The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

by Christian Brose

The United States and NATO did not intervene to save Georgia, as they had with Kosovo, but Putin knew that if the West had stepped in, the Russian military would not have been able to stop it. Rather than backing down, Putin doubled down. Russian planners had been studying the US military for a long time. They knew that US forces would fight a future war on Russia’s periphery in much the same way they had fought past wars in Kosovo and Iraq. So, as the Obama administration was going out of its way to “reset” US relations with Russia, Putin was pouring money into the construction of an arsenal of technologically sophisticated weapons: long-range missiles and rockets, highly capable special operations forces, advanced air defenses, electronic warfare, cyber weapons, lasers to blind satellites, missiles to shoot them down, and tactical nuclear weapons. All of this military modernization had one explicit purpose: to render the United States incapable of projecting military power into Europe and defending its NATO allies, especially the many parts of Europe that Putin still believed should be part of a greater Russia.