This article by Tomas Pueyo looks at Russia from a historical and geographical perspective. It makes the case that much of Russia’s foreign policy is based on the need to protect Moscow, which is in the middle of the vast Eurasian plain with no natural barriers for defense, and so is vulnerable to attack from all directions. So Russia’s strategy has been to expand as much as possible, to either control directly the land where invasions might have otherwise come from (e.g. Siberia), or failing that, to at least create predictably controllable buffer states (the former Soviet republics) between them and their rivals. From that perspective, Ukraine may have been becoming too unpredictable as a buffer state recently, giving Russia an incentive to want to control the land directly.
I like a lot of things about this article—it is a high-effort piece, and the graphics are helpful and relevant. That being said, the author is relying on a bunch of conventional-wisdoms that turn out to be false and as a result, the article essentially raises the defense-in-depth point without having any persuasive power.
A central confusion is rivers, which the article treats as a dealbreaker for commerce to and from Siberia but as not existing for military purposes or commerce with Europe. Rivers are major physical obstacles to cross, and often a major transport advantage to follow, so they are extremely militarily important.
Sidenote: there is a close link between commerce and military activity, on account of both requiring the movement of stuff from A to B. Given no other information, ease-of-invasion should be ranked according to the volume of commerce between two locations.
There are several outright historical errors, such as cavalry being obsolete with the appearance of gunpowder because of guns stopping charges.
The point about different ethnicities is raised without being connected to anything else, and then the claim is made that this requires authoritarian government because...reasons? Why did the United States get to skip out on authoritarian expenditures if domestic diversity is the driver, rather than foreign invasion?
In short, the graphics are good and the defense-in-depth point is probably valid, but not for the reasons explained in the article.
A major caveat: the points raised in the article are bad for thinking about object-level reality, but they are extremely common beliefs. This is not only among the public, but extends to people like Congress and non-combat branches of the military. I therefore expect the same is true of Russian legislators, oligarchs, and military people. Therefore it merits higher consideration as a description of the social reality underlying the reasons for invasion.
This article by Tomas Pueyo looks at Russia from a historical and geographical perspective. It makes the case that much of Russia’s foreign policy is based on the need to protect Moscow, which is in the middle of the vast Eurasian plain with no natural barriers for defense, and so is vulnerable to attack from all directions. So Russia’s strategy has been to expand as much as possible, to either control directly the land where invasions might have otherwise come from (e.g. Siberia), or failing that, to at least create predictably controllable buffer states (the former Soviet republics) between them and their rivals. From that perspective, Ukraine may have been becoming too unpredictable as a buffer state recently, giving Russia an incentive to want to control the land directly.
I like a lot of things about this article—it is a high-effort piece, and the graphics are helpful and relevant. That being said, the author is relying on a bunch of conventional-wisdoms that turn out to be false and as a result, the article essentially raises the defense-in-depth point without having any persuasive power.
A central confusion is rivers, which the article treats as a dealbreaker for commerce to and from Siberia but as not existing for military purposes or commerce with Europe. Rivers are major physical obstacles to cross, and often a major transport advantage to follow, so they are extremely militarily important.
Sidenote: there is a close link between commerce and military activity, on account of both requiring the movement of stuff from A to B. Given no other information, ease-of-invasion should be ranked according to the volume of commerce between two locations.
There are several outright historical errors, such as cavalry being obsolete with the appearance of gunpowder because of guns stopping charges.
The point about different ethnicities is raised without being connected to anything else, and then the claim is made that this requires authoritarian government because...reasons? Why did the United States get to skip out on authoritarian expenditures if domestic diversity is the driver, rather than foreign invasion?
In short, the graphics are good and the defense-in-depth point is probably valid, but not for the reasons explained in the article.
A major caveat: the points raised in the article are bad for thinking about object-level reality, but they are extremely common beliefs. This is not only among the public, but extends to people like Congress and non-combat branches of the military. I therefore expect the same is true of Russian legislators, oligarchs, and military people. Therefore it merits higher consideration as a description of the social reality underlying the reasons for invasion.