Vladimir Putin A Geostrategic Russian Icon

A Geostrategic Russian Icon

Goeran B Johansson

• Publisher: Goeran B Johansson
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9789198287905
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: History

This book describes the development of events on the global stage in connection with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We get a brief look back at the geopolitical situation in Russia, which was very vulnerable at the time before and after the Kosovo war in 1999, and during the catastrophic development of the return of capitalism during the time of President Boris Yeltsin.
However, since Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, he has been acting resolutely to resolve the border dispute with China and link Germany and Turkey to Russia through various gas pipeline projects. Furthermore, he develops and strengthens relations with SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
The author visits Santa Fe and Cebu in the Philippines, where he dialogues with a retired major from the Swedish military intelligence service, a former US commander of the US Pacific Fleet, and a retired colonel for the border police between Mexico and the United States.
Even at this early stage, there are clear signs of Russia's intentions in the coming years, which may have dramatic global consequences in the near future—detailed source list

Prologue Sweden

That morning, Wednesday, March 24th 1999, I, a music teacher, was on my way to, lo and behold, teach a lesson in German. The new teaching rules said that teachers must be able to go in and teach a lesson in any subject. They were expected to watch the students while they did their private individual studies. This was so that the school would not have to hire substitutes and thereby save money. Yes, yes, nice thought but students were not as much interested in, because they wanted a teacher who mastered the subject. Although I had a complete mastery of music, here in the German class, I felt quite lost.

I took a deep breath for courage and entered into the hall with steady steps. Articulated with attractive labial plosive and thunderous voice, out came my poor vocabulary of German words from elementary school repertoire without any time to think about it:

- Guten Morgen Swedische Jugend!

The students responded with a single voice:

- Guten Morgen mein Fuhrer!

The boys stood up together like men and made a Hitler salute. The girls were apparently not so amused and had down turned mouths showing signs of unease and fear.

The old German doyen, who at the moment was teaching in the hall next door, opened the door, looked in, smiled sweetly and then the lesson continued very well. The students studied in silence according to the instructions I gave to them.

After class, I took a break and went to the cafe to have my morning coffee before the next lesson, but it was canceled and this free time I spent at the coffee table with a delicious cheese sandwich and freshly brewed coffee with a mazarin pastry and read newspapers. Cafeteria staff turned on the TV and the news trumpeted that NATO ¹ had just attacked Yugoslavia and Serbia. I now had to reluctantly see something really vulgar and distasteful as the American pop singer Mariah Carey, lying lightly dressed on the wing of B-1 bomber, singing mushily, caressed the wing plate as if it were an erotic object. This nasty process had an extremely strong negative impression on me.

I will always remember the day when the USA and NATO attacked the sovereign Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War without UN Security Council approval

A Brief History of Russian Geopolitical Development

“What a colossus”, I say, when I look at the Russian Empire map from the 1800s. Alaska still belonged to Russia at this point, although later it was sold to the USA.

On the globe, the dark green areas show the Russian Empire, when it was at its greatest, from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. The light green areas show spheres of Russian influence. Wikipedia: The territories, that were at one time or another, part of the Russian Empire. April 22nd 2011. Graphics: Shadowxfox

Expansion, expansion and again expansion. The result of a necessity to defend the geographically vulnerable European part – the core of the country. There is no natural geographical protection in the form of rivers, mountains or swamps along the borders. People were forced to rely on climate and forests for defense.

But forests only stopped the Mongol riders temporarily. In the early 1200s the Mongols occupied the Russian more or less independent principalities - remnants of Kievan Rus. Then Russia came to be occupied by the Mongols for the next 250 years.

First, with Ivan III (Ivan the Great) in the late 1400s began the process of consolidation around Moscow, and the Russian expansion, mainly north towards the Arctic and also towards the Ural Mountains, accelerates through the constant battles against the invaders.

Ivan IV, nicknamed Ivan the Terrible, fought against Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and the state of Teutonic Order in the effort to conquer and secure areas westwards. The expansion of Russia continued south wards to the Caspian Sea, the Crimea and Grozny. The latter would be a very strategic point in the Caucasus during the Chechen Wars after the dissolution of the USSR in the late 1900s. They also conquered Siberia with the Cossacks and had in the mid-1600s under the Romanov dynasty reached to the Pacific Ocean.

In the 1700s, Peter the Great came to the Baltic Sea and the new capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, was founded. His successor, Catherine II, secured the vulnerable flanks around the Baltics and Ukraine. Through the centuries, Russia had become geopolitically a huge empire that stretched itself from Eastern Europe through the Asian continent to the Pacific and from the Arctic in the north to the Black Sea and Asian deserts in the south.

Russia hardly needed to fear any attack from the Arctic in that situation. Nor from Siberia where the Tien Shan Massif, an offshoot of the Himalayas, provided a good protection.

The Caspian Sea protected Russia from Iran and along the border in Central Asia was mostly lowland consisting of deserts that made any attack virtually unfeasible. Apart from a small area at the border to Afghanistan, a weak point which concerned Russia through the ages.

The Tsar Cannon in the Kremlin. Watercolor by the author.

The Last Decades of the Soviet Union

The year 1945 marked for Europe, and particularly the European part of the Soviet Union, the end of the devastating Second World War.

Harry Truman, the U.S. President at the end of the war, was ultimately responsible for the mass murder of unarmed civilians on August 6th, 1945 when the USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which abruptly ended the war in the Pacific Ocean area.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). Wikipedia. Graphics: Ssolbergj. March 30th 2009.

The Soviet Union, the biggest single winner in the Second World War and the only power that could defeat Nazi Germany in a land war, had now secured its borders and exercised control up to the Elbe River in eastern Germany. East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland were part of the Soviet Union sphere of influence.

The Baltic States were incorporated into the Soviet Union and thus the number of republics that the Soviet Union consisted of finally came up to fifteen. So the open landscape along the North German plateau and Poland which tempted outsider powers for centuries to attack Russia had been blocked.

The Soviet Union also incorporated a German territory around the former Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and the southernmost of the Kuril Islands, which even in the current situation is looked upon with disapproval by the defeated powers in WW2.

After the war there was a long period during the Cold War which was characterized by a massive arms race between the two superpowers, the USA and the USSR. It was a heavy burden for the Soviet system that was wrestling with bureaucracy and inefficiency. Mikhail Gorbachev’s ² attempts to reform the Soviet economy and democratize the society resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26th 1991.

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Table of contents

• Prologue Sweden
• Footnotes