It’s 2016, the internet and social media are very big things in Russia. if a ‘Second Winter War’ broke out, heavy casualties couldn’t be concealed no matter how quiet the big state media outlets attempted to keep things.
I wonder why the Russians think electing far right parties helps them. It antagonizes the left, which is normally inclined towards not taking action against bad actors, and puts in power parties that might admire Putin, but are so intensely nationalistic that if Putin screwed with their countries or countries they identified with, would gladly hang the man after the total war that broke out and which Putin lost. Whereas lefty parties are more likely to pursue limited aims if it ever comes down to war with Russia.
I’d note that many elements of the American right have admired certain right-wing dictators in the past, but are quite quick to resort to force when those dictators cease to be cute.
The answer seems pretty straightforward:
A united EU / NATO is a threat to Russia. Or at least an obstacle to Russian adventurism and expansion.
A squabbling Europe of 30ish small countries and languages fully embroiled in mutual antagonism and mutual right-wing nationalism is not. Instead it’s ripe for salami-slicing into submission.
All the more so if the right winger nationalist in charge of country X is actually, like the various Central Asian despots, simply a paid stooge who understands his continued existence, much less power, flows more or less straight from the Kremlin.
so what?
No. Nobody cared about how far “out of bounds” the invasion and annexation of a small country is.
They cared only about the direct effect on their own vital economies.
Kuwait had oil .
Finland has reindeer.
OTOH, Finlanders are white Christians. Kuwaitis are … not.
Not that that *should *matter. But it *does *matter to a lot of people.
Yes, but Finland is also a European country. It’s one thing for some half-assed country on the other side of the planet to invade another half-assed country. It’s another when we’re talking about next door, when it happens to people like you, and when you realize that today it’s Finland and tomorrow it’s Poland and next week it’s France.
NATO has been since its inception an implicit anti-Russian alliance. If Russia succeeds in enslaving Finland, while all the NATO countries do nothing, who’s next? Russia has a pretty strong military, for a country as poor and backward as it is. Russia’s economy is much smaller than France’s, much smaller than Germany, much smaller than the UK, smaller than Italy, smaller than CANADA. Even leaving out the United States, these countries combined have an economic output 10 times larger than Russia. And that’s not counting the dozen or so other powers, which might be smaller individually than Russia but they all add up.
The countervailing danger from Russia is a vast nuclear arsenal, a subjugated yet fairly nationalist population, and an authoritarian leader who might or might not make rational decisions. And even if his decisions are rational from his personal perspective, they could turn out disastrous for Russia and the rest of the world. Starting a disastrous war might turn out to strengthen Putin’s autocracy, even as it costs Russia millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.
Russia doesn’t support necessarily ‘far right’ parties per se, they tend to cultivate ties with anyone, on the far right or the far left, who’s critical of the Washington Consensus (and in Europe the Brussells Consensus) and of the ideas associated with it (liberal democracy, the existing network of alliances, weaker state role in the economy, a strong EU and US, multiculturalism / mass immigration, and so forth). In Europe, for various reasons most such parties self identify as ‘right wing’, but in Latin America it mostly has included leaders on the left (Chavez / Maduro, Ortega, and Correa specifically).
Some of Russia’s allies in Europe are on the left (Milos Zeman in the Czech Republic and Robert Fico in Slovakia, for example), and the big issue here as that while these guys are both on the left, they’re also strongly anti-EU, especially over the issue of immigration. I think Russia is kind of counting on the immigration issue to alienate Eastern Europeans further and further from the west (this has already happened in Estonia, where the most recent polls suggest Estonians now see Muslim immigration as a bigger theoretical threat to their country than a Russian invasion).
At least one of the nationalist parties in Europe, Law and Justice* in Poland, is extremely anti-Russian and anti-Soviet, so you would think that Russia might be worried about them. As I’ve seen it described though, the thought process is probably something like this: “Law and Justice hates both Russia and Germany. As such, they are preferable to Civic Platform which hates only Russia.”
*Not entirely sure Law and Justice is farther right than Civic Platform- on economics they’re actually more interventionist / social democractic.
Russians are white Christians (or post-Christians) too, as far as that goes. Saddam Hussein wasn’t.
More importantly though, Finland has a long history of being a neutral (or very weakly pro-Soviet) country during the Cold War, and a loosely Axis-affiliated state during WWII. Kuwait was an American ally and important oil source prior to the first gulf war.
But even more importantly, is there any actual evidence that Russia is planning to invade Finland? Isn’t this sort of like discussing, “If Hillary Clinton declared war on Egypt to restore democracy, how would the Middle East respond?”
