RUSSIA AND WORLD GEOPOLITICS: HISTORICAL NOTES
A still little-known aspect of the global geopolitical dynamics of the modern age is the role that the Russian nation has had, over the last two hundred years, in maintaining the dominion of the Anglo-Saxon empire over the world. Russia was the most formidable weapon that England used to repel the most violent hegemonic attempts of her geopolitical antagonists. In this article it is our intention to specifically analyze the last three “assaults” on Anglo-Saxon world power by Napoleon, William II and Hitler. To clarify how Russian power was fundamental in maintaining the central role of the Anglo-Saxon empire in the world. All this in relation to the current geopolitical events which instead see the Eurasian country aligned against the Anglo-Saxon empire and allied with the latter’s most fearsome enemy, China. Will her role be the same for China today as it was for England in the power struggles against its geopolitical rivals? That is, is the Middle Empire using Russia today to destroy its geopolitical rivals as England has done over the last two hundred years? We try to answer this question by taking a look at the war and geopolitical context of the last two hundred years of European history.
THE THREE HEGEMONIC ATTEMPTS AGAINST THE ENGLISH EMPIRE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE 19TH CENTURY UNTIL THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
We have already had the opportunity to write about the European geopolitical dynamics of the last five hundred years and how Anglo-Saxon domination of the world clashed with hegemonic attempts aimed at defeating England and putting an end to its domination over the world ( https://www.geopolitika.it/en/the-european-geopolitical-question-analysis-and-historical-notes/). This analysis is fundamental to understand the role of “lateral or external spaces” to European territory in countering the challenges posed by the enemies of the Anglo-Saxon world order. It is precisely thanks to the intervention of these geopolitical realities on the margins of the European continent that England was able to defeat its bitter geopolitical adversaries over the last two hundred years. Russia, in particular, played an essential role in preserving the Anglo-Saxon-led world order and at the same time militarily destroying England’s rivals. Eurasian power proved indispensable to exhaust and destroy the monstrous war potential of Napoleonic France and Hitlerian Germany in particular. Without the clash with Moscow it is entirely probable, given the data in hand, that both Napoleon and Hitler would have prevailed in the fight against the “perfidious Albion”. Let’s try to understand why.
NAPOLEON’S HEGEMONIC ATTEMPT
As is known, Napoleon’s hegemonic attempt was very problematic, in economic and geostrategic terms, for the Anglo-Saxon empire. Napoleonic France was a truly painful thorn in the side of England which at a certain point seemed to succumb to its very powerful rival. Not that France was ever able to challenge England on the seas (English thalassocracy was never questioned and indeed, after Trafalgar, it seemed more solid than ever) but in any case all the attempts made by London in the first decade of the 800 to finance a coalition of states that would defeat Napoleon were unsuccessful and indeed with the victory of Austerlitz (1805) over the Austrians and their allies the domination of the French empire on the European continent was practically unchallenged. The French emperor applied a continental blockade (with a relative ban on the docking of English ships on the European continent) which put the English economy in serious difficulty and was deprived of the precious European outlet market. Only Russia, the only continental European state that enjoyed effective autonomy from France, continued to trade with England and maintain good relations with London. Having noted the impossibility of binding the Tsar to the continental blockade, Napoleon decided in 1812 to invade Russia to put an end not only to his autonomist aims with respect to the French empire but also to his friendship with the United Kingdom. The undertaking decreed the geopolitical end of the French empire and the Napoleonic establishment as a consequence of the most serious military defeat that France has ever known in its history. It is clear that the role of the Russian Empire in the defeat of Napoleon’s hegemonic attempt against the English Empire was essential. Without it, despite the undisputed dominion of the seas, London would not have been able to prevail militarily over its bitter geopolitical rival and no one can say to what extent, in the long run, the continental blockade imposed by France on the English fleet and goods would have undermined the power economy of the “perfidious Albion” (perhaps to the point of significantly reducing its power).
