re: #85 HappyWarrior

If I may, if I’m understanding Sergey correctly, Putin operates with considering large bodies of population that have Russians in it and or people who would want to be part of Russia. It’s easier for him to go into Crimea where there has been people there supportive of being annexed by Russia or at least separating from the Kiev government than it would be for him to invade Poland which he would have a much difficult time trying to explain away. And Sergey if I understand you right, this is exactly why you said Belarus would be in trouble if Lukashenko went.

Exactly. There’s more to it, of course.

Reasons:

Stalin’s reason was getting back the Russian Empire territories, as well as what was lost during the Soviet-Polish war. Hence the annexation of the Western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, as well as plans for annexation of Finland, but never an attempt to, say, make Mongolia or Bulgaria official parts of the USSR (despite them being under Soviet control).

Hitler’s reason was Lebensraum.

Putin’s reasons are a mix of political maneuvering to stay in power (the “victorious little war” principle), nationalistic “protection of the Russian population”, as well as of the groups and territories seen as traditionally friendly or even as Russia’s “own” (that includes keeping them from becoming a part of the NATO-member states). And of course expanding the territory based on the “historical rights” principle never hurts as long as it doesn’t actually hurt (see the next point).

As far as reasons are concerned, Poland is right out. Baltics is not, since it has big Russian populations, but that’s what the next point is about.

Logistics and long-term consequences:

Both Stalin and Hitler had merciless totalitarian state apparatuses as well as the resources that made it possible to occupy foreign, unwilling population (such as that in the Baltics and Poland) for a long time through application of extremely brutal measures, including mass deportations.

Russia is simply not there politically and won’t be there for quite some time. It’s authoritarian but not totalitarian. It may happen sometime in an unforeseeable future, but we should be basing our assessments on what the situation is on the ground right now, not on some hypothetical one can always imagine.

Russia is quite poor. Yes, the army has been somewhat regenerated, yes, there are nuclear weapons, but that’s that. There are barely resources to keep the annexed Crimea intact and to clandestinely help the Donbass separatists (the financial side of things is already a headache), much less for any long-term occupation of a completely hostile population which takes 100x more resources, not to mention the human cost.

Both Hitler and Stalin operated in a completely different global political context which is simply in no way comparable to today. What was possible then is inconceivable now. US is hardly the only thing keeping Putin away. While some forces in Europe would like to tolerate the Crimea annexation because they think of it like rightfully belonging to Russia due to its ethnically Russian majority population, even they would not tolerate incursion on the territories that are not seen as traditionally Russian. If Poland were to be invaded, then any European country would be in danger, and even if the likes of LePen were in power, i.e. the nationalists that traditionally support Putin as a fellow nationalist when it comes to Crimea, they would turn against him in a second. Because such an unmotivated invasion of a foreign, non-Russian population would mean danger to their own nations.

So that would lose Putin all his far-right connections and would completely isolate him politically and economically (much more so than the current wobbly and weak pariah-status). Moreover, it would most likely cause a war, because almost no European country would go down without a fight, esp. those with the past Soviet experience, and you bet they would most likely receive help from the fellow European nations (whether they would receive it from Trump or not).

So going into the territories that are not seen as traditionally Russian would with a great likelihood mean an all out pan-European war. Which Putin might even be able to win purely “physically” but which would come at a great cost to Russia and Putin personally, something which is not on the agenda because such an action would not be understood by the Russians (since Poland is not a traditionally Russian territory) and which would lead to dire economic and other consequences for them. Almost the same holds for the Baltic countries which, despite the large Russian populations, are still majority non-Russian and have a deep historical memory of the Soviet occupation, which would mean bloody resistance and, to repeat, Russia is simply not there politically and economically to deal with it.

So there is no point in saying that Russia might physically invade this or that country. Purely hypothetically it can (and so can the US), but it simply won’t happen unless quite a few domino pieces fall into place.