The Geopolitics of Russia: Permanent Struggle
October 15, 2008 | 1847 GMT
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of monographs on the geopolitics of countries that are currently critical in world affairs.
Russia’s defining characteristic is its indefensibility. Unlike the
core of most states that are relatively defensible, core Russia is
limited to the region of the medieval Grand Principality of Muscovy. It
counts no rivers, oceans, swamps or mountains marking its borders — it
relies solely on the relatively inhospitable climate and its forests
for defense. Russian history is a chronicle of the agony of surviving
invasion after invasion.
Traditionally these invasions have come from two directions. The
first is from the steppes — wide open grasslands that connect Russia to
Central Asia and beyond — the path that the Mongols used. The second is
from the North European Plain, which brought to Russia everything from
the Teutonic Knights to the Nazi war machine.
To deal with these vulnerabilities, Russia expanded in three phases.
In the first, Russia expanded not toward the invasion corridors to
establish buffers but away from them to establish a redoubt. In the
late 15th century, under Ivan III, Russia did creep westward somewhat,
anchoring itself at the Pripet Marshes, which separated Russia from the
Kiev region. But the bulk of Russia’s expansion during that period was
north to the Arctic and northeast to the Urals. Very little of this
territory can be categorized as useful — most was taiga or actual
tundra and only lightly populated — but for Russia it was the only land
easily up for grabs. It also marked a natural organic outgrowth of the
original Muscovy — all cloaked in forest. It was as defensible a
territory as Russia had access to and their only hope against the
Mongols.
The Mongols were horsemen who dominated the grasslands with their
fast-moving cavalry forces. Their power, although substantial,
diminished when they entered the forests and the value of their horses,
their force multipliers, declined. The Mongols had to fight infantry
forces in the forests, where the advantage was on the defender’s side.
The second phase of expansion was far more aggressive — and risky.
In the mid-16th century, Under Ivan IV, Russia finally moved to seal
off the Mongol invasion route. Russia pushed south and east, deep into
the steppes, and did not stop until it hit the Urals in the east and
the Caspian Sea and Caucasus Mountains in the south. As part of this
expansion, Russia captured several strategically critical locations,
including Astrakhan on the Caspian, the land of the Tatars — a longtime
horse-mounted foe — and Grozny, which was soon transformed into a
military outpost at the foot of the Caucasus.
Also with this expansion, Ivan IV was transformed from Grand Prince
of Moscow to Tsar of All Russia, suggesting the empire to come. Russia
had finally achieved a measure of conventional security. Holding the
northern slopes of the Caucasus would provide a reasonable defense from
Asia Minor and Persia, while the millions of square kilometers of
steppes gave birth to another defensive strategy: buffers.
Russia — modern, medieval or otherwise — cannot count on natural
features to protect it. The Pripet Marshes were small and could in many
cases simply be avoided. There is no one who might wish to attack from
the Arctic. Forests slowed the Mongol horsemen, but as Muscovy’s
predecessor — Kievan Rus — aptly demonstrated, the operative word was
“slowed,” not “stopped.” The Mongols conquered and destroyed Kievan Rus
in the 13th century.
That leaves buffers. So long as a country controls territory
separating itself from its foes — even if it is territory that is easy
for a hostile military to transit — it can bleed out any invasion via
attrition and attacks on supply lines. Such buffers, however, contain a
poison pill. They have populations not necessarily willing to serve as
buffers. Maintaining control of such buffers requires not only a
sizable standing military for defense but also a huge internal security
and intelligence network to enforce central control. And any
institution so key to the state’s survival must be very tightly
controlled as well. Establishing and maintaining buffers not only makes
Russia seem aggressive to its neighbors but also forces it to conduct
purges and terrors against its own institutions in order to maintain
the empire.