Finland isn’t in NATO though, and never has been. The whole point of NATO was to differentiate countries we would go to war to protect, and countries that we wouldn’t.
Also, it’s very often not that easy to distinguish an ‘invasion’ from ‘a foreign country intervening in a civil war’. Kashmir in 1947-1948, the conflict between North and South Vietnam, the US during a couple of its Latin American adventures, etc., could all be spun as ‘foreign invasion’ or ‘civil war’ depending on your political affiliations. Russia has thus far been careful only to intervene in situations where there was already a civil conflict going on and could plausibly be interpreted as ‘taking one side in a civil war’. Finland isn’t in that situation and I doubt it weill be anytime soon.
Of course Finland has never been in NATO. That doesn’t mean we’re prepared to hand them over to Putin like the Sudetenland. And it’s laughable to say that Finland was pro-Soviet during the Cold War. They were afraid of being invaded and subjugated by the Russkis, like the other Eastern European countries of the time. And they were afraid that joining an anti-Russian defensive alliance would enrage the Soviets. And so, despite being firmly in the Western cultural sphere, they tried to stay officially neutral, since in any war between East and West they’d be screwed no matter what happened.
Anyway, LSLguy’s point is that Russia supports any and all nationalist tendencies in Europe, and opposes any and all internationalist tendencies in Europe, it just so happens as of today that most such nationalist movements are vaguely right-wing. Russia sees a united and peaceful Europe as a threat, and a divided and factional Europe as more likely to turn on each other than on Russia.
And of course Russia is in no way about to launch an invasion of Finland out of the blue. They’re already regarded as a threat by all their neighbors, and a military operation against Finland would be a diplomatic and economic catastrophe for Russia. And for what? I guess they get a one-time boost from looting Finland, but they can’t get the benefit of absorbing Finland’s prosperous economy by enslaving Finland. This isn’t the 18th century where the peasants passed along their meager taxes no matter who the overlord of the country was. Sure, you can put the Fins to work at slave labor I guess, but Russia has lots and lots of much more easily exploited people if Putin thinks a few million slave laborers are just what his economy needs.
“All their neighbors” is a stretch, particularly depending on what you consider neighbors. Belarus is of course a Russian ally. So is Armenia. The Czech Republic and Slovakia don’t border Russia, and are constrained by their membership in the EU, but both of them have governments that are moderately pro-Russian.
I of course agree with you that Russia isn’t going to intervene in Finland any time soon.
Good points in all your posts. You’re certainly closer to it than most of us.
As to the part snipped above …
We’re discussing it because it’s the OP’s hypothetical. Is it a likely hypothetical? IMO you’re right, it’s very unlikely *if *we assume Putin remains in charge and remains fundamentally pretty conservative. If that assumption fails, then we’ll see the Russians pushing across one of their borders. If not Finland, where do you propose?
The long-term challenge is that absolute dictators who have unlimited terms in office generally fail by failing to remain conservative enough. Eventually they get excessively adventurous, perhaps inadvertently egged on by their coterie of yes-men. The alternative failure mode is they begin to be undermined by internal factions. Then they go all strongman psycho to put down the internal rebellion. Sometimes the coup succeeds, sometimes the strongman puts it down. C.f. Erdogan earlier this year.
Putin is not today an absolute dictator in the mold of Hussein or Lil Kim. (Neither is Erdogan though he’d love to play one on TV). But Putin serves as leader until Putin decides he doesn’t. With all the long-term risks appurtenant thereunto.
The number of absolute leaders who stay mellow until they die peacefully at age 90 is few. Very few. Russia certainly has plenty of expat communal blocs, frozen conflicts, border disputes, and general lawlessness in its near abroad to provide plenty of opportunity for them to stir the pot in ways they think profitable.
Thank you. You make some good points as well. I should point out that I don’t particularly love Putin, and where I’m coming from here is much more pro-Russia than pro-Putin. I believe that a mono-polar world is dangerous, and that much of the Washington / Brussels consensus is a bad idea, and therefore I want a strong Russia to serve as a sort of counterweight. But I’d much prefer if someone like Zyuganov was in charge of Russia rather than Putin. Someone who installs a 13% flat tax is not my idea of a great leader.
