Russia’s long war with the maritime powers

Andrew Lambert

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The ongoing conflict in the Ukraine is only the latest flashpoint in a long-running economic, ideological and cultural contest between the very different world views of Russia and a progressive ‘West’. The Russian regime is defending an autocratic repressive system against western encroachment. Critically, this conflict is asymmetric, the latest iteration of a long struggle between freewheeling maritime economies, shaped by progressive-inclusive politics, capitalism and connectivity – and militarised autocratic regimes that use external threats to reinforce domestic control. These contests tend to be won by progressive coalitions exploiting the asymmetric leverage and financial power that flow from maritime/legal/economic approaches to conflict resolution. Russia has been defeated in many such conflicts.

In geographical terms, Russia’s access to the world ocean has always been compromised by maritime chokepoints (and polar ice), which leave the great bulk of its export economy, bulky products relying on shipping, or pipelines exposed to maritime interdiction, economic blockades based on international law, delivered by superior naval forces. Alfred Thayer Mahan explored this strategy through the British experience between 1660 and 1815, and it was adopted as the League of Nations’ preferred instrument to coerce aggressors in 1919. The inability of the League to execute it should not obscure the inherent power of the method.

While the strategic history of Russian empires across the last 1,000 years has focussed on the generation of military power and the acquisition of territory, the Russian economy, the basis of state power, has always depended on the revenues generated by bulk exports, forest products, timber, tar and pelts, along with agricultural surpluses of grain, hemp and flax, basic iron production and more recently hydrocarbons and military hardware. These bulky, low-value exports relied on maritime communications, ports and ships; the latter usually controlled by foreign powers.