
In 1839 the French writer Marquis de Custine travelled to Russia in search of arguments against representative government.
Custine associated that political system with the French Revolution, during which both his father and grandfather had been guillotined. Little Astolphe was an infant at the time, but he understandably grew up with a reactionary mindset.
Hoping to find a sensible alternative to revolutionary depredations, Custine spent three months in Petersburg, Moscow and Yaroslavl. What he found was a tyranny so appalling that he felt suffocated and only began to breathe freely when his carriage crossed the border into Prussia.
Custine then wrote one of the most perceptive books about Russia ever produced by a foreign observer, La Russie en 1839. Three months was enough for Custine to single out a salient Russian trait and gasp: “This country is always on a war footing. It knows no peacetime.”
Well, as Custine’s contemporary so aptly put it, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Fast-forward two centuries, and Russia is on the warpath again. It first attacked the Ukraine in 2014, and the invasion went full scale in 2022.
The war has been raging ever since, and not just all over the Ukraine. The real battlefield in any conflict is laid out in the people’s heads, and it’s there that Putin’s fascist regime has scored a crushing victory.
Perpetual war that so terrified Custine has worked its way into the Russian DNA, where it sometimes stays dormant but never for long. Some expert prodding by perfidious propagandists, and the roar “Let’s march!!!” bursts out of millions of throats.
War, specifically against the West, circumscribes the Russian national identity, even more so than do the thievery and drunkenness so trenchantly described by great satirists from Gogol onwards. Even when Russian troops aren’t in action, any reader of Russian papers may get the impression that war is in full swing.
Every 9 May, when the Russians celebrate victory in the big war, the slogan “We can do it again!” is chanted by millions of marchers. Now that Russia has actually launched a brutal invasion against what is described in the press there as the West, not just the Ukraine, the screams have become deafening.
Putin has made a speech vowing to restore what he called “Russia’s historical territories” and comparing himself to Peter the Great. Since Peter is idolised in Russia partly for his defeat of Sweden, Putin’s braggadocio may be interpreted as a hint that Russia’s expansionist ambitions are directed towards the north-west.
The recent reports by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the RAND think tank add weight to this interpretation.
“In Russia,” say the reports, “the war has become the political system”, and Custine is vigorously nodding wherever he is. “But not ‘has become’,” he adds. “Always has been.”
Both Putin and his propagandists never stop issuing threats against the West, with nuclear annihilation figuring prominently. Mystical allusions, such as Putin’s “We’ll go to heaven, and they’ll just croak,” add poignancy to such diatribes.
But lately the threats have become more focused, with NATO’s newest members bearing the main brunt. Only last month, former Russian president, Medvedev, warned that these neophytes may become targets of nuclear revenge.
That means the three former Soviet Baltic republics along with Sweden, Peter the Great’s nemesis, and Finland, which was Russia’s “historical territory” from 1809 to 1918. In the winter of 1939-1940, Stalin made an attempt to reclaim what Russia considered rightfully hers, but only succeeded in purloining a small piece of Finland at a cost of up to 500,000 Russian lives.
The man who led the Finns’ heroic resistance, Gustaf Mannerheim, had been a lieutenant-general in the Russian Imperial Army, but he wasn’t held back by any nostalgic recollections. Now both IISS and RAND point out the likelihood of another confrontation between the descendants of Mannerheim and the heirs to Stalin.
Satellite intelligence is showing a massive build-up of Russian forces just miles from the Finnish border. Russia is busily expanding the infrastructure at the major bases threatening NATO’s northeastern flank.
Putin has announced the establishment of the ‘Leningrad Military District’ near the Finnish border and the deployment of additional military units in the area. History buffs will remember that it was the forces of the original Leningrad Military District that attacked Finland in 1939. Note that it’s still called the Leningrad, not Petersburg, Military District. The city has changed its name, but the Kremlin hasn’t changed its tune.
“Russia is strengthening its military presence and activities in its northwestern direction in all operational environments as quickly as possible,” says the RAND report. At the same time the Russian high command is war-gaming a massive assault in the direction of the Baltic.
Estonia, Lithuania and Finland are the obvious targets, and the terrain used in the exercises involving some 100,000 Russian troops is similar to that of those countries. Both IISS and RAND insist that, should a ceasefire be agreed in the Ukraine this year, the Russian army will be ready for the next round as early as in 2027.
