That’s all well and good, but that’s never as far as anyone goes. Annexation of the entire country is as you say only really theorized - Romania caved in and handed over Bessarabia in June 1940; Stalin didn’t have annexation of Romania as his goal.
And this is exactly what I mean. Finland. Lost. The. War. It’s not even debatable, it doesn’t matter how pyrrhic a victory it was for the Soviet Union. Finland lost, try telling the residents of Karelia that Finland won by every measure.
This.
On the international stage he’s a rabble-rouser. His intent is to keep the pot simmering and to make every one of the West’s planned moves include a briefing session on “What will Russia do in response?”
Agreed.
As long as both sides are mostly engaging in an expeditionary proxy war on some real third party territory (IOW, not former Warsaw Pact nor EU / NATO / affiliated) it becomes *possible *to start shooting directly at each other without proceeding directly to WWIII without passing GO nor collecting $200.
But it’s a very, very precarious balance. Both sides are deeply embedded in combined arms doctrine. Neither side’s infantry skirmishes alone. They’ve got artillery, national recon assets, air power, etc. right behind them.
Real quickly one of our ships puts a cruise missile into one of the bases on their allies’ soil. Shortly thereafter one of their subs or long range aircraft take out one of our ships. Or vice versa.
Suddenly we’re both no longer dealing with a couple dozen dead infantrymen on each side. We’ve lost some serious equipment worth serious money and lost a bunch of headcount in a short period of time.
You’d hope the honchos could get on the hot line at that point and say: we either both truce and retreat or we both go MAD. Which’ll it be pardner? Sanity or suicide pact?
The problem is that it’s real unlikely both sides will hit their respective threshold of pain/fear simultaneously. For darn sure they won’t be at the same point measured in dollars, roubles, men, or machines. Both sides also have their Gen. Turgidsons who’ll think only of stopping the enemy and nothing of the consequences.
All in all, as WOPPR (?) said: “It’s a strange game. The only way to win is to not play.”
One political faction in America is all hot and bothered that Obama hasn’t stepped up in the war with Syria, allowing Putin to grab the hearts and minds of everyone with Russia taking center-stage in the war. What is relatively unknown is Russia is running out of money, very, very fast. Western sanctions and the drop in the price of oil are critically hurting Russia. Obama knows this and is sitting back.
Any attempt by Russia to force a hand with Finland (OP scenario) or Syria (actual reality) is going to greatly exacerbate Russia’s financial problems.
No, it wasn’t. The Soviet goal was to “adjust” the border so that Finland was farther away from Leningrad. The Soviets asked for some territory, the Finns said no, they fought a war, and the Soviets ended up taking significantly more territory than they had originally asked for.
I agree. Putin is acting aggressive to shore up his domestic reputation. And because he’s doing this for domestic reasons, he can pick and choose where he looks for a war.
There are plenty of places (Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Syria) where Putin can have an outlet for Russian military aggression without directly challenging other major powers.
This isn’t a replay of the Cold War. Putin isn’t looking to confront the United States (or NATO or China).
I know that Grim Render was referring to the Winter War, but conquering Finland probably was one of the Soviet goals in the Continuation War. Finland’s ability to put up a stiff resistance to overwhelming Soviet numbers and the desire to focus on Germany seem to be the key factors in the armistice that allowed Finland to remain independent, albeit with forced USSR “friendliness.”
But to the OP’s question, neither Kuwait or Yugoslavia were part of NATO or any other treaty-bound alliance with the U.S. or the West when Western forces intervened. In the unlikely event of a Russian invasion, there would be strong pressure from Poland, Denmark, Norway, and the Baltic states to directly intervene both due to close bilateral ties to Finland but also due to fears they might be next. It would also likely lead to Sweden formally joining NATO and being amenable to participating in any military coalition to assist Finland.
I think when the Soviets send their armed forces into an unwilling territory, their stated reasons for doing so should not be taken as gospel.
If the Soviets did not intend to conquer Finland, this would have been somewhat exceptional.
In the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviets, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and parts of Romania were placed in the Soviet sphere of influence. At the time, Finland had been independent of Russia for 22 years, the same as the Baltics. Given that by 1941 all the other territories that had been put into the Soviet sphere of influence, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia, had been absorbed into the Soviet Union, I am not sure what reasons the Soviets would have for only reacquiring only parts of Finland.
Also, while I am not aware of direct documents from Stalin having survived, there was a lot of information manuals given to the Soviet troops in the run-up to the invasion. Which included such helpful information as how to avoid the guards on the Finnish-Swedish border and to be polite if caught.