That having been said, I don’t think it’s that unlikely that Russia and the US get into a sort of proxy war situation sometime in the near to medium future. I actually think it’s most likely if Putin is not in charge, though. Much of the domestic criticism of Putin, as I mentioned, is that he’s not tough enough either on ‘protecting’ the breakaway Donbass republics, on controlling Muslim immigration from Central Asia, or on other issues. I can certainly see a situation where Putin decides he needs to take a more judicious ‘detente’ approach to President Hillary Clinton, offers to withdraw Russian personnel from Ukrainian territory in return for ending sanctions, and in response Russia explodes into domestic unrest and outrage and Putin is overthrown by someone much more hardline. Probably an ultranationalist, maybe a communist, and possibly by a coalition of the two.
In terms of where I think a proxy conflict between Russia and the US might happen, I’d guess probably the Ukraine (or maybe Moldova). Another alternative hotspot might be Hungary, though. At present Hungary is part of the EU and NATO, and although their government is run by a fairly tough and mildly authoritarian euroskeptic ethnonationalist (who his enemies refer to as a fascist), he’s pretty clear that he wants to stay in the EU and in NATO. The largest opposition party though (which has an absolute majority among Millennials) is an extreme radical ethnonationalist party which venerates interwar fascism and wants to pull out of NATO and the EU entirely. I can see a scenario in which things get worse in Hungary, the EU threatens to kick them out over their refusal to accept immigrants and refugees, Jobbik wins a close election and announces that they’re withdrawing from NATO and the EU and allying with Putin, the liberals and socialists challenge the election results, and the country collapses into political violence. In this scenario, Putin announces that he’s sending Russian forces into Hungary to prop up their newly elected government, and the US has to make a choice about whether or not to intervene.
Russia of course doesn’t have a border with Hungary (nor does Belarus or Moldova), so they’d have to rely on sending people in by air, or else a full scale invasion of the Ukraine proper to use it as a corridor. Not sure if that would be very feasible.
Uhm, we are very close to a shooting war in Syria.
US and NATO aircraft are operating over Syria and have even attacked Syrian troops.
In response Russia has put up more anti-aircraft measures and the Kuznetsov is steaming to the area.
Not good.
That Turkey keeps on supporting IS doesn’t help the situation either.
And Clinton’s Syrian no-fly zone makes a shooting war with Russia significantly more likely.
Accidental combat incidents between US & Russian forces are certainly possible in Syria. More so there than anywhere else right now.
It’s a pretty good bet the two sides (or at least our side) are working pretty hard to avoid such incidents and will tend to downplay any incident that happens. Six months ago the Turks shot down a Russian attack aircraft. The world held its breath while both sides bloviated at one another quickly then got back to their respective work.
Except a situation where we shoot down a Russian plane or they shoot down an American plane only leads to war if one or both sides seize on the incident as a pretext for war. If neither side actually wants war, then there’s a lot of pro-forma apologies and speeches, and the incident is over.
What’s not likely in this situation is the accidental war scenario of “Sarge, I tripped and my rifle went off!” “Ohmigod they’re shooting at us! Fire everything back!” “Ohmigod they’re firing everything at us! Fire everything back, and call for reinforcements!” “Ohmigod, they’re massing for an offensive, drop the nukes!”
That might have happened on the Fulda Gap back in the Cold War, but it isn’t going to happen in Syria. There’s a concerted propaganda effort by Russia in the western media that the US doing anything at all in Syria is going to lead inevitably to a nuclear war. It’s pretty ridiculous.
I don’t think it leads inevitably to a nuclear war, but the chance is certainly higher if Clinton tells the USAF to start shooting down Russian jets in Syrian airspace. Maybe the Russians would back down and tell their pilots not to fly, but that doesn’t really fit in that well with what I know about Putin. And maybe if they fly Clinton will back down and scrap the no-fly-zone, but certainly, if ordered to, I expect the USAF will shoot down Russian jets. Is Aleppo really worth taking that risk?
Oh c’mon. Orthodox don’t count.
So you honestly think that Hillary is going to give the order to shoot down Russian planes in Syrian airspace? On what basis?
This is never going to happen.
The only way a no-fly zone can be established is if the Russians are in on it too. The whole concept of a no-fly zone only works when you’re enforcing it on a country where you have total air superiority. Otherwise it’s not a “no fly zone”, it’s an “aerial combat zone”.
It would be possible for the US Air Force to unilaterally impose a no fly zone on the Syrian government. Any Syrian, ISIS, or opposition planes that dare to take off get shot down. But we’re certainly not going to shoot down RUSSIAN planes on purpose, that’s a whole different ballgame.
How can you seriously believe that this is Hillary’s plan once she gets in office? I understand that this is an alt-right talking point nowadays, but it’s on the Vince Foster was murdered level of delusion.