If Russia succeeds in conquering Ukraine by using Putin's BS argument that Ukraine isn't a real country, just land and people that Russia once controlled so must control again, Russia could regret the precedent it sets.
Russia uses an argument for control that will encourage serial wars around the world:
Putin is retroactively creating casus belli by twisting a historic narrative on the record. The history of Kievan Rus is as irrelevant to the current war as the history of the Roman Empire was to World War II. Every country in the world has a historical basis to claim rights to some or all of the territory of its neighbors. The world avoids a Hobbesian war of all against all by rejecting the validity of such arguments. Yet the Kremlin’s constant driving of them continues to divert Western discussions about what to do now into these historical irrelevancies. The Kremlin also forces the West to dedicate energy to an equally irrelevant discussion about whether Ukraine has the “right” to be a state or a nation. No country with a seat in the United Nations and recognized by the overwhelming majority of states in the world has an obligation to prove its right to exist no matter how small or ethnically like another state it might be. This principle is central to the current world order, and its destruction would open the floodgates of war around the world as predators used such reasoning to justify attacks on would-be prey. But the flood of false Russian narratives forces us to engage in such irrelevancies rather than focusing on war-winning strategies and our interests.
Indeed. Can Britain reclaim America? Hell, we're technically English-speaking people. Can Italy lay claim to the old Roman borders? Is Mongolia due a restoration of its glory? Is this a green light for Germany's Anschluss 2.0 with Austria? Ethnic Germans and they speak German! Or can Germany demand Russia return Kaliningrad (former East Prussia)? Good God, don't even glance through your historical world atlas. The chaos it promises to unleash with the Putin Rule will require you to change your underwear.
Russia has no legal claim to own Ukraine. Indeed, Russia has agreed Ukraine is a sovereign state ever since 1945 when Stalin insisted Ukraine have a United Nations seat. That's right, Ukraine is a founding member of the United Nations. Russia also agreed Ukraine was real in 1991 when the USSR broke up and accepted its border. And in 1994, Russia promised it would respect Ukraine's sovereignty and borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that required Ukraine to give up the nukes it inherited from the Soviet Union. America and Britain guaranteed that promise.
But now Putin claims Russia must have Ukraine from history, language, and the dire threat of Ukraine to Russia's security. But how much of a threat is Ukraine when Putin believed Ukrainians were eager for Russian control and that it would require only a parade into Ukraine to win in a few days, as that ISW report I linked above brilliantly observed? And I'll add, Russia handily repelled Ukraine's grand summer 2023 offensive. Are the Russians saying they couldn't have done that at their border? With the modern tanks and armored vehicles--and tens of thousands of troops--they lost between their February 2022 invasion and the summer 2023 counteroffensive?
And then you have the big "oops" moment for Putin's logic. Russia took over large chunks of its Far East from China in the 19th century. If Russia's invasion had gone as planned with Ukraine collapsing and accepting "reunion" with Russia in a couple weeks, China might have been suitable impressed with Russian military prowess.
Oops.
And China has a history of revising its official map to signal that it is now claiming that which it once owned no matter how far back China has to go for the flimsiest of justifications. Indeed, Putin established the precedent that China can demand land Russia has now.
Ominously for Russia, as Russia destroys territory it claims in Ukraine while entrenching NATO's view of Russia as an enemy, China is leaning forward on its border claims on the Russian border:
There was little notice of China's sudden claim of a small amount of Russian territory and calling Russia-controlled territory by their Chinese names in their newly released official map. But Russians surely paid attention to that very dangerous precedent for future claims to reverse Russia's contribution to the Century of Humiliation that China fixates on.
But Putin remains fixated on imaginary NATO threats in the west while outside of the cone of his tunnel vision a gathering storm builds in the east. He has lost his gamble of buying time to face that threat.
That claim is a problem for Russia. As Russia should know.
But Putin thinks Russia is special in China's eyes? He is wrong. Russia has been useful to China. Putin's war in Ukraine threatens that usefulness. That changes calculations in Peking.
As I've observed before, I will enjoy it if China puts Russia's nuts in a vise over those lost Far East territories from China's century of humiliation. For a while, anyway. American interests have to trump seeing Russia get what it deserves. But there is probably a measurable gap between our interests and Russian control of that territory, no?
But that's a crisis I don't want America to face. Hell, defeating Russia and forcing its rulers to accept its western borders might be the biggest favor to Russia that Putin doesn't appreciate.
UPDATE: Preaching to the TDR choir:
The current policy of Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be a demonstration of strength, but in reality, it is a symptom of Russian weakness." ...
Central Asia and the future of Siberia are points of contention, and Beijing is subtly but relentlessly making its territorial claims on the Russian Far East known.
The author says conflict is in their future when current conditions that make Russia-China cooperation a good idea. Which I've addressed: "Russia and China are not allies. They just have more immediate targets. For now."
And this from the preaching author, which is directly related to this post:
Even if this topic is currently being studiously avoided, it has not escaped Russian nationalists that a creeping colonisation is taking place east of the Ural Mountains. Should Beijing take a page out of Moscow’s playbook and distribute Chinese passports to “those in need of protection” in Siberia, Russia would fall victim to exactly the policy it itself is currently practicing in Ukraine.China could use the Putin Rule.
I've also noted the Central Asia contest.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
