Russia’s move against Ukraine and the imperatives of geography, security, and natural resources – a short dissertation

There is a reason why we should study geography well in school, because, without it, one cannot understand the tides of history or the destinies of people. Civilizations often carve out their own histories within the framework of their geographical and environmental possibilities. We may have mastered our land, built massive cities and skyscrapers, but eventually, it is the environmental factors, the natural surroundings that define the habitation and the DNA of society. Even a casual study of history will inform us that this is true of every civilization, be it Athenian, Persian, Babylonian, Indian, European, American, or the present-day middle east. It is Geo-politics, the study of nations, through the lens of geography that best illuminates why nations, governments, and leaders behave the way they do. Unfortunately, the subject of geography itself is taught shabbily and without passion in most schools, and therefore very few acquire a good understanding of the world in the way it really matters. The spread of oceans, rivers, mountains, deserts, islands, jungles, climatic conditions, and natural resources are not only important to sustain human life, but they also form natural territorial barriers and act as a bulwark against others. Take the case of India and China. We share a long border, and often have brief skirmishes between us, but only once have we waged a full-fledged war against each other. That was in 1962. The reason why don’t regularly fight full-fledged wars is because of the presence of the high mountain ranges of The Himalayas – that act as a natural barrier. It is difficult to carry troops back and forth. Greater leaders and warriors have always succumbed or triumphed based on their understanding of the land, mountains, and seas. Alexander was exhausted by the time he reached India. He and his army were in shambles negotiating the mountains and heat. Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, on the other hand, used the Alps mountains to frustrate the Romans and win the Battle of Cannae – the biggest defeat the Romans had ever faced and one that signaled the beginning of their decline. In modern times, Hitler’s nemesis was his attempt to enter Moscow from the west in the blast of winter under freezing conditions. It signaled his decline as well. Geography is all the cake there is for Man to live, survive and preserve himself, history is just mere icing on the cake. Without the former, the latter doesn’t exist.

Drawing imaginary lines over the planet and dividing people into fungible nations, attempting to impose an all-encompassing ideology, or technologically wiring the globe and talking about globalism, hardly takes away the hegemony of land and water over the affairs of man. Man is by nature a territorial animal, like any other species, no matter how progressive our thinking has evolved. He likes his space, his ecosystem, and when that is threatened or provoked, he gets agitated. There is nothing wrong with it, and honestly, there is nothing one can do about it. That is how we are wired. Altruism, ideology, selflessness, and empathy towards others will work till a certain point; beyond that self-interest and preservation prevail. Let someone try encroaching an inch into our backyard, or even come close to it, our primal instincts begin to rear their head, and once we exhaust our options of reason, politeness, and manners, hell breaks loose. We want the trespasser out of arm’s length. What is true of a single home, is true of a nation, especially, one as historical, as possessive, as vulnerable, and as huge as Russia.

Before one can talk about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one must open a map of Russia and study it carefully. If you look at the Map, here is what you will see: Russia is roughly divided by the Ural mountains into two regions – East and the West. To the east of the Urals is Eastern Russia, which has strong ties with Asia and has never had problems. This portion of Russia stretches all the way across Siberia ( which is rich in minerals and natural resources) to the Arctic ocean. Even though 75% of the Russian landmass is in the east, the population of Russians who live here is around 22% of the total, and they are loyal to Russia and speak the Russian language. No issues there, and it rarely features in the news. Russia has never faced any major threat from the East for centuries, simply because it is impossible to maintain a supply line that can feed an army across 4000 miles, in freezing conditions, and then cross over the Ural mountain range to take on Moscow, the capital of Russia. Now turn your gaze to the West of the Urals, and you instantly see the Moscow close to the Urals, and from there as you move your eyes west of Moscow, you will notice nothing but one vast rolling flat plains, no mountains, no rivers, no natural barriers to protect an advancing army, and this continues right up to the corridor of the west, bordered by Poland and Ukraine. You should pause here on the map and take note of where Ukraine is positioned, Ukraine literally demarcates the western bloc of nations from Russia. Ukraine is a big landmass in its own right, and one of the fifteen countries that split off the Soviet Union in 1991. The Eastern part of Ukraine (which is closer to Moscow) is pro-Russian (and Russia has ensured it has remained so) whereas, the part of Ukraine that borders with the western nations is heavily influenced by the NATO (North Atlantic treaty organization, an alliance formed in 1949, few years after the second world war between western nations to counter Russian hegemony) alliance.