Further, if the Soviets only wanted to adjust the borders a little, I wonder why they bothered to set up a puppet government for Finland, the Kuusinen government
Sure seems a strange thing to do if they only wanted to adjust the borders a little.
The technique of demanding concessions like bases, as they wanted on the Hanko peninsula, is exactly what the Soviets did in the Baltics. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania all had to admit Soviet troops in, then had their governments replaced by puppets, then got absorbed into the Soviet Union.
This is also the same playbook they used in Poland in 1920 and Georgia in 1921.
I believe it may be significant that by the time of the continuation war, Stalin had actually recognized the Finnish government as legitimate, whereas during the Winter War, the Soviets started referred to the Finnish Government at the “junta” and “white bandits”, insisting that Otto Kuusinens government was the legitimate one.
You know, I had to take some time out to see how you might have arrived at that conclusion. What I am thinking is that you do not understand the difference between a military victory and victory in war ?
Blum, citing Clausewitz examples of victory, writes “A successful military campaign therefore is not a sufficient condition for victory, nor is it always a necessary one. Political, economic, and civic forces may all shape the longer-term outcome of the war so as to render it an overall success or failure.” and defines victory as “the attainment of one’s goals as they are set at the beginning of a military campaign or as they are refined and redefined throughout it.”
Bartholomeees, in the “Theory of Victory” writes that “winning a war (as opposed to a battle or campaign) is a political condition. If war is a political act, victory at the highest levels is correspondingly defined in political terms. The implication is that tactical or operational victory without favorable political outcomes is sterile, and by any reasonable assessment that is true.”
The paper notes that an example of a victory while loosing at the operational and tactical level is Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. He suffered a huge tactical and operational loss, but his regime had survived (his strategic objective after the Coalition intervened).
It also notes that winning a war is not an “either-or” but a sliding scale, with degrees of victory and loss. We can note that Finland did not win a total victory as it did have to surrender territory, and the Soviet loss was not total at that time.
In "Clausewitz and the Culmination Point of Victory " von Kirchbach writes “The Culmination Point of Victory is related to the strategic oblectives of a campaign and the outcome of the war and therefore a strategic concept.”
All of which goes to illustrate that *military victory *and *winning a war *are related, but not the same thing. Winning a war is determined by achieving the political objectives of the war. Often, this follows winning militarily, but not always. The US lost in Viet Nam after winning every battle.
Finland, unlike the Baltics, retained its independence, which was its political goal. That was victory. The Soviet Union failed to reabsorb Finland into Russia, witch was their objective. Some exchange of territory may have made victory and loss less than total on each side. But it was victory for Finland and a loss for the Soviets, unless one believes the Soviet propaganda about just adjusting the borders a little.
I was going to say, hopefully not the mushroom cloud variety…
It seems rather arbitrary to create goals that nobody made public and define victory or defeat by those goals. Leaving aside hidden goals, the public goals of the Soviet Union was the surrender of Finnish territory. The Soviets ended up getting all of the territory they had demanded and some additional territory to go with it. It’s hard to see that as a defeat.
Beat me to it. 
What part of Romania ceded Bessarabia to the Soviet Union didn’t you understand? Romania wasn’t annexed as a whole nation, and Stalin never had any intention of doing so. After all of the tap-dancing you try in the following paragraphs, you still produce not one shred of actual evidence that Stalin intended to conquer and annex all of Finland; all you have is hypothesis and conjecture.
Funny, I don’t think you truly grasp either one.
You are the only one assigning reabsorbing Finland as the sole Soviet objective, and I can assure you Finland’s goal wasn’t to only lose Karelia to the Soviet Union. Even had the complete annexation of Finland been the Soviet goal and they fell short of attaining total victory,** they still won the war**. It’s funny that you should mention the US losing in Vietnam, I was going to say earlier that the mindset of people insisting that Finland ‘won’ is the same as those who insist that the US didn’t lose the war in Vietnam.
To go back to this, did I mention that Finland gained a reputation as being so bad-ass and a bad nation to invade that they were invaded in, and lost the Continuation War shortly afterwards? Know who else conducted an even more extremely successful war and inflicted even more massively lopsided casualties and unlike Finland in the Winter War didn’t lose a single battle yet still lost the war? The US in Vietnam.
And this is nonsense, the Winter War did nothing to embolden Hitler to invade the Soviet Union. He was already going to invade the Soviet Union; he had made that perfectly and explicitly clear in Mein Kampf. The entire point of the war for him was to gain lebensraum in the East.
One other thing I forgot to mention - Finland’s situation in [del]it’s glorious victory in winning[/del] losing both the Winter War and the Continuation War has led to the nation becoming a pejorative political term: Finlandization.
