The Geopolitical Past of the Present
Long time after the end of the Second World War, the feeling in front of the ruthless violence of an Army invading an independent country, member of the United Nations, is a mix of incredulity, surprise and indignation. Quoting Angela Merkel, Mr. Putin behaves as a leader of the Dark Ages, talking "about spheres of influence and territorial claims that we know from the 19th or 20th-century but thought were a thing of the past".
Putin's (personalization is, in this respect, truly due) aggression of a sovereign State through a "total War" – a term itself we thought buried under the ashes of history – has been attributed to a mix of egocentrism, search for internal political consensus, chances of definitely smashing the internal opposition, and the impersonal chain of decisions apparently under control but in the end unstoppable. All important, all however insufficient.
History and geopolitics can help. Geopolitics highlights the spatial/geographic side of the problem. History helps to frame the present strategic choices in the stratified thinking of leaderships.
The premise itself of this war is both geopolitical and historical: it stems from Russia's dissatisfaction with the post-Cold War World order, led by an incumbent, the US, challenged by a rising opponent, China. A new bi-polar order from which Russia is excluded. Geopolitically speaking, however, there is a great opportunity for Russia in the US. refocusing towards the Pacific, leaving a vacuum of power hardly filled in by a (so far) weak EU.
A frequent mistake in modern international relations theories is to credit leaders as Mr. Putin as rationale actors. As historians know well, instead, political decisions even at the top level, particularly in absence of check-and-balance systems, may be driven by obsessions. Three in particular drive the tragic decisions of the Russian leadership, all of them both historical and geopolitical.
The first obsession is the ghost of Soviet Union as the core "capital" of (using the jargon of geography) a Pan-region, that is a supra-regional unit of semi-continental or even continental size, and the uneasy acceptation of the current, perceived or real, ranking of big powers. The core capital must still be respected.
The second obsession is the idea that this geographic core (a "pivot area", as old geopolitical thinking defined it) is constantly under external threat by hostile powers trying to contain and encircle it, given its innate might. Breaking encirclement is a derivate strategy, which includes the medieval attitude of Russian leadership towards feudal autocrats in the territories bordering the "Empire".
The third obsession, in part linked to the first, is the idea that the sole future political geography acceptable for Russia is something again rooted in history. A "concert of big Powers" (very similar to that governing the World after the Napoleonic Wars), supposed to lead the above mentioned pan-regions. For sure, US. and China, but of course Russia and India. The fate of EU, well, it has to be seen.
What has to be done to neutralize the poisonous mix of these three obsessions which are translating into a lethal assertiveness on Ukraine's ground is, of course, not suggested here. The attempt, here, is to put forward some logics in the illogicity of a 19th century war which is taking place in the wrong era – unfortunately, a frequent task for historians.