Much has been written trying to understand what Putin wants, but I think there is one aspect of his thinking we tend to underestimate.
Transcript and sources:
What is Putin up to?
I’m not just talking about now, but for years, the West has been trying to understand how Vladimir Putin thinks.
Well, when I was researching this topic I came across something kind of crazy: a book – published before Putin came to power – that appears to lay out his every move.
The invasion of Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014… Even the operations to support Brexit, and to seed social conflict in the US… It was all argued for in this book: Osnovy geopolitiki… [fails to read Russian]
Okay, in English: it’s called “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia” [Online copy of the book]
The author was this guy, Alexander Dugin.
Yeah I know, he’s definitely going for the Rasputin-Bond villain look;
But although the book was ignored in the west, in Russia, it launched Dugin’s career, with his ideas gaining prominence in Russian politics. [See this article by Chance A Nelson and this article in Foreign Policy by Charles Clover]
But this video isn’t just about this one guy or the current crisis in Ukraine.
Rather it’s about something bigger, an idea that will help you understand the news not just now but in future too. It’s the idea, right here in the title of this book: Geopolitics.
In many parts of the world, geopolitics is highly influential but it’s less well known to us in the West, partly because — as we’ll see — it has an unexpected and dark history. And the way to explain all this is to go back to where we began: Russia.
The Ideas That Explain the News: Geopolitics
The word geopolitics is often used in a general way – something vaguely to do with international relations – but actually, it has a more specific meaning: the way geography affects politics; especially how countries act in diplomacy and war. [Wikipedia]
To get a sense of how this way of thinking works, let’s look at things from Putin’s perspective. This is what Russia’s territory looks like today, but go back in time to the original borders, and you’ll see two problems. [Wikipedia]
First: no natural defences.
Unlike the channel that makes the invasion of Britain more difficult, or the Himalayas that have meant few wars between China and India, this area is surrounded by nothing but flat grasslands.
Historically this region – the North European Plain – has been especially vulnerable to attack, with invasions from the Poles, the Swedes, the French under Napoleon, and the Germans in the Second World War. [As well as Dugin’s work, Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography is good on this]
Russia’s response to this weakness has been expansion, so that by 1900 its territory reached north to the Arctic sea; east to take in the huge frozen expanse of Siberia; south, to take in the Caucasus and Central Asia; and west – occupying the plains that today are Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.
The idea was to create a buffer zone, a place to retreat from, with attacking armies slowly defeated by the huge distances and savage conditions.
The second problem is the lack of ports that can be used all year round.
Because although Russia has thousands of miles of coastline, for many months the ports on this coastline look like this. In fact, there’s only one warm water port anywhere near Russian territory, here in this area of Ukraine called… [clips of “Crimea”]
Okay wait, I’m sure you can see where this is going, but first I need to tell you about one more important part of this.
Geopolitics is the connection of politics and geography but it’s not just physical geography – mountains, seas – but human geography too: demographics, religion, culture
This is what Dugin does in his book when he looks at Ukraine, arguing it’s best understood as four different regions. [Chapter 5 of Dugin’s book is the key section]
These areas, so his thinking goes, are Orthodox, and have more Russian speakers, and should be under the control of Moscow, whereas these areas, historically part of Austria or Poland, are more Catholic and pro-Western and should be split off to remove their disruptive influence from the other parts.
Like much of what Dugin says I don’t have time to go into all the dark implications of what he’s saying – I mean splitting up a country based on “ethno-cultural” groups is not an idea with a strong history of success.
But the main point from a geopolitics perspective is that different parts of Ukraine have different attitudes towards Russia, partly based on the underlying demographics, something that will become important because now I want to bring together these various elements to tell the geopolitical story of Russia and Ukraine.
Okay, let’s do this.
At the end of the Second World War, the Russian leader, Stalin, remembering Hitler’s recent invasion of Russia across the north European plain, takes over this area, and for the next 40 years, Russia keeps it under brutal control.
But then in 1989, the USSR starts to crumble, and two years later these countries become independent.
Putin would later call this moment the “greatest geopolitical disaster” of the 20th century. [BBC]
Note, not “disaster”, “geopolitical disaster”.
Before Russia had buffer states, but now many of those states would go on to join Nato, a defensive alliance, but one set up against Russia.
As Putin put it later, Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from.” A phrase that, if you know the geopolitics, becomes much more significant. [BBC]
1991 is also when Ukraine – after 72 years under Russian control – regains its independence. But from the start, a clear geographical divide is evident in elections, and although this is simplifying things, in the years that follow it will be the west of the country that is more pro-European, and the east that is more pro-Russian.
Putin’s approach in many other neighbouring countries over this period is to support pro-Russian leaders as they rig elections and consolidate power.
But in Ukraine, when the pro-Russian President tries to do this in 2004 he’s stopped by mass protests.
In the following years, the country swings between pro-Russian and pro-European leadership until things reach another climax at the end of 2013.
Mass protests are followed by a brutal government response, and finally the pro-Russian leader fleeing the country. At this point, Putin acts.
News clips: ”We begin this hour with Russia’s invasion of Crimea.”
Russia invades, then annexes this part of Ukraine and sends soldiers into these eastern areas: the start of a series of hostile acts that is still ongoing.
Okay, so hopefully now you can see how geopolitics gives an insight on part of Russian thinking,
Crimea gives Russia access to the sea all year round; attacks stop Ukraine from joining Nato, keeping its rival out of this part of the North European Plain; and looking at the human geography reveals why these eastern areas are easiest for Russia to control, and why doing the same in the western areas would be much harder.
But while all this is useful to understand, I’m not saying this means accepting all of Russia’s actions.
Putin always argues that Russia is the victim, its neighbouring countries pulled into Nato and the EU until Russia is surrounded, part of a policy containment, that goes back to the Cold War and to centuries of Western actions designed to keep the Russian empire in place. [BBC]
But while he uses the language of defence – the reality of his foreign policy has been the opposite: invasion, annexation and aggression.
Powerful countries – including Britain in its time – often dress up attack as defence.
The danger comes when thinkers like Dugin use geopolitics to help excuse these actions, presenting them as the inevitable conclusions of a kind of secret science.
During the second world war, it was this version of geopolitics that became notorious in the west, with magazine reports talking of geopolitics being the “super-brain of Nazism”, and this contributed to it being shunned by western academia after the war. [A Very Short Introduction to Geopolitics by Klaus Dodd]
By the time I was studying international relations at university, we never even talked about it
But look at Putin’s actions in Ukraine. While there are other factors in his motivation – the element we tend to miss in the west is this geopolitical thinking. That alone makes it worth understanding.
And finally, geopolitics is worth understanding because it’s true that geography matters. It’s an important factor that shapes how things work,
With the internet and globalisation — it’s easy to forget that space, real physical space — matters, and if we want to understand the news, we’d be wrong to underestimate its importance.
GENERAL SOURCES
A good introduction to geopolitics is Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. Its language is a bit determinist for my liking (“Putin has no choice but to control Ukraine”) but very readable.
Klaus Dodd’s work on geopolitics is very useful. I got a lot from A Very Short Introduction: Geopolitics.
Putin’s 2014 speech https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26652058
Useful article on Dugin in Foreign Affairs (pay-walled) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-03-31/putins-brain