Russia’s most powerful weapons now, Tim Marshall explains (in Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World), are not its army and air force, but gas and oil:
Russia is second only to the United States as the world’s biggest supplier of natural gas, and of course it uses this power to its advantage. The better your relations with Russia, the less you pay for energy; for example, Finland gets a better deal than the Baltic States. This policy has been used so aggressively, and Russia has such a hold over Europe’s energy needs that moves are afoot to blunt its impact. Many countries in Europe are attempting to wean themselves off their dependency on Russian energy, not via alternative pipelines from less aggressive countries but by building ports.
On average, 25 percent of Europe’s gas and oil comes from Russia; but often the closer a country is to Moscow, the greater its dependency. This in turn reduces that country’s foreign policy options. Latvia, Slovakia, Finland, and Estonia are 100 percent reliant on Russian gas; the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Lithuania are 80 percent dependent; and Greece, Austria, and Hungary 60 percent. About half of Germany’s gas supply comes from Russia, which, along with extensive trade deals, is partly why German politicians tend to be slower to criticize the Kremlin for aggressive behavior than a country such as Britain, which not only has 13 percent dependency, but also has its own gas-producing industry, including reserves of up to nine months’ supply.
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In the north, via the Baltic Sea, is the Nord Stream route, which connects directly to Germany. Below that, cutting through Belarus, is the Yamal pipeline, which feeds Poland and Germany. In the south is the Blue Stream, taking gas to Turkey via the Black Sea. Until early 2015 there was a planned project called South Stream, which was due to use the same route but branch off to Hungary, Austria, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Italy. South Stream was Russia’s attempt to ensure that even during disputes with Ukraine it would still have a major route to large markets in Western Europe and the Balkans. Several EU countries put pressure on their neighbors to reject the plan, and Bulgaria effectively pulled the plug on the project by saying the pipelines would not come across its territory. President Putin reacted by reaching out to Turkey with a new proposal, sometimes known as Turk Stream.
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Poland and Lithuania are constructing LNG terminals; other countries such as the Czech Republic want to build pipelines connecting to those terminals, knowing they could then benefit not just from American liquefied gas, but also supplies from North Africa and the Middle East. The Kremlin would no longer be able to turn the taps off.
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LNG is unlikely to completely replace Russian gas, but it will strengthen what is a weak European hand in both price negotiation and foreign policy. To prepare for a potential reduction in revenue, Russia is planning pipelines heading southeast and hopes to increase sales to China.
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A lot was made of the economic pain Russia suffered in 2014 when the price of oil fell below $ 50 a barrel, and lower still in 2015. Moscow’s 2016 budget—and predicted spending for 2017—was based on prices of $ 50, and even though Russia began pumping record levels of oil, it knows it cannot balance the books. Russia loses about $ 2 billion in revenue for each dollar drop in the oil price and the Russian economy duly took the hit, bringing great hardship to many ordinary people, but predictions of the collapse of the state were wide of the mark.
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The days when Russia was considered a military threat to China have passed and the idea of Russian troops occupying Manchuria, as they did in 1945, is inconceivable, although they do keep a wary eye on each other in places in which each would like to be the dominant power, such as Kazakhstan.
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What seems like an odd example came in May 2015 when they conducted joint military live fire exercises in the Mediterranean. Beijing’s push into a sea 9,000 miles from home was part of its attempt to extend its naval reach around the globe. Moscow has designs on the gas fields found in the Mediterranean, is courting Greece, and wants to protect its small naval port on the Syrian coast. In addition, both sides are quite happy to annoy the NATO powers in the region, including the American 6th Fleet based in Naples.
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The average life span for a Russian man is below sixty-five, ranking Russia in the bottom half of the world’s 193 UN member states, and there are now only 144 million Russians (excluding Crimea).
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It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist — the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still flat.
This reads like something from the 1990’s, hopelessly out of date.
It’s from 2016.
Little has changed. Russia had a salient natural advantage and they trashed it.
Seems to me Russia is currently doing a better job of defending its borders than the USA or Europe.
One cannot practicably defend what one practically denies exists.
Oddly enough in so doing it [being the border] does not, in fact, exist. Turns out they’re right! All they had to do was refuse to defend it, and boom, it ceased to exist!
I cannot help but wonder at this effect…