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A Recipe for War, Analysis of History, Current Events, Military History, Disinformation, Military History, Russo-Ukrainian War, Historical Education, Parallels to the Cold War, Parallels to Imperial Russia
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July 14, 2022
“…Control of the sea means security. Control of the seas can mean peace. Control of the seas can mean victory…” -John F. Kennedy
Spanning over 20,000 miles and bordering 12 seas in 3 oceans, the coastline of the Russian Federation is no joke, to say the least. Only 3 other countries have more miles of coast than Russia according to the CIA World Factbook. Much wealth lies under the waters near Russia’s coast, in numerous oil and natural gas fields as well as some of the largest fisheries on the planet. Because of the size of Russia’s coastline and Russia itself, Russian cargo ships can leave one of their own country’s ports and reach major international ports thousands of miles apart, like Shanghai and Rotterdam, in only a matter of days (depending on which Russian port they departed from). Russia’s coastline is undoubtedly a valuable asset to the country, yet it may also be one of the country’s greatest vulnerabilities. The problem is that, despite its extensive coastline, Russia is historically very vulnerable to a blockade. That’s because, to access the world’s sea routes, Russian ships leaving most of the country’s ports have to go through chokepoints that in times of conflict can easily be sealed off. Any Russian ships that want to leave the Black Sea, for example, can only do so if Turkey allows them to pass through the narrow Straits which connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Russia’s two ports on the Baltic: Leningrad and Kaliningrad, can be blocked off in a similar fashion by closing the Danish Straits to the Atlantic. Russia’s Pacific ports in the Seas of Japan and Okhotsk, such as Vladivostok, can be closed by any major power that monitors the tiny gaps through the islands that form the boundaries of these seas. And Russia’s long Arctic coastline is blocked to the north by Polar Ice Caps, meaning any Russian ships in these waters have to go through relatively small ice-free passages north of Norway or through the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska if they want to access the outside world. The situation with Russia’s Arctic Ocean is now changing because, due to climate change, the Polar Ice Caps are melting fast. The territory that they cover is expected to shrink in size significantly as the century progresses, meaning that Russian surface ships will have the ability to travel all over the Arctic Ocean, and reach the world’s other ocean’s via this route without much interference. However, this scenario is still some years away from being realized, and until this happens, Russia can easily be blockaded by its enemies. Indeed, massive blockades have been forced on Russia in the past, and it was unable to effectively counter them due to its unlucky geography. However, we’re now seeing Russia blockade an enemy, rather than vice versa. The Russian blockade on Ukraine, whose effects I will discuss more in detail, later on, is one of the most pressing issues in the world right now. In this blog post, I will discuss historical blockades on Russia by its enemies, and why the current blockade may be revenge by Russia’s leaders for them. I will further discuss the havoc that the blockade is wreaking on the global economy, and possible steps that the West can take to put an end to it.
