I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos, most notably by Sarah Paine, who put forward a “geography is destiny” argument with regards to Russian culture and geopolitical outlook. Paine for example argues that Russia is a classic “continental” power that obsessively focuses on securing its borders against invasion, something that becomes impossible without aggressively seizing key choke points to its west. That centuries of bitter experience have instilled a mindset in Russian leaders that the best (or indeed only) defense is a strong offense.
If this is literally true, it would mean that even the most progressive and liberal government imaginable, if faced with the long-term task of making Russia a secure nation, would inevitably develop the same rationales that Russia currently has. Do you think that there is anything to this? Why or why not?
Why would it be any more true of Russia than any other nation? Sure, it’s big, and therefore has a lot of border, but so long as it can manage to fight only one war at a time, it only needs to worry about the length of one other nation’s border. Russia’s border with, say, Poland is the same length as Poland’s border with Russia.
Plus, of course, you have Russia’s quite effective and centuries-old defensive tactic of “fall back and wait for winter”.
We don’t need to guess about psychology and obsessions. Historically, Russia, due in part, yes, to geography has actually been invaded time and time again and portrayed as an evil empire long before the Bolsheviks. It would take a long time for the “west” to convince any government of its honest, peaceable intentions and allay the fear of treachery and invasion. George Kennan pointed this out with regard to NATO and Ukraine, saying it would be a red line for Putin or any Russian leader.
More than, say, France? Or Poland, or Germany, or any other European nation? Or for that matter, China or India?
I have heard Marxist/Soviet/Russian apologist argue this very point. That the west, and the United States, are the reason the Soviets (Russians) are justified in setting up satellite nations. They’ll often point to the American Expeditionary Force into Russia as their proof they need to fear the west and how they’re justified as seeing NATO as a direct threat. It falls on deaf ears when you ask them why those former Warsaw Pact countries were so keen on joining NATO.
I think that’s the mindset of the Russian government. A lot of them want to return to the good old days of expansionism and carve out their own little hegemony in that corner of the world. They may justify it to themselves by saying it’s defensive but I think they just want control. It kind of reminds me about all those Roman wars of defense. They weren’t aggressive, they just wanted peace.
In regards to NATO-Europe, Russia is well defensible, mainly that NATO has no interest in invading and even if it did, would quickly run into Stalingrad problems.
On the east, though, there’s nothing Russia could do (short of nukes) if China decided to make the far-eastern part of Siberia its next Chinese province. The sheer distance, length of the border, remote wilderness make defense incredibly spread out.
Russia only has such a long indefensible border, to whatever extent that is true, because it embarked on a centuries-long campaign of unrelenting aggression that took its eastern border from Moscow to the Pacific. What comes around …
No. No. No. You are making an argument that Paine does not. She contrasts the traditional outlook of continental and maritime powers but doesn’t suggest that countries’ fates are determined by geography.
For people to understand this argument, we need to look at what Paine is saying. This actually should have been defined in the OP.
She defines the continental mindset as follows: (the article is behind a paywall, but free if you register. She outlines the argument there.)
In the continental world, the currency of power is land. Most countries, by geography, inhabit a continental world with multiple neighbors. Such neighbors have, historically, been each other’s primary adversaries. Those with enough power to conquer others—continental hegemons such as China and Russia—believe the international system should be divided among them into huge spheres of influence. They funnel resources into their militaries to protect boundaries, conquer and intimidate neighbors in wealth-destroying wars, and entrench authoritarian rule at home to prioritize military over civilian needs. The result is a vicious cycle. To justify their repression and retain the throne, despots require a big enemy and manufacture security threats that lead to more wars.
In contrast she discusses a maritime outlook as:
By contrast, states with an oceanic moat have relative security from invasion. They can thus focus on compounding wealth rather than on fighting neighbors. These maritime states see money, not territory, as the source of power. They advance domestic prosperity through international commerce and through industry, minimizing the tradeoff between military and civilian needs. While continental hegemons gravitate toward finite-game, winner-take-all strategies that are ruinous to the defeated, those vested in the maritime order prefer the infinite game of wealth-compounding, mutually beneficial transactions. They view neighbors as trade partners, not enemies.
She never claims that countries have have those outlooks based solely on geography. In fact, she she explicitly states that change is possible:
Should any of the continentalists cease coveting other countries’ territory and instead peacefully contribute to improving international laws and institutions, then the United States and its partners should welcome them into the rules-based order. But if these countries do not change, containment is the answer.
In the article, she states that all the European powers, including the UK:
In World War I, every European power, including the United Kingdom, pursued continental strategies that required using massive armies to establish diverse empires with overlapping territory.
She also gives the example of Japan pursuing a continental strategy leading up to WWII.
Her arguments thus explicitly reject your mischaracterization. She does not state that “geography is destiny”, instead she says that countries with continental outlooks act in one particular way and those with maritime outlooks act in another way, and change is possible.
Thus, it is not inevitable that any government of Russia would act the same way. Paine herself answers the argument.
As someone who lives in a country a good runner can jog across without stopping to rest, I find Russia’s complaints about its size bitterly hilarious. Russia already has a huge buffer zone against invasion: it’s called more frickin’ Russia.
It also makes holding it almost impossible. It’ll take the Chinese decades to root partisans out of the wilderness, all the while fending off Russian counter-invasions.
For people who aren’t familiar with Sarah Paine, she was a professor of grand strategy at the US Naval War College, specializing in Russia and China.
Unless @Lumpy has a cite to show otherwise, Paige’s essay is not stating what they are claiming she says.
The question then is, what is the debate?
This presupposes that NATO is an aggressive pact, which it is not and never has been. There is plenty of history to back that up. All NATO does is ensure that Russia’s existing border remains intact. Which, according to the OP. should have them sending donations.
I’ve listened to multiple lectures/talks she’s given. While I don’t find any particular disagreements with her historic analysis, I’m usually left with the feeling of, ‘Yeah, and what next? How does this analysis lead to better outcomes?’
I’m sure it’s some sort of deep character flaw on my part.
The question is, is Russia uniquely invadable, and thus its defense policies will always lean towards the paranoid?
Russians are suffering from self-inflicted generational trauma from WWII. They are the perpetual victims of Nazi aggression.
They never got over it and they never will if the ruling class has anything to say about it.
No more so than, say, Poland.
In China’s case, it’s an interesting dilemma of the choice between the two. China is distinguished by having a coastline and a well-watered agricultural region on its east, then becoming progressively drier and more barren until civilization peters out in the steppes/ mountains/ desert to the west. Like China has a huge “flyover” region only in China’s case there’s nowhere to flyover to on the other side. One pundit argued that whenever China has focused on maritime activity, such trade has benefited the coastal elites while telling the impoverished masses of the interior “tough luck”. Ultimately, leading to social and political destabilization. That Mao Zedong’s communist movement was based on explicitly rejecting the maritime option and glorifying the peasant working the land.
Speaking of World War II, Poland exists, and so no, Russia is not “uniquely invadable”.
ETA:
I see you beat me to the punch.
Missed edit window: the essay was “China is an Island” by John Mauldin. I couldn’t find the whole thing but here’s a summary.
Getting back to the OP, Russia may have needed to be that way in the pre-nuke era, but surely in the nuke era any risk of Russia being invaded is kind of moot now? Nukes are a guarantee against any invasion. So there’s no reason for Russia to be so paranoid anymore. If it engages in territorial aggression, like Crimea or Ukraine, it’s because it wants to.