THE HEGEMONIC ATTEMPT OF WILLIAM II
The hegemonic attempt of Wilhelmine Germany took place during the First World War (1914-1918) and saw the so-called central empires (i.e. Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) on one side and the Anglo-Saxon empire and its allies on the other ‘other. Among these, the main one was undoubtedly the Russia of Nicholas II. Even in this long conflict, Moscow’s role was essential to engage the German army on multiple fronts and disperse its offensive potential. The Eastern Front involved the Central Empires much more than the Western one and even after the October Revolution and the consequent withdrawal of Moscow from the hostilities, the German army was engaged in the occupation of the territories annexed following the Treaty of Brest. Litovsk. Which did not allow the German army to fully engage on the Western Front against the Allied troops (from 1917 US troops flocked massively into France to support the Anglo-French troops). Therefore, despite the October revolution and the collapse of the tsarist regime, even in the first German hegemonic attempt by William II, Russian power played a fundamental geostrategic role in allowing the victory of the Anglo-Saxons over their antagonists.
HITLER’S HEGEMONIC ATTEMPT
Truly essential was the role that Russia (which became the “Soviet Union” after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917) played in the challenge to world power that Hitler’s Germany launched against it. This was the most violent hegemonic attempt of all and, in dealing with it, England revealed the extent of her exhaustion. And her geopolitical weakening, to the point that she was forced to cede world power to the nations of “outer space” (USA and USSR) without whose military contribution she would in no way have been able to prevail over her very powerful rival. The Russian contribution, without a shadow of a doubt, was indispensable in the work of contrasting Hitler’s hegemonic plans. In fact, it was against the eastern space that the German expansion plans were shattered and where the German army literally exhausted itself in very violent, continuous and exhausting clashes with the Red Army. Which, despite suffering enormous losses, both human and material, fought until the total destruction of the German war machine. Although the US contribution (the United States of America represented, in this war, the “Western external space” which contributed together with “the Eastern external space” or Russia, to the defeat of the German hegemonic attempt) played an important role in this match there is no doubt that Moscow’s role was much more important. This is “reported” by the data on the losses and destruction suffered by the Russians (to counter and annihilate the attack of the Wermacht, the Red Army used every human and material resource available at the time and this commitment cost the death of over twenty million people and immense material destruction in the Soviet space occupied by the Germans) and the same losses suffered by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front (the Germans had the bulk of the losses, human and material, on the Eastern Front compared to which those suffered on the other war fronts appear marginal).
RUSSIA AND WORLD GEOPOLITICS: CONCLUSIONS
If history has taught us anything it is that Russia cannot be defeated militarily. You cannot win against it on the field. The immensity of its territory, the harsh climate and the particular rainfall regimes of the Eurasian country (read in this regard, https://www.geopolitika.it/en/war-in-ukraine-analysis-and-historical-notes/) make it effectively unconquerable. Only an internal revolution or a bankruptcy of the state apparatus (as occurred, respectively, in 1917 and 1991) can cause a defeat and collapse of the Russian state, whatever its nature. But no war has ever managed to achieve a victory over Moscow. None. Precisely because it is not possible to win in the specific geographical-environmental conditions of Russian territory. London has used the immense Eurasian nation on several occasions to tame and demolish the hegemonic aspirations of its geopolitical rivals by attracting them into the Russian trap which proved fatal to each of them. Today, however, it seems to have ended up in the trap itself and on behalf of that emerging power that aspires to replace it at the helm of the world. And just as the Russian establishment annoyed Hitler and Napoleon with its claim to autonomy, so today it annoys the very hegemon that it has contributed several times to “keeping in the saddle”. Who decided to attack him militarily to silence any claim to independence from finance and the yoke of the West. Yet in Washington and London they should know well the end of all those who were attracted by them (by the Anglo-Saxon power) into the Russian trap, without ever emerging from it. How is it possible then that they themselves ended up in the conditions to which they had reduced their bitterest adversaries? Million dollar question. What is certain is that, if history does not lie, this time they will be the ones who will never emerge and will, inevitably, leave the scepter of power. It is also curious that the Western establishment shows the same boldness as its predecessors in today’s “Russian campaign”. Hitler and Napoleon had the same belief that they could have an easy game in what has always been considered a backward country and, on balance, not even fully European. Yet both failed to do so. And both, on the way to Moscow, were destroyed.