The Vikings that founded the predecessor states of today’s Russia had one of the most powerful fleets in history. Viking ships explored the North Atlantic as far west as today’s Canada, and they so completely ruled the waves off Europe that their unopposed sea raids took them as far as Italy. However, the navy of the Russian Tsardom (soon-to-be Empire), wasn’t founded in 1696 for the purpose of going on far-off expeditions like those of the Vikings. Russia’s new Tsar, Peter the Great, dreamed of giving his country a “window to the West,” something that Russia’s then-main port of Arkhangelsk couldn’t do. Russia’s first fleet conquered Turkish forts on the Azov Sea, but Peter realized that he could never reach Europe from there if the Turks controlled the straits out of it. So he launched the 21-year Great Northern War against Sweden to capture areas of the Baltic coast, and with Russia’s victory, the window to the West was finally open. Over the next century, Russia expanded its coastal holdings, putting the strategically valuable areas of Finland and Crimea under its control, while also building a formidable navy to protect its new gains. Yet in this same period, and in the century afterward, Russia was to learn that its “window to the West” could easily be closed from the outside. Europe’s Great Powers, especially Great Britain, feared that Russia’s expansion was too fast, and was determined to prevent Russia from becoming too powerful. To force Russia to stop its expansion, they blockaded the country several times. One such blockade was launched by Britain in 1807 after Russia signed a peace treaty with Napoleon. Russian ships anchored in Britain were prevented from leaving for some time, and British ships entered the Baltic, capturing Russian naval vessels, while other British ships went as far as the White Sea, where they disrupted local trade. This blockade, however, was less a true blockade of goods than a show of force against Russia, which during this time fought several big wars against and took lots of territory from Sweden, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Russia’s dire economic situation at the time forced it to continue its trade with Britain, whose display of power through the blockade dispelled any doubts in Russia’s leadership on whether or not to continue the trade. Napoleon was incensed by this, as he’d ordered Russia to stop its trade with Britain. This ultimately led to his Invasion of Russia in 1812. The blockade also had the effect of preventing Russia from taking much larger concessions from its neighbors in wars that it won in this period, as Russia’s leaders feared angering the British into starting another blockade. Yet Russian expansion continued in the decades after Greece won its independence from the Ottomans in the 1820s with Russian assistance, provoking the Great Powers into launching a new blockade. However, this blockade came in the form of an all-out conflict: the Crimean War. The British and French decided to help the Ottoman Empire fight the ever-expanding Russia with direct intervention in 1853, and their navies attacked Russian bases all over the empire to enforce a blockade. Allied navies attacked Russian bases in Crimea, the Western Black Sea, Finland, and Kamchatka. They didn’t have much success in conquering territory outside of the Black Sea, but they did succeed in disrupting Russian trade, and then proceeded to invade Crimea. The blockade and mounting losses shattered Russia’s economy, forced it to sue for peace, and temporarily checked its expansion. However, Russia fought another war against the Ottomans from 1877 to 1878 and decisively defeated them with the help of nationalists in former Ottoman territories who wanted to create their own nations. Britain, France, and Austria grew alarmed at the possibility of Russia annexing the area that it conquered, so Britain sent a fleet to the Black Sea and threatened a blockade. Russia backed down and agreed to give countries like Bulgaria and Romania their independence in the treaty that ended the war. Russian relations with Britain and France improved after this until the Russian government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in November 1917. To help anti-Bolshevik White forces fight the Bolsheviks, who the capitalist nations of Britain and France were inherently opposed to due to their communist views, the British and French and other Allies of World War I launched a blockade, as well as a campaign of naval bombardment of Bolshevik positions on the Baltic Sea and the Arctic Ocean. White forces ultimately failed to take Leningrad, the Bolshevik capital, and Kronstadt, the Bolshevik’s main naval base. However, the Allies did help nationalist fighters capture almost the entirety of the rest of Russia’s Baltic coast, and force the Bolsheviks out of there while destroying their navy in the process. The blockade also helped cripple Russia’s economy already battered by war, famine, and disease. This may have prevented the Bolsheviks from expanding further than Russia, as their over-extended and badly-supplied forces were mauled in their attempt to invade Poland. The blockade didn’t prevent the Bolsheviks from taking power in Russia, but because of the devastation to the Bolshevik economy that it caused and the help that it gave to freedom fighters during the Russian Civil War, the modern nations of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania might just owe their independence to it. To some extent, the cordon sanitaire of the 1930s and the containment policy of the Cold War were themselves blockades of the Soviet Union by the West. Ultimately, all the Western blockades and threatened blockades of Russia had the common goal of preventing its expansion, and in this goal, they largely succeeded.
