When I was DSACEUR, I led exercises in which we war-gamed these scenarios, based on our own capabilities and what we knew about our enemies. What follows in this book represents one such, entirely feasible, scenario, however unimaginably awful it may seem. But just because something is unimaginably awful to Western political leaders, that does not mean it is not considered a viable option by the Russians.

This is fiction, but it is fact-based, entirely plausible, and very closely modeled on what I know, based on my position as a very senior military insider at the highest and best-informed level. Why write it as a future, fact-based fiction rather than a polemic? The answer is simple. I have contributed to at least three think tank papers, including one highly respected US think tank, in the last six months highlighting the threat from Russia. But who reads think tank papers but other think tankers? My aim has been to explain the very real danger we face to the general reader with no particular interest in defense and to make it accessible. At every stage I have shown how the political and military decisions we are currently making, and have already made, are now propelling us into a future war with Russia. However, this is a war that could yet be avoided, if we act right now.

That is why this story needs to be told before it is too late. Because, in Trotsky’s chilling words, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

Of one thing I am absolutely certain: the President in the Kremlin knows all this and, even as you read these words, his admirals and generals are also war-gaming these very scenarios. And they have every intention of winning the war.

General Sir Richard Shirreff

Laverstoke, Hampshire

August 2016

Prologue

It is May 2017.

A new US president was inaugurated in January and immediately reversed President Obama’s “hands-off” approach to Russia. The first new foreign policy decision was to arm Ukraine with the counter-battery radars, drones, electronic warfare equipment and secure communications, armoured HUMVEEs, and medical equipment it so desperately needed if it was to defend itself against the Russian separatists, supported by Russian regular forces. But equipment is rarely enough and, on the advice of the generals, US military personnel were also deployed to train the Ukrainian army in how to operate this highly sophisticated equipment.

This allows the President to tell the world that the US is in Ukraine only in the role of “trainers” and not as combatants; an obfuscation that the American president believes will deter the Russians and their proxies without over-inflaming existing tensions.