The third expansion phase dealt with the final invasion route: from
the west. In the 18th century, under Peter and Catherine the Great,
Russian power pushed westward, conquering Ukraine to the southwest and
pushing on to the Carpathian Mountains. It also moved the Russian
border to the west, incorporating the Baltic territories and securing a
Russian flank on the Baltic Sea. Muscovy and the Tsardom of Russia were
now known as the Russian Empire.
Yet aside from the anchor in the Carpathians, Russia did not achieve
any truly defensible borders. Expansions to the Baltic and Black Seas
did end the external threat from the Cossacks and Balts of ages past,
but at the price of turning those external threats into internal ones.
Russia also expanded so far and fast that holding the empire together
socially and militarily became a monumental and ongoing challenge
(today Russia is dealing with the fact that Russians are barely a
majority in their own country). All this to achieve some semblance of
security by establishing buffer regions.
But that is an issue of empire management. Ultimately the
multi-directional threat defined Muscovy’s geopolitical problem. There
was a constant threat from the steppes, but there was also a constant
threat from the west, where the North European Plain allowed for few
natural defenses and larger populations could deploy substantial
infantry (and could, as the Swedes did, use naval power to land forces
against the Muscovites). The forests provided a degree of protection,
as did the sheer size of Russia’s holdings and its climate, but in the
end the Russians faced threats from at least two directions. In
managing these threats by establishing buffers, they were caught in a
perpetual juggling act: east vs. west, internal vs. external.
The geography of the Russian Empire bequeathed it certain
characteristics. Most important, the empire was (and remains) lightly
settled. Even today, vast areas of Russia are unpopulated while in the
rest of the country the population is widely distributed in small towns
and cities and far less concentrated in large urban areas. Russia’s
European part is the most densely populated, but in its expansion
Russia both resettled Russian ethnics and assimilated large minorities
along the way. So while Moscow and its surroundings are certainly
critical, the predominance of the old Muscovy is not decisively
ironclad.
The result is a constant, ingrained clash within the Russian Empire
no matter the time frame, driven primarily by its size and the
challenges of transport. The Russian empire, even excluding Siberia, is
an enormous landmass located far to the north. Moscow is at the same
latitude as Newfoundland while the Russian and Ukrainian breadbaskets
are at the latitude of Maine, resulting in an extremely short growing
season. Apart from limiting the size of the crop, the climate limits
the efficiency of transport — getting the crop from farm to distant
markets is a difficult matter and so is supporting large urban
populations far from the farms. This is the root problem of the Russian
economy. Russia can grow enough to feed itself, but it cannot
efficiently transport what it grows from the farms to the cities and to
the barren reaches of the empire before the food spoils. And even when
it can transport it, the costs of transport make the foodstuffs
unaffordable.
Population distribution also creates a political problem. One
natural result of the transport problem is that the population tends to
distribute itself nearer growing areas and in smaller towns so as not
to tax the transport system. Yet these populations in Russia’s west and
south tend to be conquered peoples. So the conquered peoples tend to
distribute themselves to reflect economic rationalities, while need for
food to be transported to the Russian core goes against such
rationalities.
Faced with a choice of accepting urban starvation or the forcing of
economic destitution upon the food-producing regions (by ordering the
sale of food in urban centers at prices well below market prices),
Russian leaders tend to select the latter option. Joseph Stalin
certainly did in his efforts to forge and support an urban,
industrialized population. Force-feeding such economic hardship to
conquered minorities only doubled the need for a tightly controlled
security apparatus.
The Russian geography meant that Russia either would have a
centralized government — and economic system — or it would fly apart,
torn by nationalist movements, peasant uprisings and urban starvation.
Urbanization, much less industrialization, would have been impossible
without a strong center. Indeed, the Russian Empire or Soviet Union
would have been impossible. The natural tendency of the empire and
Russia itself is to disintegrate. Therefore, to remain united it had to
have a centralized bureaucracy responsive to autocratic rule in the
capital and a vast security apparatus that compelled the country and
empire to remain united. Russia’s history is one of controlling the
inherently powerful centrifugal forces tearing at the country’s fabric.