The question is why is Russia so paranoid about the western plains? There are currently no armies marching down towards Moscow, or fighter planes hovering in the air dropping bombs. So why this aggression against Crimea in 2014, and now against Ukraine itself. We will get to it in a moment, but before that, it is important to remember that Russia has faced quite a number of invasions in the past from the western plains. The Poles came marching on them in 1605, the Swedes followed under Charles XII in 1708, the French swooped down under Napolean in 1812, then it was Germany’s turn – not once, but twice, once in 1914 and a second time in 1941, and if you add the two Crimean wars between 1853 to 1856, the Russians have been in a constant battle in the western plains, on an average, once every thirty-three years. You cannot fault them for being paranoid about another threat from the West. Since the time the western powers, notably the USA, UK, and France formed NATO, in 1949, the Russians have been on their guard. While the explicit reason for NATO’s existence is to maintain a balance of power between superpowers, the implicit reasons pursued by NATO under the garb of the balance of power are different. It is to push democracy and get as many countries out of Russia’s sphere of influence and within the protectorate of the west. The west, as we all know, loves to play the big brother, even when not solicited. Since the end of the cold war, the fall of the berlin wall, and the break up of the former Soviet Union in 1991, NATO has been aggressively pushing NATO membership further and further to countries close to the Russian territory. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia in 2004. Once again, look at the Map, and you will notice all these newly joined NATO states are on the border of Russia, and dangerously close to her backyard. Russia kept quiet when these two tranches of NATO membership happened, even though Putin’s government knew that the west had wooed these countries with monetary aids and civil promises. However, In 2008, after a NATO summit in Bucharest, there was a joint announcement from NATO countries that Ukraine and Georgia have also indicated their willingness to join NATO. This time the Russians drew the line. This was unacceptable for the Russians, and they couldn’t let it happen. They cannot allow Ukraine or Georgia to join NATO, because they have strategic interests there, and allowing these two countries to slip away into Western coterie is almost like giving away Russia’s territorial sovereignty and access to resources. Russians made it very clear, unequivocally clear, to the west to leave Ukraine and Georgia alone. Vladimir Putin famously said, ” if you press a spring too hard, it will recoil”. The West ( NATO) didn’t take him seriously and kept pushing at the borders of Russia, and Putin had to strike back. Such acts have historical precedence. In 1961, the US reacted with the same fury that Russians are displaying today when Russian nuclear missiles were found in Cuba. The US fumed over the violation of territory. They invoked the Monroe doctrine which explicitly prohibited any far-flung superpower to pile up arms anywhere close to the western hemisphere. Today, when we see how the US and NATO are hobnobbing with Ukraine and arming them, the situation is no different from what the Russians attempted to do in Cuba. In both cases, territorial integrity was in question. When the west screams, it is democracy at stake; when others do, it is branded as a dictatorship.

When Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it was absolutely necessary for them to do so. The only warm-water port that Russia has access to is at Sevastopol in Crimea, Ukraine. They already had a lease on it, and once the intentions of Ukraine were made public by NATO after the Bucharest summit, they had no choice, but to claim Crimea back once again, before they lose it to the West. Historically Crimea was gifted to Ukraine in the 1940s as a measure of goodwill, and in Russia was merely revoking the gift from a good friend who planned to go rogue. That’s how the Russians see it. Russia needs warm-waters ports that are navigable throughout the year, and do not freeze like the others in the region, and Sevastopol is the only one they have. To think Russia would let Crimea alone, was nothing short of naive thinking. Any sensible country would have taken the same course of action. The precipitating cause of the 2014 aggression was NATO’s bait to Ukraine, which Putin cleverly subverted by offering the then President Yanukovych a fifteen billion dollar aid instead. Yanukovych took the money, but lost his presidency after a civil war and fled led to Russia for asylum.

