Let's look at Ukraine.
There it is, in the center of this map.
North of the Black Sea, west of Russia, east of Central European countries of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.
Ukraine is part of the greater Russian/Slavic world. Ukraine was sometimes part of Russia, sometimes part of Poland, sometimes part of the Polish-Lithuanian empire, briefly part of German occupied territory, during WWII. For most of the past century it was part of the Russian empire. Currently, it is independent.
Ukraine has 40 or 44 million people. Russia has about 140 million. Ukraine is either a big part of Russia, or a big re-acquisition for it. Here is how Stalin would have seen the population distribution. Ukraine is the densely populated dark area in the southwest.
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| USSR, 1920. Population map. |
The pattern persisted:
Moscow, with ten million people, is visible northeast of Ukraine. (Remember, Ukraine sits atop the Black Sea.) Kiev with 2.6 million people is visible in north central Ukraine. Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv, with 1.5 million people is visible near the Russian border, north of the Black Sea.
Ukraine, Belarus, and the three Baltic states were fully part of the USSR. Another tier of countries, including Poland and East Germany, south to Bulgaria, were part of the "Russian Block" of quasi independent Russian-controlled countries.
Russia has two fundamental strategic problems. The first that it is landlocked during a time of war. Its exits to the world's oceans are easily blocked by foreign rivals. Turkey, and before that the Ottoman Empire, has been a traditional southern rival of Russia, contesting control and influence in the Balkans and Russia's Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions. Turkey's great threat is Russia, which would like to control the Bosphorus. Turkey aligned with NATO, the worst of outcomes for Russia. Russia's second problem is its vulnerability to attacks from land armies coming from the west across the broad northern European plain. NATO expansion to Poland and the Baltic States put NATO troops within 100 miles of Russia's second city, St. Petersburg. Russia lost the strategic depth that protected itagainst Napoleon and Hitler.
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| Choke points |
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| NATO |
There is an ongoing imperative for Russia to address those strategic vulnerabilities. That imperative conflicts with a contrary one. European powers over the centuries work to suppress any European power from becoming too strong. Sometimes that power has been France, with Britain and Europe united against it. After Germany unified under Prussian leadership France and Britain aligned with Russia/USSR to confound Germany. More recently they align with Germany to confound Russia/USSR. Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine were and remain the victims to be saved, abandoned to their fate, or devoured.
Russia has a large military, nuclear weapons, and the tool of its oil. It wants to change the equilibrium. Another tool for Russia is the fact that the borders and ethnicities of the battleground areas have never been settled, and they sometimes conflict with an ethic of self-determination.
The fight over Ukraine is another iteration of European great power politics. Russia wants something. The West doesn't want Russia to have it. It wants Russia fenced in and unthreatening. The West wants the strategic depth for itself.
So we fight on, endlessly.
Tomorrow: More maps. Ukraine is a breadbasket and food exporter.
9 comments:
History, smishtory, Russia is being opportunistic after perceiving a lack of resolve in the West. I accept "it's complicated", but not a situation that calls for brutal attacks on civilians, after rejecting negotiation.
Ukraine's current border was a product of the Soviet Union and was ratified by a majority in the 90's. It has wandered into modernity since and with the current government has made a definite move to join the West. This is a repudiation of Russian fascism going back to Stalin and unacceptable to them.
Democracy, messy and imperfect as it is, is preferable to authoritarian societies that curtail freedoms and dissent. Social Democracy is antithetical to Kleptocracy and is the fundamental struggle of our age.
Russia and Ukraine obviously have a long and complicated history, but that's no excuse for mass murder.
You have outdone yourself yet again. Thank you for this presentation. It has opened my eyes on several levels.
History, shmistory!
An interesting historical parallel is the American Civil War. Seen from the viewpoint of the Confederacy, it was a war of a larger, industrialized North invading a smaller agrarian South. As to population disparity, this from The National Park Service web site:
In 1861, The population of the Union was 18.5 million. In the Confederacy, the population was listed as 5.5 million free and 3.5 million enslaved. In the Border States there were 2.5 million free inhabitants and 500,000 enslaved people. So the Confederacy had about 30% (excluding slaves) of the Union's population. The Ukraine has about 28.55 of Russia's population.
And similar to the US and NATO allies sending arms and supplies to The Ukraine today, The British had economic reasons to support the Confederacy - direct access to cotton and a market for its own products. Just as Putin is threatening NATO supply lines by starting to bomb L'viv, The Union imposed an effective naval blockade on the Confederacy. The Confederacy, thousands of miles away from the factories of Europe, had to create its own munitions. Poland, Romania, and other NATO countries are just across the border from The Ukraine. And NATO allies are sending to The Ukraine very effective weapons that are severely hampering the Russian land assault.
But the similarities end. For starters, the Union had a moral imperative - doing God's work to end the evil of slavery. Russian troops have no such motivation. The Confederates had an imperative too - the preservation of their "way of life." But only a percentage of southerners whites owned slaves, reliable consistent data is hard to come by, but a cursory review on Google brings up numbers ranging from 1&½ % up to 20%. Regardless, aside from the 5th column of ethnic Russian separatists in the 2 eastern breakaway regions, most Ukrainians, be they Ukrainian or Russian speakers, seem quite motivated to resist Russian hegemony. Further, whereas the Confederacy had a large slave population to continue to control, and from which Union Armies could seek recruits, The Ukraine is not so encumbered.
And further, The Union did not have to endure the severe economic sanctions that have been placed on Russia. American oligarchs prospered during the Civil War, unlike what is no doubt the case for Russian ones. There has been about a 40% drop in the value of the Ruble.
Who knows how this will all end, although in any event it won't end well for the millions of Ukrainians who have been forced to flee and the tens of thousands who will die. As the body bags of Russian soldiers stream bag to their families, will Russia's so far successful information bubble hold up, or will the Russian people and the armed forces begin to question Putin's propaganda?
Russia seems destined to become a vassal state of China. The Russian population is shrinking. Their economy before Putin’s stupid war was smaller than Italy’s. Now it will be even smaller.
The main conflict of the 21st Century is going to be the United States and its allies versus China. Hopefully this current war in Ukraine will remind us that there is no such thing as “the end of history,“ and that there are real threats that we have to be prepared to meet and defeat.
We were flat on our backs in the 1930s, but we rose to the occasion in the 1940s and smashed our enemies flat. There’s no reason this amazing country can’t do something like that again if Putin attacks a NATO country or China attacks Taiwan.
Except neither Russia nor China would go down without taking the rest of us with them. Let's not be in too big a hurry to see whose nukes can wipe out more of the world.
Deterrence doesn’t work if there’s no response to aggression. It was tried in the 1930s, and it worked out quite poorly.
No one is talking about conquering Russia or China, just deterring them from attacking their neighbors.
Wrecking Russia's economy may not be as spectacular as nuking them, but I still think it's preferable.
Ha! Nearly half of this country thinks the 2020 election was stolen and refused to wear masks during a pandemic, even to save the lives of their neighbors. I think you're overestimating the attitudes of the American people.
World War II, like most wars, was good for corporate America.
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