Finlandization is more or less is synonymous with “hostage nation.”
IOW, it’s not a statement about Finland being a wimp or quisling, but rather about the Soviets being so much bigger and stronger that it was trivial to bully the pipsqueak next door just by snarling menacingly in their direction. Backed by a credible threat to roll over the whole country in a week if push came to shove.
I too have fond memories of Helsinki and Turku
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that Finland is a member of the EU? While that confers no treaty obligations to defend Finland, a Russian invasion of Finland would pretty much end the dream of well, European union.
There’s also the matter of the UN. Kuwait wasn’t officially an ally any Western countries, but an invasion and annexation by one state against another was considered so far out of bounds in 1990 that it brought a military response. Of course the UN can’t approve military action against Russia officially due to their Security Council veto, but the UN could still hold a vote, have it go overwhelmingly against Russia, and the Western powers could start organizing a coalition to aid Finland anyway. Anything less would basically mean the end of the UN, as well as the EU.
Now of course we don’t HAVE to defend Finland, but the consequences would look a lot like the leadup to WWII. It would expose international organizations as useless, and demonstrate that Russia could invade anyone. And strategically, I bet it’s easier to defend Finland than the Baltic states, so Finland is as good a place to make a stand as any.
One point to bear in mind.
This isn’t WW2. The Russian public is actually quite sensitive to casualties. Has been since Afghanistan. They’re media has gone to great lengths to minimise reports of ‘volunteers’ being killed because they don’t want their public to get riled up over losses. The idea that they would launch a second Winter War and accept even a tithe of the previous ones casuallties isn’t going to fly.
You hit the nail on the head though - if virtually all of the media is state controlled, who is going to publicize mass Russian casualty numbers or give voice to any resentful families of the fallen? If any such conflict escalated into involving major Western countries, then it would be even easier to portray the conflict as one of national survival or national honor. Or to claim that the government of Finland had been taken over by fascists or terrorists, just as they claimed with Ukraine that served as their supposed justification for invading and annexing Crimea and giving “humanitarian” support to pro-Russian rebels in the Donbass.
As we’re seeing in this country, a relentless propaganda effort can convince a lot of people of totally false facts. And in this country we still have the other non-propaganda media telling a countervailing story. The Russians have nobody to give the lie to state TV’s version.
Russian media isn’t “virtually all” state controlled: Putin gets harshly criticized all the time. The bigger issue is that most of the criticism of Putin is from voices that are more nationalistic than him (whether on the right or the far left), not less, so it’s likely that his Communist, ultranationalist, and moderate nationalist critics would all have reason to minimize the casualties as well.
Finland is of course different than Afghanistan as well, since it’s a country that has at least some cultural similarities with Russia, had a large pro-Russian faction in its electorate during the Cold War, and was run by Russia as late as a hundred years ago, so I can see people being more willing to die for Finland than to die for Afghanistan. All of this seems beside the point though: I don’t think Russia is going to militarily intervene in Finland, at least not anytime soon. The smartest thing Russia could do right now is let western and central Europe simmer for awhile, and let the general dissatisfaction with the EU (and more broadly, the western liberal-capitalist order) grow, the same way it’s growing right now. If they ever do intervene militarily in Finland it might be in 10 or 20 years, but not any time soon.
You’re right, I should have said national television media is virtually controlled by the Russian state.
[Quote=Wikipedia entry on Media of Russia]
Main television channels
First Channel – national, state-owned channel – news and entertainment
Rossiya 1 – national, state-owned channel – news and entertainment
Zvezda – national, owned by Russian Ministry of Defense
NTV – national 50% state-owned – news and entertainment
Russia K – state-owned – culture and arts
Russia 2 – state-owned, commercial
Russia 24 – state-owned – news channel
Petersburg – Channel 5 – state-owned – commercial
TV Center – owned by Moscow city government – news and entertainment
STS – commercial – entertainment
Domashny – commercial, entertainment
TNT – state-owned, commercial
Ren TV – Moscow-based commercial station with strong regional network
Russia Today – state-funded, international English-language news channel
Dozhd – private independent news channel
ProRussia.tv – state-owned, in French
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Hector_St_Clare]
The smartest thing Russia could do right now is let western and central Europe simmer for awhile, and let the general dissatisfaction with the EU (and more broadly, the western liberal-capitalist order) grow, the same way it’s growing right now.
[/QUOTE]
Russia isn’t just letting Europe simmer, it is actively funding anti-EU, far right parties in an attempt to cause the EU to crumble from within.