Physical and geographic features of Russia's defense space.

The late 20th-century change in the correlation of world economic, political and military forces had a considerable effect on Russia's economic-geographic, political-geographic and military-geographic position. There are new geopolitical conditions associated with the end of the Cold War, the disintegration of the USSR, and the actual assertion of a one-pole world. Many hundreds and thousands of nuclear-carrying vehicles that the U.S. and other NATO countries have at their disposal, though currently not aimed at Russia, can at any time be given flight assignments tailored for the former USSR. With this in mind, we must comprehensively take into account all geopolitical defense influence factors, primarily the geographic position of the sides (Fig.).

Russia's geopolitical status changed radically in the latter half of the 20th century. The coming of long-range bomber aviation, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and atomic submarines with an unlimited range brought about a situation where facilities deep inside the territory of Russia could no longer be seen as invulnerable. This also affected many other countries located far from the traditional theaters of operations. Space and time "contracted," since the high speed of missiles leaves the parties involved very little time for decision-making. It became necessary to rethink physical-geographic features and capabilities in the defense sphere.

While choosing the means for expanding its defense capabilities, each state proceeds from its geographic position. The defense space of modern Russia has both positive and negative aspects. The positive points are the following.

First. Russia is a great continental and maritime power. It has no equals in the world in the size of territory, length of the state border, variety of nature and abundance of natural resources constituting its national wealth and the basis for the further expansion of its defense capabilities.

From the geographical point of view, Russia is a single space with a huge planetary continental geopolitical structure, a space stretching from the East European states in the West to the Chukot meridian in the East. Nearly 75% of its territory is in Asia and 25% in Europe (mostly northern). Its north to south length is over 4,000 kilometers and east to west length almost 10,000 kilometers. The Russian Federation's territory boasts (with a short break) 11 time zones. Its immense single continental space gives it considerable advantages in the area of defense capabilities by comparison with other world countries.

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Second. Russia is distinguished by a unique geographic position. This country is a link between the biggest states of Eurasia and the center of the world community. This gives it the right not only to be actively involved in the life of Europe, Asia and Oceania but also to implement a well-considered real military policy aimed at strengthening its defense capabilities.

Third. Russia is a world maritime power. Its territory is washed by 12 seas and three oceans--Atlantic (less than 1,000 kilometers), Arctic (12,000 kilometers) and Pacific (18,000). The total length of the mainland coastline is in excess of 60,000 kilometers (108,000 km with islands).

Being, in effect, Eurasia's "axial state," Russia, by virtue of its favorable geographic location, raw material wealth, and size of territory (one-eighth of the planet's surface), plays an immense geopolitical role. Despite Russia's current economic and military weakness, the modern world (whether it wants it or not) will, from the geographical point of view, rotate around the axial state which in some way or other will always remain great unless yet another "fifth column" blows it up from within into small pieces. But even in this case, as I see it, the change of political elites and their political reorientation in any direction will not lead to the diminution of its axial importance.

Russia's isolated continental location has its disadvantages too. The chief one is its immense continental latitudinal extent (from the Baltic and the Norwegian seas to thousand-kilometers-long Pacific coast). Indicative in this sense is a comparative evaluation of the location of the USSR and the U.S.A. as provided by the Memorandum of the Soviet Government on the Matter of Disarmament (1957). It noted that the situation of the USSR and the U.S.A., from the point of view of requirements for their security, was not the same in many respects. Said the document: "It cannot be disregarded that the Soviet Union has a much larger territory than, for example, the territory of the U.S.A. as well as much longer borders which, to be securely protected, require an appropriate amount of armed forces." (1) The United States is in a totally different position, there being no danger threatening its borders. (2)

Apart from that, the advantages of the Russian Federation's geographic location are leveled, in the modern conditions, by the rapid development of information technologies, communications equipment and all types of transport, something that has led to a substantial drop in the importance of large geographical spaces. In the past, it was what Russia's and the Soviet Union's main geopolitical calculations were based on. Unlike the past wars, however, there is no point in Russia today that is hidden from space observation and impervious to precision weapons, even despite the huge size of its territory.