Russia, then, has two core geopolitical problems. The first is
holding the empire together. But the creation of that empire poses the
second problem, maintaining internal security. It must hold together
the empire and defend it at the same time, and the achievement of one
goal tends to undermine efforts to achieve the other.
Geopolitical Imperatives
To secure the Russian core of Muscovy, Russia must:
- Expand north and east to secure a redoubt in climatically hostile
territory that is protected in part by the Urals. This way, even in the
worst-case scenario (i.e., Moscow falls), there is still a “Russia”
from which to potentially resurge.
- Expand south to the Caucasus and southeast into the steppes in
order to hamper invasions of Asian origin. As circumstances allow, push
as deeply into Central Asia and Siberia as possible to deepen this
bulwark.
- Expand as far west as possible. Do not stop in the southwest until
the Carpathians are reached. On the North European Plain do not stop
ever. Deeper penetration increases security not just in terms of
buffers; the North European Plain narrows the further west one travels
making its defense easier.
- Manage the empire with terror. Since the vast majority of Russian
territory is not actually Russian, a very firm hand is required to
prevent myriad minorities from asserting regional control or aligning
with hostile forces.
- Expand to warm water ports that have open-ocean access so that the
empire can begin to counter the economic problems that a purely land
empire suffers.
Given the geography of the Russian heartland, we can see why the
Russians would attempt to expand as they did. Vulnerable to attack on
the North European Plain and from the Central Asian and European
steppes simultaneously, Russia could not withstand an attack from one
direction — much less two. Apart from the military problem, the ability
of the state to retain control of the country under such pressure was
dubious, as was the ability to feed the country under normal
circumstances — much less during war. Securing the Caucasus, Central
Asia and Siberia was the first — and easiest — part of dealing with
this geographic imbroglio.
The western expansion was not nearly so “simple.” No matter how far
west the Russians moved on the European plain, there was no point at
which they could effectively anchor themselves. Ultimately, the last
effective line of defense is the 400 mile gap (aka Poland) between the
Baltic Sea and Carpathian Mountains. Beyond that the plains widen to
such a degree that a conventional defense is impossible as there is
simply too much open territory to defend. So the Soviet Union pressed
on all the way to the Elbe.
At its height, the Soviet Union achieved all but its final
imperative of securing ocean access. The USSR was anchored on the
Carpathians, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Urals, all of which
protected its southern and southwestern flanks. Siberia protected its
eastern frontier with vast emptiness. Further to the south, Russia was
anchored deeply in Central Asia. The Russians had defensible frontiers
everywhere except the North European Plain, ergo the need to occupy
Germany and Poland.
Strategy of the Russian Empire
The modern Russian empire faces three separate border regions: Asian
Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus (now mostly independent states),
and Western Europe.
First, Siberia. There is only one rail line connecting Siberia to
the rest of the empire, and positioning a military force there is
difficult if not impossible. In fact, risk in Russia’s far east is
illusory. The Trans-Siberian Railroad (TSR) runs east-west, with the
Baikal Amur Mainline forming a loop. The TSR is Russia’s main lifeline
to Siberia and is, to some extent, vulnerable. But an attack against
Siberia is difficult — there is not much to attack but the weather,
while the terrain and sheer size of the region make holding it not only
difficult but of questionable relevance. Besides, an attack beyond it
is impossible because of the Urals.
East of Kazakhstan, the Russian frontier is mountainous to hilly,
and there are almost no north-south roads running deep into Russia;
those that do exist can be easily defended, and even then they dead-end
in lightly populated regions. The period without mud or snow lasts less
than three months out of the year. After that time, overland resupply
of an army is impossible. It is impossible for an Asian power to attack
Siberia. That is the prime reason the Japanese chose to attack the
United States rather than the Soviet Union in 1941. The only way to
attack Russia in this region is by sea, as the Japanese did in 1905. It
might then be possible to achieve a lodgment in the maritime provinces
(such as Primorsky Krai or Vladivostok). But exploiting the resources
of deep Siberia, given the requisite infrastructure costs, is
prohibitive to the point of being virtually impossible.
