Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World came out in 2015 and was revised in 2016. It opens with this introduction:
Vladimir Putin says he is a religious man, a great supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church. If so, he may well go to bed each night, say his prayers, and ask God: “Why didn’t you put some mountains in Ukraine?”
If God had built mountains in Ukraine, then the great expanse of flatland that is the North European Plain would not be such encouraging territory from which to attack Russia repeatedly. As it is, Putin has no choice: he must at least attempt to control the flatlands to the west. So it is with all nations, big or small. The landscape imprisons their leaders, giving them fewer choices and less room to maneuver than you might think.
Later he devotes a whole chapter to Russia:
When writers seek to get to the heart of the bear they often use Winston Churchill’s famous observation of Russia, made in 1939: “It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” but few go on to complete the sentence, which ends “but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” Seven years later he used that key to unlock his version of the answer to the riddle, asserting, “I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.”
[…]
Poland represents a relatively narrow corridor into which Russia could drive its armed forces if necessary and thus prevent an enemy from advancing toward Moscow. But from this point the wedge begins to broaden; by the time you get to Russia’s borders it is more than two thousand miles wide, and is flat all the way to Moscow and beyond. Even with a large army you would be hard-pressed to defend in strength along this line. However, Russia has never been conquered from this direction partially due to its strategic depth. By the time an army approaches Moscow it already has unsustainably long supply lines, a mistake that Napoleon made in 1812, and that Hitler repeated in 1941.
Likewise, in the Russian Far East it is geography that protects Russia. It is difficult to move an army from Asia up into Asian Russia; there’s not much to attack except for snow and you could get only as far as the Urals. You would then end up holding a massive piece of territory, in difficult conditions, with long supply lines and the ever-present risk of a counterattack.
You might think that no one is intent on invading Russia, but that is not how the Russians see it, and with good reason. In the past five hundred years they have been invaded several times from the west. The Poles came across the North European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1708, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans—twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. Looking at it another way, if you count from Napoleon’s invasion of 1812, but this time include the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the two world wars up to 1945, then the Russians were fighting on average in or around the North European Plain once every thirty-three years.
At the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Russians occupied the territory conquered from Germany in Central and Eastern Europe, some of which then became part of the USSR, as it increasingly began to resemble the old Russian empire. In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed by an association of European and North American states, for the defense of Europe and the North Atlantic against the danger of Soviet aggression. In response, most of the Communist states of Europe—under Russian leadership—formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955, a treaty for military defense and mutual aid. The pact was supposed to be made of iron, but with hindsight, by the early 1980s it was rusting, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 it crumbled to dust.
President Putin is no fan of the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. He blames him for undermining Russian security and has referred to the breakup of the former Soviet Union during the 1990s as a “major geopolitical disaster of the century.”
Since then the Russians have watched anxiously as NATO has crept steadily closer, incorporating countries that Russia claims it was promised would not be joining: the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia in 2004; and Albania in 2009. NATO says no such assurances were given.
Russia, like all great powers, is thinking in terms of the next one hundred years and understands that in that time anything could happen. A century ago, who could have guessed that American armed forces would be stationed a few hundred miles from Moscow in Poland and the Baltic States? By 2004, just fifteen years after 1989, every single former Warsaw Pact state bar Russia was in NATO or the European Union.
The Moscow administration’s mind has been concentrated by that, and by Russia’s history.
In other words, forget the drone age: Russia never acculturated into the nuclear age. Mean old NATO is going to drive columns of tanks to Moscow to steal their dirt. No wonder Putin invaded Ukraine. This makes him look worse than anyone portrayed him.
Tim Marshall:
With those three little words one instantly knows Tim Marshall’s disposition.
From: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
Simply put, the Russians were pwned by America’s vastly superior propaganda. Had they only had Jews in charge of that part of their state functionary, the Soviet Union may have survived unto the present day.
First of all, usage of “Russian” as a thesaurus substitute for “Soviet” is simply an older and subtler version of “never been tried!”. Thus never a good sign, one way or another.
Yes, yes. It’s hard to not notice. There are 2 factors actually. One is good old habit of projection, as expected. It was there long ago, and it only gets worse. Especially among the mainstream of nu-Puritans (but the opposition on the level of Moon of Alabama is far from immune).
The other is complementary selection on the other side. Or perhaps self-selection. With whom (on the outside) are the puppeteers likely to deal the most? With their own puppets, plus opportunistic shoe-shiners and petty criminals. Duh. Which is surely a part of why the Brits got so high on their delusions of ubermenschness.
“Resemble” in what properties? I thought the widespread de-industrialization have started after USSR fell, huh. Especially in the Western parts. Or resemble the old Russian empire in being a glorified British resource colony?
That’s just silly, as he would know if he have read “Inside the Soviet Army” by Viktor Suvorov, at least. He is comparing an actual mechanism with a dust cloak of a larger mechanism. One may argue which structure could be better for what purpose, since obviously neither was self-contained anyway, but talking about a decorative cover as if it was the important part in itself is, ah, not an evidence of keen analysis.