That’s not to say the Russians will necessarily launch a full-fledged assault straight away. This isn’t how fascist regimes operate, as history shows. Hitler, for example, had made several incremental steps before invading Poland, gradually upping the ante each time.
Neither did Putin invade the Ukraine in one fell swoop. The blow did come in 2022, but not before the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and gradual occupation of parts of the Eastern Ukraine over the subsequent eight years.
Attacking NATO countries would raise the stakes even higher, what with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty stating that “an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against all”. And then what happens?
At this point, the language becomes rather nebulous: “If an attack occurs on a NATO ally, all other members are obligated to assist the attacked party, potentially including the use of armed force.” [My emphasis.]
Potentially may or may not mean definitely, and Putin is likely to test the meaning of that word empirically, by launching a small-scale attack to claim a chunk of Russia’s “historical territory”. NATO will then be faced with a stark choice: either to turn potentiality into reality or effectively to disband, giving Putin the freedom of Europe.
Though the reports don’t say this, I believe the likeliest first target will be the Estonian city of Narva, almost 90 per cent of whose population are native Russians.
The roadmap is well-charted: Hitler cited as his casus belli the plight of native Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland, while Putin used the same stratagem to attack the Ukraine where supposedly a genocide of Russian speakers was taking place. (Version of this lying claim are regularly regurgitated by a certain British columnist.)
The two reports also state the self-evident truth that NATO is ill-prepared for war. Trump is ready to remove US troops and weaponry from Europe, possibly even to withdraw the US from NATO. Whichever way he goes, under his presidency Europe can’t count on US support and must stand on its own hind legs.
That, by the way, adds credibility to the 2027 date put forth by IISS and RAND. Putin isn’t going to delay the attack until another, possibly less amenable, president takes over. Trump’s second term expires in 2029, which makes 2028 the latest, and 2027 the likeliest, date Putin must have earmarked.
The reports also say something that many commentators don’t seem to realise: “Once [the Ukraine war] ends, this shift to a wartime economy, and the attendant effects on the defence industrial sector, will be difficult to reverse without provoking a backlash. As a result, Russia’s leaders may decide to pursue the permanent militarisation of the Russian economy even after the war ends.”
That’s true, except for one detail: Russia’s leaders may not be free to make any other decision even if they wanted to, which they don’t. They simply won’t be able to afford a lasting peace.
The Russian economy has been put on a total war footing, which means it grows without developing. Russia’s cash reserves are close to complete depletion, and no wherewithal exists for transferring the economy into a peaceful mode.
Even if Trump succeeds in easing the sanctions on Russia, nothing resembling the post-perestroika inrush of Western investment is on the cards to smooth the country’s economy going peaceful.
Then, any West-brokered peace treaty with the Ukraine will involve compensation for damages, which at present are roughly equal to Russia’s annual GDP. There will also be the problem of repairing the damage caused by Ukrainian strikes, mainly against the Russian energy infrastructure.
Successfully hit just between September and mid-February were 27 Russian oil and gas storage facilities, refineries, and pumping stations, plus 97 oil storage tanks. It takes hundreds of millions of dollars to restore a refinery, 3-6 billion to build a new one, and that’s just for starters.
Above all, too many resources, especially human ones, are directly involved in the war effort for Russia to be able to change horses in mid-stream. As Custine spotted with his eagle eye, war is the spiritual sustenance of the Russian people – and their rulers’ claim to legitimacy.
Every day I watch appalling videos of life in the Russian provinces, where 20 per cent of the population have no access to indoor plumbing and most people live in abject poverty, below even the miserly poverty level of $150 a month. Nothing new in that, and the Russians can forgive their tyrants for any kind of penury.
What they can’t forgive is the rulers’ failure to ‘make Russia great again’. And greatness is associated in the Russian mind with the ability to bully the world, starting with the country’s immediate neighbours.
As commentators correctly point out, the Russian government is unaccountable to anyone, and it can’t be voted out of office. Yes, but it can be unseated by what Pushkin called “the Russian revolt, senseless and merciless”. Such a revolt breaks out whenever the government is perceived as weak, meaning unwilling to fight wars or unable to win them.
Putin, or whoever follows him, knows that Russia can’t afford peace for both physical and, if you will, metaphysical reasons. That’s why all indications are that the West has a maximum of two years to prepare for the next barbarian onslaught. So we’d better get cracking – or else.