We begin with Siberia in order to dispose of it as a major strategic
concern. The defense of the Russian Empire involves a different set of
issues.
Second, Central Asia. The mature Russian Empire and the Soviet Union
were anchored on a series of linked mountain ranges, deserts and bodies
of water in this region that gave it a superb defensive position.
Beginning on the northwestern Mongolian border and moving southwest on
a line through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the empire was guarded by a
north extension of the Himalayas, the Tien Shan Mountains. Swinging
west along the Afghan and Iranian borders to the Caspian Sea, the
empire occupied the lowlands along a mountainous border. But the
lowlands, except for a small region on the frontier with Afghanistan,
were harsh desert, impassable for large military forces. A section
along the Afghan border was more permeable, leading to a long-term
Russian unease with the threat in Afghanistan — foreign or indigenous.
The Caspian Sea protected the border with Iran, and on its western
shore the Caucasus Mountains began, which the empire shared with Iran
and Turkey but which were hard to pass through in either direction. The
Caucasus terminated on the Black Sea, totally protecting the empire’s
southern border. These regions were of far greater utility to Russia
than Siberia and so may have been worth taking, but for once geography
actually helped Russia instead of working against it.
Finally, there is the western frontier that ran from west of Odessa
north to the Baltic. This European frontier was the vulnerable point.
Geographically, the southern portion of the border varied from time to
time, and where the border was drawn was critical. The Carpathians form
an arc from Romania through western Ukraine into Slovakia. Russia
controlled the center of the arc in Ukraine. However, its frontier did
not extend as far as the Carpathians in Romania, where a plain
separated Russia from the mountains. This region is called Moldova or
Bessarabia, and when the region belongs to Romania, it represents a
threat to Russian national security. When it is in Russian hands, it
allows the Russians to anchor on the Carpathians. And when it is
independent, as it is today in the form of the state of Moldova, then
it can serve either as a buffer or a flash point. During the alliance
with the Germans in 1939-1941, the Russians seized this region as they
did again after World War II. But there is always a danger of an attack
out of Romania.
This is not Russia’s greatest danger point. That occurs further
north, between the northern edge of the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea.
This gap, at its narrowest point, is just under 300 miles, running west
of Warsaw from the city of Elblag in northern Poland to Cracow in the
south. This is the narrowest point in the North European Plain and
roughly the location of the Russian imperial border prior to World War
I. Behind this point, the Russians controlled eastern Poland and the
three Baltic countries.
The danger to Russia is that the north German plain expands like a
triangle east of this point. As the triangle widens, Russian forces get
stretched thinner and thinner. So a force attacking from the west
through the plain faces an expanding geography that thins out Russian
forces. If invaders concentrate their forces, the attackers can break
through to Moscow. That is the traditional Russian fear: Lacking
natural barriers, the farther east the Russians move the broader the
front and the greater the advantage for the attacker. The Russians
faced three attackers along this axis following the formation of empire
— Napoleon, Wilhelm II and Hitler. Wilhelm was focused on France so he
did not drive hard into Russia, but Napoleon and Hitler did, both
almost toppling Moscow in the process.
Along the North European Plain, Russia has three strategic options:
1. Use Russia’s geographical depth and climate to suck in an enemy
force and then defeat it, as it did with Napoleon and Hitler. After the
fact this appears the solution, except it is always a close run and the
attackers devastate the countryside. It is interesting to speculate
what would have happened in 1942 if Hitler had resumed his drive on the
North European Plain toward Moscow, rather than shift to a southern
attack toward Stalingrad.
