era T-55 and T-64 tanks taken out of storage, refurbished and sent to fight and get destroyed in Ukraine. Russia has lost most of its modern weapons. There were a lot of older weapons in storage. Some of these weapons date back to World War II and were maintained for an emergency. That emergency was supposed to be someone else invading Russia, not Russia invading Ukraine, a former part of Russia that does not want to become part of Russia again.

For both NATO and Russia, the failure of Russia Ukraine this answers the question of what would have happened if Russia attacked NATO forces during the Cold War. The failure in Ukraine was not surprising for military historians. Russia has always done poorly in the opening stages of a war, especially as the attacker. This has been a consistent problem for over a hundred years. Russian leaders are shocked when their formidable offensives stumble and fail against determined opposition. Vladimir Putin expected his 2022 attack to be different, but that was because his military advisors were telling him what he wanted to hear, not the truth about Russian shortcomings. This pattern has repeated itself several times since the late 19th Century. It was no different in Ukraine.

While the violence of the war in Ukraine alarmed European NATO members, the United States calmly supplied most of the weapons while European NATO members sent in piles of money and large quantities of supplies for rebuilding the shattered infrastructure that made millions of Ukrainians horrified or homeless because of Russian attacks on civilian targets.