At the beginning of the month Emmanuel Macron proposed to include Russia into European security architecture and give it some guarantees “the day it returns to the negotiation table”.
That was three weeks ago and the statement has been already downplayed by the French government, but there’s little doubt that in the coming months the idea to include Russia in European security architecture will reappear in Paris and Berlin again and again. The problem with this idea is that Russia by its very nature can’t be a part of European security architecture any more than a wolf can be a part of the security of a herd.
Other countries count their history from attainment of independence or anti-tyrannical revolution. The predecessor of modern Russia, Grand Duchy of Moscow, became independent from the Golden Horde in 1472, 1476 or 1480, depending on how you count. But Russians don’t count the existence of their state from any of these dates. Instead, they start the history of the Russian state from 1478.
Why? Because it was the year when Moscow annexed its much bigger, richer and freer neighbor, one of the handful of democratic states of the era, the Novgorod Republic.
Russian schoolbooks call the main battle between Moscow and Novgorod “a battle for Russian unity”. Novgorodians didn’t see it this way. They didn’t want to unite. For them it was a battle for their freedom and survival. After the occupations thousands of Novgorod citizens were murdered and thousands more forcefully relocated to the east.
The cruel fate of Novgorod and its citizens was shared by the Principality of Tver in 1485, the Vyatka Republic in 1489, the Pskov Republic in 1510 and the Ryazan Principality in 1521. And it was just the beginning. The official history of Russia shamelessly starts with a bloody invasion, and proceeds in the same vein up to this day.
Russian propaganda claims that Russia never was an aggressor and every Russian war was defensive. Nothing can be farther from truth. Sure, Russia had its share of invasions. In the 544 years of its official existence, Russia suffered some 15-20 foreign invasions, excluding minor nomadic plundering raids. But during the same time Russia invaded or annexed other countries more than 100 times.
This numbers does not include fulfillment of Russian allied obligations, as during Napoleonic Wars or WWI, punitive operations against nomads, conquest of sparsely populated territories in Far North and Far East and brutal suppression of popular uprisings in already occupied territories, as in Poland or Chechnya, otherwise it would be several times higher.
One can say that Britain, France or Spain also waged dozens of aggressive wars. That’s true, but there are two major differences between these countries and Russia. First, Britain, France and Spain mostly invaded faraway overseas countries. Russia, on the other hand, almost exclusively attacked its neighbors, with only a couple of exceptions. Being an aggressor overseas is not morally superior, but there’s a significant practical difference between a robber working on the other side of the town and a robber terrorizing his immediate neighborhood.
In the first 5 centuries of its existence the Russian state increased its territory 45-fold, from 0,5 mln to 22,5 mln sq. km, 50 fold, if you count the satellite countries. Today’s Russia is somewhat smaller ― 17,1 mln sq.km, but it’s trying its best to regain the territories it’s lost.
Most people believe that Russia almost exclusively expanded to the east, into Siberian taiga and tundra. But in fact, it also actively expanded west, into Europe. No other state manages to grab from its European neighbors such a huge territory, except France under Napoleon and Germany under Hitler. But both Napoleon and Hitler lost their possessions in a decade. Russian rulers managed to keep theirs for centuries.
It’s understandable, why it should be France that’s looking to include Russia in European security architecture: France has never been a victim of an unprovoked Russian aggression. You can’t say that about Russian neighbors. Russia 7 times invaded Lithuania , 7 times Poland, 6 times Sweden, 8 times Turkey. These countries also invaded Russia, but they did it once or twice, though Russians will tell you that every single Russian war against them was defensive. Because, you know, Russia never attacks. Even today Russia’s trying to paint itself as a victim and Ukraine as the aggressor.
The other major difference between the British, French and Spanish and the Russian empires is that the former were dismantled a long time ago. In the last 100 years Britain, France and Spain aren’t trying to conquer new territories. On the contrary, they have shrunk to their 15th century sizes. In stark contrast, Russia in the last 100 years annexed parts of Poland, Romania, Finland, the entire Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Tuva, and effectively, though not officially, parts of Georgia and Moldova. Today it’s already annexed parts of Ukraine and is trying to occupy the entire country.
Russia can’t be included in the European security architecture because Russia is uninterested in European security. It isn’t a national state like Britain, France or the other states in Europe . It’s an empire whose raison d’être is expansion. While other states are proud of their freedoms or economic power, Russians take pride in how huge their country is and want it to be even huger. The more insecure Europe is, the more Russia is set to gain.
Russia was included in European security architecture, the so-called Concert of Europe, in 1815. In 1854 it had to be thrown out of the concert for repeatedly refusing to play in tune with the rest. In the meantime Russia with exceptional cruelty subjugated Chechens and Circassians, encroached into Central Asia, crushed liberal movements in Poland and Hungary, almost started wars against Belgium and France and finally under a false pretext invaded Turkey.
Russian thuggishness won’t disappear with Putin, at least not for long, it’s ingrained in the Russian state. The most liberal Russian rulers Catherine the Great and Alexander II started aggressive wars just as eagerly as the worst Russian despots Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. Effective Russian occupation of Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russian military help to a tyrannical Tajik regime, and the two bloody wars in Chechnya started under the most democratic Russian ruler ever, Boris Yeltsin.
Until Russia ceases to be an empire and returns to its 15th century borders, it’s and always will be the biggest threat to European security. And we can’t expect it to return to the 15th century borders any time soon. Therefore, the only thing we can do to maintaine peace in Europe is to keep Russia out, fence it off, and arm ourselves up.