Russia’s current blockade of Ukraine might be seen by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, an avid student of Russian military history, as payback for all the Western blockades against Russia in its history. He may very well believe that the West’s past interference in Russia’s conflicts, through blockades, is the reason why the Russian flag doesn’t fly over places like Constantinople, Tallinn, and Helsinki today. So it’s likely that, at the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian grain talks, Putin’s emissaries will demand some sort of acknowledgment of Russia’s newfound power, to show that a blockade of Russia’s own doing has finally harmed the West like previous Western blockades harmed Russia. Western powers may not exactly embrace the proposal with open arms, but there aren’t really any good alternatives that could actually work. That’s because any alternative that involves somehow removing Ukrainian products from Ukraine without Putin’s consent will be certain to fail due to Russian counter-measures. For example, if the West builds roads in Ukraine to ship Ukrainian products to Europe overland, Russia can easily destroy these roads with missiles or artillery. If NATO instead decides to send military planes and naval ships into Ukraine, as the US did in the late 1980s to protect oil transports in the Persian Gulf from attacks by Iran to prevent oil from reaching its enemy Iraq, this will infuriate Russian leaders. This also will be an unpopular move in the West as it puts NATO soldiers directly at risk of facing Russia’s wrath. If the West instead gives Ukraine new anti-ship, anti-submarine, and anti-aircraft weapons that can be used to fight Russia’s navy, then Russia may be forced to resort to drastic measures such as destroying these weapons right at the Ukrainian border. And it will be a long time before Ukraine’s army will even be capable of using these weapons to such an extent that it will completely prevent Russia’s navy from blockading the country. Even if this will happen in the future, Ukraine’s ships will still have to get through the minefield that Russian forces have created in the northern Black Sea during the conflict. At the same time, Russia can send its own special forces to continue disrupting Ukrainian grain exports. It’s also important to note that even if Ukraine somehow manages to prevent Russia from impacting grain export from territories that it controls, it won’t be able to do anything about the export of grain from Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia as long as the occupation of these territories continues. In the coming days and weeks, some major events can occur that can change the whole situation, and perhaps put Western powers in a better position. However, in this most dangerous of chess games, Putin’s got the West’s king in check with his blockade. We’re already seeing the effects of the inability of Ukraine to get its grain to other countries. Starvation and rising prices have led to the overthrow of Sri Lanka’s government, as protesters stormed the Presidential and Prime Ministerial residences to put an end to the rule of Sri Lanka’s corrupt leaders who failed to end the crisis. More third-world countries could become victims of protests and even revolutions as millions of poor, starving people find themselves in what the UN has called “Hell on Earth.” The Russia-Ukraine talks now being held in Turkey (somewhat ironically, as most Western blockades of Russia started to defend the Ottoman Turks from Russian expansion), will decide whether or not Russia’s navy will continue to blockade Ukraine and prevent its grain from reaching the outside world. Russia may be willing to let the blockade end, but it’s likely that the West will have to give it something in return, some proof of Russia’s successful retaliation against all the previous Western blockades against it. Will the West be willing to do this? Now, we can only wait and see, and hope.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Russian_War_(1807%E2%80%931812)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Suomenlinna#CITEREFNolan1855
http://marksrussianmilitaryhistory.info/Petropavlovsk1854/Petropavlovsk1854.html
https://russia.rin.ru/guides_e/6931.html
https://warontherocks.com/2022/04/the-russo-ukrainian-war-at-sea-retrospect-and-prospect
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-by-coastline
https://www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/11541/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Polish-War-1919-1920
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Russo-Turkish-wars
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/coastline/
https://www.history.com/news/vikings-in-russia-kiev-rus-varangians-prince-oleg
https://www.iea.org/articles/energy-fact-sheet-why-does-russian-oil-and-gas-matter
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-aboard-the-uss-kitty-hawk
https://www.reuters.com/world/turkey-russia-ukraine-un-set-meet-grain-exports-2022-07-13/
Image Sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Will
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kronstadt-raid-august-1919-eric-sibul
One response to “The Blockade, and How the West can Respond”
[…] to retaliate, and more to political pressures that forced its hand. The first blockade (see my post about it) caused worldwide hunger and famine. It was devastating for many Third World countries that […]