In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia. That wasn't just a single decision made from Paris. It took Napoleon 15 years to have what he needed to invade to Russia. What did he need? Control over all of Europe. Why did he need it? Because he needed soldiers, materials, and most importantly, logistics. One cannot simply take an army from Paris and March them all the way to Russia without supply chains, and if your supply chains stretch from Paris to the Russian border, they're going to break easily.

So Napoleon spent 15 years militarily dominating all of Europe which created the necessary preconditions for him to invade Russia. That was a Western European invasion of Russia and it was incredibly bloody and devastating. One of the most important aspects of Russia's defense against the invasion is that they had troops stationed deep into Western Ukraine. Napoleon had to go North and invade through Lithuania, and that was more defensible for Russia. If Russia had not been able to force this through its garrison on Ukraine, Napoleon's invasion would have occured over what is today the border between Russia and Ukraine, because that border is much easier for an invasion force to cross.

Russia repelled essentially the combined force of all of continental Europe in that war, but at a very cost.

The next major invasion of Russia was initiated by Western Europe and the US as part of WW1. The US, Britain, and Japan invaded from the East, and Western continental Europe invaded from the West. Specifically they didn't want Russia to choose for itself that it would be communist. They thought they could stop Russia from choosing it's own system of government by invading them. But how did they get to Russia? WW1 required the creation of supply chains and the mobilization of forces across all of Europe. Because they were already mobilized and operating logistically, they were able to push their troops just a little further to reach Russia. They ultimately failed to achieve their goal because their troops were tired and their systems were strained after years of war, especially at that distance.

The next time Russia was invaded was by the Third Reich. Hitler, in Mein Kampf, had stated quite clearly that his goal was to invade and occupy Russia. But again, he couldn't just raise an army and send it across all of continental Europe for the same reasons Napoleon couldn't. So, the Third Reich had to militarily occupy all of Europe first, aggregate their resources and recruit soldiers, build logistics and supply chains across all of Europe and only then could the Third Reich invade Russia. And their first target was Ukraine. They invaded and built up logistics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, and then using their position in Ukraine were able to invade Russia through the least defensible border. Western Europe had again invaded Russia.

What all three of these invasions have in common, besides being invasions of Russia by Western forces for the purposes of dominating Russia and controlling it, is that it required military occupation, mobilization, and readiness that spanned the entire continent of Europe. Russia could see Napoleon coming 10 years before the invasion. The USSR could see the Third Reich coming 10 years before the invasion. When you look at the invasion not as a surprise attack but rather the results of a decade of physical mobilization of military logistics spreading from the command centers of Western Europe across all of continental Europe, you might get where I am going.

NATO is the modern formation of this Western attempt to invade Russia. NATO starts with all of Western Europe agreeing to pool their military resources and stop fighting each other. It requires that all members give up sovereignty over the parts of their country that NATO logistics and readiness require. Soldiers on NATO bases are not subject to local laws. NATO started off in Western Europe and has been expanding it's supply chain and logistics across all of Europe, this time not by fighting but through comprador governments, economic pressure, and propaganda. As NATO builds military bases, recruitment, aggregates material and soldiers from all of continental Europe, it looks a lot like Napoleon or the Third Reich from the perspective of Russia. Which is why Russia said that Ukraine joining NATO was a red line. Russia has never been able to easily defend against an invasion via the border with Ukraine. It always suffers heavy losses. It's an indefensible border.

So from the perspective of Russian military security, it looks like NATO has been expanding across continental Europe, accruing material and soldiers, building supply chains and readiness, and traveling from West to East towards Russia, establishing bases all long the Russian border. No matter how many times NATO countries say "it's for defense", it looks exactly like every other time Russia was invaded.

That's why it looks like the West is the problem here. The West is creating a military readiness threat that Russia cannot defend against without massive losses, potentially can't defend at all with the advances in warfare. So Russia's national security assessment was that, like in times of Napoleon, like in the aftermath of WW1, and in response to WW2 and NATO expansion, it must have military readiness and deep layered defenses on the southern border where Ukraine sits or it faces an existential threat of invasion that it may not be able to recover from.

[–] Aimchi007@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for the critique and i agree with you that that specific point of mine was weak. The problem is that what you said can very well start being a justification for Russia to conquer essentially any land and say 'well its for our security' sure that might be so but unlie Napoleonic wars WW1 WW2 there are nukes and Russia has plenty of them along with a system inhereted from soviets(im talking about the one where missials could be launched automatically if administration is down).

[–] frisbird@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

I don't see how it could be used that way. As I detailed, the stretch of land that is currently the present day border between Russia and Ukraine has consistently been the most advantageous point of invasion for any adversary and has been for centuries. This is why Russia said that moving NATO operations into Ukraine was a security red line. What that means is that Russia was saying that if the West wants to be in a trusting mutually secure relationship, don't station a nuclear military in the most vulnerable point of Russian security.

What it justifies is taking military action to secure that border in the face of an operational nuclear military threat.

What it doesn't justify is Russia invading Germany, or France, or Romania, or Italy, or Greece or whatever. There's no reasonable way to interpret the military history I detailed as "this justifies Russia invading anyone and everyone". It's specifically about a single vulnerable border.

The bigger problem with the Western narrative about Russian beligerence is that it denies the most important concept in military security - security is bounded. Either you are inside the security regime or you are outside. If you are inside, then security is mutual. If you are on the outside, then security is zero sum.

When the USSR was dissolved, it was a moment within a process of detante with the US started by Russia. Russia wanted to be allies with the USA and stop being adversarial. They wanted to trade, they wanted to ensure mutual security, and they were willing to make concessions to make this happen. Putin, as leader of Russia, was actively pursuing membership on NATO for years with the entire Russian government supporting it, because security is either mutual or it is preparation for war.

In discussions of mutual security, everyone knows that the stretch of land that is the present day Russia-Ukraine border is highly vulnerable. Since the early 1990s Russian leaders and diplomats have been making it clear to the West that they know this and that they know the West knows it, and that in the interest of mutual security Russia will not be able to tolerate a foreign military presence at that border.

What happened? The West denied Russia membership in NATO and continued to develop their own security while denying that Russia was allowed to have any legitimate national security concerns.

Like your statement, born of the Western narrative, any Russian complaint about their national security was illegitimate and could be a slippery slop to Russia invading anyone and everyone. The line "Russia doesn't get to decide who is in NATO" is literally saying "Russia has no legitimate security concerns and we will do whatever we want wherever we want and they can't stop us".

That's explicitly putting Russia outside of the security context. That's creating the conditions for war. And all Western leaders, civilian and military, understand this. It is a fundamental tenet of international security frameworks. There is no interpretation other than the West is more interested in dominating Russia than it is in partnering with Russia.

And so, Russia did the only thing it could do, and the same thing that it did back in Napoleon's time - it garrisoned Ukraine. It invaded Ukraine and built a deeply layered defensive formation on the border. It secured the border and then held it. It hasn't advanced, it hasn't tried to take all of Ukraine or even substantially more of it. It has spent its entire campaign strengthening its defenses and degrading the capabilities of the West that have been deployed to Ukraine as a proxy.

Russia is essentially responding perfectly rationally to the military behaviors of the West in the context of the last 200+ years of military behaviors of the West, and the West is talking like they too are behaving rationally but if you analyze the behaviors of the West they look exactly like a block that has every intention of dominating Russia and in fact has never stopped having that intention for over 2 centuries.