2. Face an attacking force with large, immobile infantry forces at
the frontier and bleed them to death, as they tried to do in 1914. On
the surface this appears to be an attractive choice because of Russia’s
greater manpower reserves than those of its European enemies. In
practice, however, it is a dangerous choice because of the volatile
social conditions of the empire, where the weakening of the security
apparatus could cause the collapse of the regime in a soldiers’ revolt
as happened in 1917.
3. Push the Russian/Soviet border as far west as possible to create
yet another buffer against attack, as the Soviets did during the Cold
War. This is obviously an attractive choice, since it creates strategic
depth and increases economic opportunities. But it also diffuses
Russian resources by extending security states into Central Europe and
massively increasing defense costs, which ultimately broke the Soviet
Union in 1992.
Contemporary Russia
The greatest extension of the Russian Empire occurred under the
Soviets from 1945 to 1989. Paradoxically, this expansion preceded the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the contraction of Russia to its
current borders. When we look at the Russian Federation today, it is
important to understand that it has essentially retreated to the
borders the Russian Empire had in the 17th century. It holds old
Muscovy plus the Tatar lands to the southeast as well as Siberia. It
has lost its western buffers in Ukraine and the Baltics and its strong
foothold in the Caucasus and in Central Asia.
To understand this spectacular expansion and contraction, we need to
focus on Soviet strategy. The Soviet Union was a landlocked entity
dominating the Eurasian heartland but without free access to the sea.
Neither the Baltic nor Black seas allow Russia free oceangoing
transport because they are blocked by the Skagerrak and the Turkish
straits, respectively. So long as Denmark and Turkey remain in NATO,
Russia’s positions in St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Sevastopol and
Novorossiysk are militarily dubious.
There were many causes of the Soviet collapse. Some were:
- Overextending forces into Central Europe, which taxed the ability
of the Soviet Union to control the region while economically exploiting
it. It became a net loss. This overextension created costly logistical
problems on top of the cost of the military establishment. Extension of
the traditional Russian administrative structure both diffused Russia’s
own administrative structure and turned a profitable empire into a
massive economic burden.
- Creating an apparent threat to the rest of Europe that compelled
the United States to deploy major forces and arm Germany. This in turn
forced the Russians into a massive military buildup that undermined its
economy, which was less productive than the American economy because of
its inherent agricultural problem and because the cost of internal
transport combined with the lack of ocean access made Soviet (and
Russian) maritime trade impossible. Since maritime trade both is
cheaper than land trade and allows access to global markets, the Soviet
Union always operated at an extreme economic disadvantage to its
Western and Asian competitors.
- Entering an arms race with much richer countries it could compete
against only by diverting resources from the civilian economy —
material and intellectual. The best minds went into the
military-industrial complex, causing the administrative and economic
structure of Russia to crumble.
In 1989 the Soviet Union lost control of Eastern Europe and in 1992
the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Russia then retreated essentially to
its 17th century borders — except that it retained control of Siberia,
which is either geopolitically irrelevant or a liability. Russia has
lost all of Central Asia, and its position in the Caucasus has become
tenuous. Had Russia lost Chechnya, its eastern flank would have been
driven out of the Caucasus completely, leaving it without a
geopolitical anchor.
The gap between Kazakhstan in the east and Ukraine in the west, like
the narrowest point in the North European Plain, is only 300 miles
wide. It also contains Russia’s industrial heartland. Russia has lost
Ukraine, of course, and Moldova. But Russia’s most grievous
geopolitical contraction has been on the North European Plain, where it
has retreated from the Elbe in Germany to a point less than 100 miles
from St. Petersburg. The distance from the border of an independent
Belarus to Moscow is about 250 miles.
To understand the Russian situation, it is essential to understand
that Russia has in many ways returned to the strategic position of late
Muscovy. Its flank to the southeast is relatively secure, since China
shows no inclination for adventures into the steppes, and no other
power is in a position to challenge Russia from that direction. But in
the west, in Ukraine and in the Caucasus, the Russian retreat has been
stunning.