Unfavorable climatic conditions can be listed among other geographic disadvantages. Russia's territory is exposed to practically the entire spectrum of dangerous natural phenomena and processes of geological, hydrological and meteorological nature that affect this country's defense capabilities. The biggest danger is associated with floods as well as earthquakes that can occur in around 20% of the national territory (particularly so in the East).

Influenced by the geographic peculiarities of its heartland position, Russia's defense has always been of a forced territorial nature implying organization of resistance to invasions coming from different sides and sectors. Today, however, its Armed Forces are unable to reliably provide for national security through an even disposition of troops (forces) along the entire huge border perimeter. The situation grows complicated many times over due to our potential adversaries acquiring new advanced weapons, including long-range precision weapons which make it possible to deliver strikes at every point in the Russian territory, including operational disposition areas of missile formations and units. As is evident from experience, present-day attack weapons enable the enemy to achieve his political goals in a war even without capturing a country's territory and with a defending army preserving much of its combat capability.

The natural environment goes long toward determining Russia's territorial-defense capabilities. In totality, the natural conditions and the natural resources form our natural potential, that is, maximal capabilities built in into nature, which can be used by the state to meet civilian and military needs of society. This country is the world leader in proven reserves of many strategic types of minerals, being the only state in the world that is fully supplied with its own mineral resources. It is in possession of 17-18% of the world reserves of oil; 70-75% of gas, diamonds, tantalum, and niobium; as much as 50% of palladium; over 40% of nickel; as much as 30% of coal, iron ores, rare-earth elements, and beryllium; and over 10% of uranium. By early 2000, Russia explored over 20,000 mineral deposits. (3)

On the whole, the state of Russia's mineral resources is such as to make it possible to meet the needs of the domestic industries and the defense-industrial complex on the full scale. And yet, we feel an acute shortage of such minerals as manganese, chromium, aluminum, and titanium that are extremely necessary for the defense industry. Besides, the ores of ferrous, non-ferrous and rare metals at many a Russian deposit are inferior to their foreign counterparts in technological qualities and useful content. (4) In this connection, a speedy development of explored reserves of natural resources in the Eastern region is absolutely necessary if Russia is to expand its defense capacities and strengthen its defense capability. Today one can state with certainty that mineral resources are a crucial source of our being and of our defense capability. But it wouldn't be quite correct to link the future of our Armed Forces with it and it alone.

The climatic conditions substantially complicate the realization of Russia's defense capabilities. True enough, they repeatedly came to the aid of the Russian people in conventional wars (where neither MDW nor PW were used)--such as those that began in 1812 and 1941--in which the enemy had to operate in exceptionally unfavorable harsh winter conditions. At the present time, however, when standoff wars predominate that employ precision weapons on a massive scale, this factor does not provide sufficient ground for feeling safe.

Early 20th-century military geography manuals asserted that armed warfare on the northern borders of the Russian Empire was impossible because of the Russian North being harsh and hard-of-access. Alas, it was a profound delusion. As early as the first years of the Soviets, this nation had to take up arms in order to chase the U.S. and British invaders from Murmansk, Archangel, Dickson Island and other northern territories. During the Great Patriotic War, it disrupted the German attempts to seize northern areas and thence threaten the USSR's vital interests. In the modern conditions, the Arctic is of much international importance. It is where the shortest airways between the Russian Federation and the United States pass. Until recently the U.S. military strategists viewed the Arctic in their future plans as one of possible theaters of operations.

Not only do the harsh climatic conditions in the Arctic zone create difficulties in the life of the population, they also restrict the military activities. Those organizing all types of combat training as well as the material-technical and medical support must thoroughly take into account the impact of northern conditions on personnel, combat equipment, weapons and transport vehicles and be mindful of the fact that the harsh climate complicates combat alert duty and maintenance of WME in a high state of readiness for being used.