For the last eight years, Putin has been relatively quiet on the Ukrainian front, but NATO hasn’t been so. They have been selling arms to Ukraine, training the soldiers, and running mock air raids. President Obama, in his wisdom during his Presidency, had blocked the sale of arms to Ukraine with the hope that leaving Ukraine as a neutral state would be beneficial to both NATO and Russia. But that changed with the Trump presidency when sales of arms picked up again. The Russians were increasingly agitated over the courting of Ukraine with the covert blessings of the United States. It was only a matter of time before Russia retaliated. One must understand that Putin belongs to a long line of Russian leaders who believe the attack is the best form of defense. Ivan, the great, the first Tsar, started this practice in the fourteenth century, of expansion as a form of defending Russia’s territory. Peter the Great – who founded the Russian empire in 1721, consolidated that policy, and Empress Catherine, one of the great queens in history, established it as a norm. It was her idea to relocate settle pure-breed Russian-speaking families in Ukraine, hoping that Ukraine, will forever remain loyal to Russia. It was a masterstroke, because even today, the population in eastern Ukraine is predominantly Russian-speaking people. The breakup of the soviet union in 1991 may have been a great event for the west, but as far as Russians are concerned, they are strong believers in historical determinism, and to them either Ukraine should remain neutral or belong to them. Ceding it to the west is not an option at all. In fact, the very idea of Russia as a concept, the roots of the Russian empire began in Ukraine, in Kyiv, along the Dnieper river It is only in the thirteenth century the capital was moved further east to Moscow. So for Putin and Russia, getting back to Ukraine is a matter of pride and fulfillment of Russian destiny, a homecoming for the Russians in Ukraine.

Make no mistake here. The EU or the NATO countries are heavily dependent on Russia for its energy needs. Therefore, stringent sanctions is not a practical option in the long run. The gas pipelines in Russia run from east to west, and Kremlin controls the taps. Countries close to Russia often get good oil deals. Half of Germany’s oil and gas needs are met by Russia. That is why Germany never openly criticizes Russia. It is interesting that India abstained from voting on the UN general resolution condemning Russia’s action, and so did China. This is not the first time India has taken this stand. The Asian countries understand that it needs the power and stability of Russia to counteract the West, and in recent times, China and Russia have been hugging each other, therefore, even if the west decides to cut down the oil intake from Russia, China will buy enough from Russia. India’s dependence on Russia for oil is not so much, but it is in India’s interest that it maintains a diplomatic stance on the current Russian aggression.

So Putin a dictator? Is he the new age Hitler, as the western media seems to suggest? The answer is a categorical No. Russian aggression only began after NATO openly started wooing Ukraine, not before that. As long as Ukraine remained a neutral state, Russia had no problem, but the moment, the west started sending feelers to Ukraine to lure it into a NATO alliance, they were stepping on Russia’s toes. You cannot expect them to remain quiet. War in any form is tragic, and this Russian aggression will lead to the loss of untold numbers of innocent lives. But is Russia the sole cause of this takeover, again No. The West pushed too far, and Russians could no longer hold their peace. What the USA and the NATO countries should clearly understand is that China and Russia do not like them interfering at their border states. The west can call the interference any name they want to – democracy, liberty, freedom, etc; but these words don’t resonate well with these two superpowers. Americans learned their lesson in Vietnam, a lesson about not interfering in others’ internal affairs; and Russia learned a similar lesson in their war against Afghanistan. Western diplomacy is all about filling the world with their brand of ideology, with the ulterior motive, that states who embrace this ideology will be favorable to them – both economically and politically. It is yet to understand that not all people believe in what they believe.

Sir Winston Churchill summed up Russia the best in a BBC broadcast on 1st October 1939. He said:  “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. These are very popular words from the great orator, but very few remember his next few words which are: ” but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest”. Russia is a big land almost six million square miles, with eleven time zones, and twice the size of the United States, with a population of 120 million. It takes six days to cross the country by train. It is really vast!! If History has anything to teach us about Russia and its leaders, it is this fact: they have tremendous pride in their territorial sovereignty and national interest across both sides of the Ural mountains, and if that security is threatened in any way, they will act swiftly and decisively. The fate of Ukraine is almost sealed, as I write these lines, and thousands of pro-western sympathizers have fled the country seeking refuge. What will the future hold for Ukraine, and how Russia will bear the brunt of Western sanctions and the anger of the NATO countries remains to be seen? Unlike the aggression in 2014, which resulted in the claiming Crimea, this time around, the stakes are very high for Russia and the West. Ukraine holds a very strategic position right at the border, and now that Putin has made the move, taken it, and emphatically indicated his intentions, it remains to be seen, how the balance of powers works out. It will, for sure, in some form or the other. For now, Putin has won his battle, but the outcome of the larger war in economic and political spheres is yet to unfold.

Our hearts go out to those people who are caught in the crossfire of this political gameplay, those millions who care nothing for politics or what Putin or the US thinks, and only wish to live a normal life like anybody else. This is the tragedy of war. Ukraine has been in a state of civil war for years, but now they are dealing with an invasion from their mother country. Our prayers are with those who have lost their loved ones, and with those who are in the process of surviving this existential threat. We hope the nations which triggered this war will provide necessary asylum to those who are affected by it, and young children who have had to witness this bloodshed will be given the necessary care and support to start afresh. That is our collective hope.