We need to remember why Muscovy expanded in the first place. Having
dealt with the Mongols, the Russians had two strategic interests. Their
most immediate was to secure their western borders by absorbing
Lithuania and anchoring Russia as far west on the North European Plain
as possible. Their second strategic interest was to secure Russia’s
southeastern frontier against potential threats from the steppes by
absorbing Central Asia as well as Ukraine. Without that, Muscovy could
not withstand a thrust from either direction, let alone from both
directions at once.
It can be said that no one intends to invade Russia. From the
Russian point of view, history is filled with dramatic changes of
intention, particularly in the West. The unthinkable occurs to Russia
once or twice a century. In its current configuration, Russia cannot
hope to survive whatever surprises are coming in the 21st century.
Muscovy was offensive because it did not have a good defensive option.
The same is true of Russia. Given the fact that a Western alliance,
NATO, is speaking seriously of establishing a dominant presence in
Ukraine and in the Caucasus — and has already established a presence in
the Baltics, forcing Russia far back into the widening triangle, with
its southern flank potentially exposed to Ukraine as a NATO member —
the Russians must view their position as dire. As with Napoleon,
Wilhelm and Hitler, the initiative is in the hands of others. For the
Russians, the strategic imperative is to eliminate that initiative or,
if that is impossible, anchor Russia as firmly as possible on
geographical barriers, concentrating all available force on the North
European Plain without overextension.
Unlike countries such as China, Iran and the United States, Russia
has not achieved its strategic geopolitical imperatives. On the
contrary, it has retreated from them:
- Russia does hold the northern Caucasus, but it no longer boasts a
deep penetration of the mountains, including Georgia and Armenia.
Without those territories Russia cannot consider this flank secure.
- Russia has lost its anchor in the mountains and deserts of Central
Asia and so cannot actively block or disrupt — or even well monitor —
any developments to its deep south that could threaten its security.
- Russia retains Siberia, but because of the climatic and geographic
hostility of the region it is almost a wash in terms of security (it
certainly is economically).
- Russia’s loss of Ukraine and Moldova allows both the intrusion of
other powers and the potential rise of a Ukrainian rival on its very
doorstep. Powers behind the Carpathians are especially positioned to
take advantage of this political geography.
- The Baltic states have re-established their independence, and all
three are east and north of the Baltic-Carpathian line (the final
defensive line on the North European Plain). Their presence in a
hostile alliance is unacceptable. Neither is an independent or even
neutral Belarus (also on the wrong side of that line).
Broader goals, such as having a port not blocked by straits
controlled by other countries, could have been pursued by the Soviets.
Today such goals are far out of Russian reach. From the Russian point
of view, creating a sphere of influence that would return Russia to its
relatively defensible imperial boundaries is imperative.
Obviously, forces in the peripheral countries as well as great
powers outside the region will resist. For them, a weak and vulnerable
Russia is preferable, since a strong and secure one develops other
appetites that could see Russia pushing along vectors such as through
the Skagerrak toward the North Sea, through the Turkish Straits toward
the Mediterranean and through La Perouse Strait toward Japan and
beyond.
Russia’s essential strategic problem is this: It is geopolitically
unstable. The Russian Empire and Soviet Union were never genuinely
secure. One problem was the North European Plain. But another problem,
very real and hard to solve, was access to the global trading system
via oceans. And behind this was Russia’s essential economic weakness
due to its size and lack of ability to transport agricultural produce
throughout the country. No matter how much national will it has,
Russia’s inherently insufficient infrastructure constantly weakens its
internal cohesion.
Russia must dominate the Eurasian heartland. When it does, it must
want more. The more it wants the more it must face its internal
economic weakness and social instability, which cannot support its
ambitions. Then the Russian Federation must contract. This cycle has
nothing to do with Russian ideology or character. It has everything to
do with geography, which in turn generates ideologies and shapes
character. Russia is Russia and must face its permanent struggle.
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