The remoteness from Central Russia of East Siberia and the Far East, their unsatisfactory infrastructural organization, particularly so in the area of transport and communications, are factors turning these regions into a defense vacuum zone. In many respects, the situation grows worse in view of the dwindling of the local population and a simultaneous large-scale Chinese migration, something that significantly reduces the Russian Federation's defense capabilities in the Far Eastern region. If the situation continues to deteriorate, Russia runs the risk of losing, within the next few decades, not only the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin but also the Far Eastern lands as a whole, along with its outlet to the Pacific, this even without an armed aggression. Regrettably, this can happen in consequence of a forced, Center-provoked (under the pretext of market non-profitability) exodus of Russians from the Far East.

Rather than a whim, the infrastructural organization of the Northern and Eastern regions is, as I see it, an urgent necessity, for the case in point is the nation's survival. This is something that the absolute majority of inhabitants of Russia understand and it may well serve as a unifying idea for the peoples of this country as well as the basis for constructive decisions aimed at the further strengthening of Russia's economic and defense might.

But how could a decent existence be then secured for the peoples of the Russian Federation in the territory that history had given them? How should its defense capabilities be built up rather than lost in these forbidding conditions? As I firmly believe, a general strategy should be formulated and certain landmarks--that is, a list of measures toward its implementation--assigned for the peoples of Russia to take purposeful actions with the aim of solving this problem. In my view, it makes sense to perform the quantitative and qualitative buildup of the Russian Federation's physical-geographic defense capabilities along the following main lines.

First, to take measures for an all-out development of Russia's northern transport infrastructure, because the oceanic constraints and the forbidding climate do not permit to use the Northern Sea Route with sufficient efficiency. New transportation technologies have to be introduced, primarily a ramified rail network that will enable versatile enrichment of local life infrastructure. Construction and operation of transcontinental roads in the vast expanses of Siberia and the Far East will bring in their wake a more efficient industrial development and, inevitably, a migration to these areas. Railways and motor roads can work wonders where development of eastern and northern regions is concerned, preventing their isolation and secession from Russia.

Second, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East must be turned into the backbone of Russia's geopolitical future. At the same time, one shouldn't overestimate the natural and purely spatial factor in the development of this country. The natural geographic position (might) can become a real positive military-political factor, but this depends on the people living in Russia, primarily the Russian people who form the basis of the Russian state. As I see it, only the Russian people (80% of the total population of this country) is capable of transforming the natural economic potentialities into really operating productive forces, which will make it possible to maintain the Russian Federation's defense might at the necessary modern level.

Third, Russia, in overcoming resistance of the United States and a number of other states, must display its will, and, like in the past centuries, do all it can to develop the eastern areas. If we fail to do that, it will be done by others--the U.S. or our western and eastern neighbors. So far favorable conditions existed and continue to exist for us in the country's northern and eastern fringes, conditions that restrict penetration of other industrial powers. Russia's Center must turn east--today. Tomorrow will be late. The East will imperceptibly go and become the property of others, something that will deal a considerable blow to both Russia's economic might and defense capabilities.

It should be stressed once again in conclusion that the vast size of the territory in conjunction with the huge natural resources are an important element of the economic and military potential of Russia. The geographical conditions enable it to withstand an aggressor's onslaught for longer than other countries (West European ones, for example). Despite the reduced importance of the space factor as an obstacle in the way of an enemy in the course of military operations, the big size of the country and the variety of its nature have not lost their value in the matter of development and location of the defense-industrial complex or disposition and dispersion of troops (forces). The important thing is to prepare the Armed Forces with account taken of Russia's physical-geographic features and those of appropriate strategic sectors (regions).

NOTES:

1. Pravda, September 21, 1957.

2. Ibidem.

3. Novaya Rossiyskaya Entsiklopedia, Vol. 1, Entsiklopedia Publishers, Moscow, 2004, p. 30.

4. Ibidem.

N. Ya. LYSUKHIN

Peter the Great Strategic Missile Forces Military Academy

Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor