THE GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA: ANALYSIS AND GEOSTRATEGIC ASPECTS
Understanding the geopolitical dynamics of the Russian state is very important today. This is not only because today’s Russia is a crucial geopolitical actor in the current framework of international relations but also because it is directly involved in a clash of “world power” of which Ukraine is merely the “ main theatre”. We are at war. The West is at war against its geopolitical rivals. It is at war against Russia and China who threaten its world domination and whose expansion must necessarily be stopped to maintain the world order as it was established after the collapse of the USSR. In our opinion, those who believe that the war in Ukraine is Moscow’s reaction to NATO’s expansion towards the east (and therefore towards the Russian borders) are wrong. The expansion of NATO has occurred in the last thirty years and has brought the Atlantic alliance into direct contact with the Eurasian country thanks to the annexation of the Baltic countries whose distance from Moscow is more or less the same as that existing from Ukrainian borders (for those who think in terms of a direct missile threat to Russia from NATO missiles). The truth is that the expansion and absorption into NATO of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact does not constitute (it has constituted in the recent past) a real geopolitical advantage for Washington and Brussels which have absorbed irrelevant countries both in terms of the enlargement of the EU internal market as well as for a strictly geostrategic anti-Russian value. In fact, since the Second World War, these countries have had the role of states protecting the Soviet space in case of attack from the West (and therefore from NATO). That is, they would have supported the first blow of the enemy forces, giving Moscow plenty of time to act against the attackers. But modern military technology (and in particular new offensive weapons such as hypersonic missiles make the role of “buffer states” obsolete) has made such a geostrategic vision completely obsolete. Military strategy has evolved in relation to technological development and the presence of increasingly deadly weapons capable of hitting the enemy thousands of kilometers away without even being able to be intercepted (we are talking about the hypersonic missiles supplied to the Russian forces with speed ‘ up to mach 10 and complex and variable flight paths). It is understandable why Moscow (Russia is the only nation in the world, at the moment, to possess such weapons) is no longer very interested in NATO’s enlargement towards the east and its interest in Ukraine is of a mainly economic (read the following article in this regard: https://www.geopolitika.it/ucraina-cui-prodest/.). It is the control of Kiev’s immense agricultural and industrial resources that interests Moscow and not its alleged geostrategic role, heralded by many geopolitical analysts. The fact that the Russian establishment let it slide in the face of the 2014 color revolution is explained not only by its military intervention in Syria which involved Moscow massively in the Middle East but also by the loss of geostrategic relevance of Ukraine in Moscow’s vision . Let’s try to understand the reasons for these considerations.
GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA: GEOPOLITICAL AND GEOSTRATEGIC VISION OF PUTIN’S RUSSIA
Today the geopolitical vision of the Russian establishment looks, as always, towards the south and the warm seas. Moscow is favoring its expansion in the southern Mediterranean (and sub-Saharan Africa), the Red Sea, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. And, to date, this strategy has been crowned with complete success. Russian influence on the African continent is today even greater than that of the USSR and today Moscow is directly threatening the interests of France (and the European Union) in former French colonial Africa (where it is actively favoring regime change ) with all the consequences this entails for Paris and Brussels. The Kremlin is also cementing its relations with the Saudi leadership (the two countries are by far the most important within OPEC+ as the largest producers and exporters of oil within the organization) so as not to allow more a manipulation of oil prices which in the past was very harmful to Russian finances (the economic collapse of the USSR was caused precisely by the collapse of the oil price agreed upon in 1985 between Washington and Riyadh). At the same time, Moscow has strengthened its alliance with Iran and its economic and military cooperation with India in recent years, which strengthen its presence in the Indian Ocean area. Cooperation with India received a strong boost after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and makes Moscow a strategic partner for New Delhi.This, at the same time, places the Kremlin in a privileged position in what is the fastest growing economy in the world as well as the largest market on the planet. The Russian octopus has therefore been able to stretch its tentacles in a formidable way and extend its influence globally. At the same time, Russia has been able to forge privileged relationships with Erdogan’s Turkey (which controls the Bosphorus Strait and is a treacherous ally of the USA) and with the most dynamic and powerful reality in today’s global geo-economy: China. Moscow has become Beijing’s main military partner as well as its first-level economic partner. This is even more so after February 24, 2022 when the West decided to sever its economic relations with the Kremlin due to the invasion of Ukraine. All this clearly shows how today Russia has expanded its influence in a truly powerful way and how it has increased its geopolitical “weight” in the world. And it is as a consequence of this that the West today attempts to contain the Kremlin and frustrate its geopolitical aims.
GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA: MILITARY DEVELOPMENT OF TODAY’S RUSSIA AND CHANGE OF GEOSTRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE.
As written above, today’s Russia has profoundly changed its geopolitical and geostrategic considerations as a consequence of the profound changes that modern-day high military technology has brought to today’s warfare techniques. Let’s not forget that the Eurasian country today has the best military technology in the world and unique weapons (hypersonic missiles, the S 400 and S 500 anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems, the ultra-modern SATAN 2 intercontinental missiles) that have no equal in the world. Today Russia could launch a missile attack against the West without even being countered because the West has not yet developed effective weapons against the most advanced Russian missiles. Even a preventive attack by NATO against Moscow would not be decisive and would not prevent a retaliatory nuclear attack which would also destroy the entire West by virtue of a centralized and computerized retaliation system which would trigger nuclear countermeasures even in the event of the destruction of Russian decision-making centers (look, in this regard, at what the “perimeter” system, otherwise called “dead hand”) is. From this we can deduce how the geostrategic dynamics in the world have changed. And how the latest military technology has changed today’s geostrategic science. This explains why Moscow in recent years has launched a global expansion while NATO was getting ever closer to its borders following the so-called “anaconda strategy” or the strategy that involves the encirclement and “crush” of ‘opponent. This would give Washington and Brussels an essential geostrategic advantage if they could prevent a Russian missile attack in the West. But since Western technology cannot keep pace with Russian technology, all this has proven to be completely useless (in truth, this strategy is in any case ephemeral since the deployment of the Russian submarine fleet with nuclear capabilities is not however locatable with precision and the latter could not be destroyed by a Western preventive attack). In the same way as the economic sanctions of February 2022. Sanctions that should have destroyed the Russian economy in a few weeks and which instead served no purpose. Which says a lot about the strength of the Russian nation today and its future role in the world.
GEOPOLITICS OF RUSSIA: CONCLUSIONS.
From all this it can be seen how the Russian geopolitical vision has changed based on the profound changes in the global geostrategic framework. Changes resulting from technological-military evolution which make the geopolitical and geostrategic aims of the West and NATO completely obsolete. The expansion of which has reached the Russian borders but without there being the possibility of an invasion of Russian territory without triggering a military reaction that would lead to the total destruction of the West itself in the space of a few hours. Washington and Brussels appear to be unable to compete with Moscow not only in terms of military technology but also in terms of their own geopolitical and geostrategic vision in the strict sense. Which today appears completely dated, purely anachronistic. On the other hand, given the profound and very rapid changes in the global geopolitical framework, the Western establishment seems to have moved in this direction because it could not stand still in the face of the risk that its antagonists would steal the scepter of power from it. We moved in the hope that something could happen. Like a coup d’état in Russia that would bring to power a person who is more accommodating towards Western power (than Putin is).But even this, honestly, doesn’t seem realistic to us. Rather, it appears as a last resort by Washington and Brussels, disorientated in the face of epochal changes whose significance they struggle to fully understand.