The number of well-informed commentators, politicians, blogger and observers who are predicting a war – or at least of a serious risk of war – between Russia and the USA is sharply rising. Though I myself am rather inclined to believe that the US will use the Ukrainian junta to attack Russia rather then risk a direct confrontation, I would not go as far as saying that I find a direct US-Russian war impossible. If only because many wars are not deliberately started, but rather stumbled into. For all these reasons, it is, I think, high time to look at the historical record of Russia in wars.
It turns out that a military historian in Russia already did all the work for us. Nikolai Shefov is the author of 10 books about Russian history including one entitled “The Battles of Russia” in which he not only looks at each war, but actually at all the major battles fought in all the wars of Russia between 1700 and 1940 (he stops at the Soviet-Finnish war and does not include WWII). Here are his findings:
Between 1700 and 1940 Russia/USSR fought in 34 wars and won 31 and in 392 battle and won 279. We could say that Russia won 91% of her wars and 71% of her battles. Russia’s opponents included: Swedes, French, Germans, Turks, Poles, Tatars, Finns, Caucasians, Japanese, Chinese, Austrians, Hungarians, British, Italians and Central Asians.
In the author’s opinion Russia lost only three wars: the Crimean one, the Russo-Japanese one and the one against Poland in 1920. He considers that Russia won the first world war because no enemy ever stepped on any part of the Russian land (If you are interested, here is a link to an the original book in Russian, to an article summarizing the book, and to a machine-translation of this article into English).
I would just add that Crimea was fought against what I call a “great ecumenical coalition” (including Anglican British, the Latin French and the Muslim Turks) which outnumbered the Russians by over 200’000 people (there was almost a MILLION “ecumenical attackers” for just over 700’00 Russian defenders. But yes, Russia did lose this one.
Did Russia lose the war against Japan? I would argue that the Russian Fleet sure was defeated by the Japanese Navy, but Japanese historians have a very different view of what happened and consider that Japan’s military was spent by the time the peace treaty was drafted (by the Russian side, by the way) and that Japan had been forced to accept very bad terms. At the very least, I would call this one a draw.
As for the Russian-Polish war, yes, the Soviet’s lost this one badly. But look at the kind of Soviet Union we had in 1920: a country in the midst of a civil war, with many uprising taking place, with a “worker-farmer” “army” with no real officers and let by clueless commissars. So while the outcome was a defeat, the circumstances of that defeat are, I think, so unique as to be irrelevant.
But whatever the fine print and different views of the significance of individual outcomes, I think that these figures strongly suggest that attacking Russia is an exceedingly bad idea, even when only conventional wars are considered. Attacking Russia while she has the powerful nuclear arsenal on the planet is utter lunacy.
Let’s hope that this short reminder will reach at least one of the crazies who think that playing a game of chicken with Russia is a sound policy and that the Russians will “blink first” impressed by the US/NATO military prowess.
It has been said that no one ever conquered Afghanistan. Amerika knew that, but did not listen. How did that work out?
No one has ever conquered Russia either. Amerika knows this, but won’t listen. I wonder how that will work out?
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Russia’s “Startling” Proposal To Europe: Dump The US, Join The Eurasian Economic Union
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/04/2015 16:02 -0500
Slowly but surely Europe is figuring out that as a result of the western economic and financial blockade of Russian, it is Europe itself that is suffering the most. And while Germany was first to acknowledge this late in 2014 when its economy swooned and is now on the verge of a recession, now others are catching on. Case in point: the former head of the European Commission, and Italy’s former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi who told Messaggero newspaper that the “weaker Russian economy is extremely unprofitable for Italy.”
The other details from Prodi’s statement:
Lowered prices in the international energy markets have positive aspects for the Italian consumers, who pay less for the fuel, but the effect will be only short-term. In the long-term however the weaker economic situation in countries producing energy resources, caused by lower oil and gas prices, mostly in Russia, is extremely unprofitable for Italy, he said.
“The lowering of the oil and gas prices in combination with the sanctions, pushed by the Ukrainian crisis, will drop the Russian GPD by five percent per annum, and thus it will cause cutting of the Italian export by about 50%,” Prodi said.
“Setting aside the uselessness or imminence of the sanctions, one should highlight a clear skew: regardless of the rouble rate against dollar, which is lower by almost a half, the American export to Russia is growing, while the export from Europe is shrinking.”
In other words, just as slowly, the world is starting to grasp the bottom line: it is not the financial exposure to Russia, or the threat of financial contagion should Russia suffer a major recession or worse: it is something far simpler that will lead to the biggest harm for Europe’s countries. The lack of trade. Because while central banks can monetize everything, leading to an unprecedented asset bubble which if only for the time being boosts investor and consumer confidence, they can’t print trade – that all important driver of growth in a globalized world long before central banks were set to monetize over $1 trillion in bonds each and every year to mask the fact that the world is deep in a global depression.
Which is why we read the following report written in yesterday’s Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten with great interest because it goes right to the bottom line. In it Russia has a not so modest proposal to Europe: dump trade with the US, whose call for Russian “costs” has cost you another year of declining economic growth, and instead join the Eurasian Economic Union! From the source:
Russia has presented a startling proposal to overcome the tensions with the EU: The EU should renounce the free trade agreement with the United States TTIP and enter into a partnership with the newly established Eurasian Economic Union instead. A free trade zone with the neighbors would make more sense than a deal with the US.
It surely would, but then how will Europe feign outrage when the NSA is found to have spied yet again on its “closest trading partners?” Some more on Russia’s proposal from EUobserver:
Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver: “Our idea is to start official contacts between the EU and the EAEU as soon as possible. [German] chancellor Angela Merkel talked about this not long ago. The EU sanctions [on Russia] are not a hindrance”.
“I think that common sense advises us to explore the possibility of establishing a common economic space in the Eurasian region, including the focus countries of the Eastern Partnership [an EU policy on closer ties with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine]”.
“We might think of a free trade zone encompassing all of the interested parties in Eurasia”.
He described the new Russia-led bloc as a better partner for the EU than the US, with a dig at health standards in the US food industry.
“Do you believe it is wise to spend so much political energy on a free trade zone with the USA while you have more natural partners at your side, closer to home? We don’t even chlorinate our chickens”, the ambassador said.
The treaty establishing the Eurasian Union entered into life on Thursday (1 January).
It includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia, with Kyrgyzstan to join in May.
Modelled on the EU, it has a Moscow-based executive body, the Eurasian Economic Commission, and a political body, the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, where member states’ leaders take decisions by unanimity.
It has free movement of workers and a single market for construction, retail, and tourism. Over the next 10 years, it aims to create a court in Minsk, a financial regulator in Astana and, possibly, to open Eurasian Economic Commission offices in Astana, Bishkek, Minsk, and Yerevan.
It also aims to launch free movement of capital, goods, and services, and to extend its single market to 40 other sectors, with pharmaceuticals next in line in 2016.
And as a reminder: The Eurasian Economic Union, a trade bloc of former Soviet states, expanded to four nations Friday when Armenia formally joined, a day after the union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan began.
So the ball is in your court, Europe: will it be a triple-dip (and soon thereafter quadruple: see Japan) recession as your Goldman-controlled central bank plunders ever more of what little is left of middle-class wealth with promises that this year – for real – is when it all turns around, or will Europe acknowledge it has had enough and shifts its strategic, and trade, focus from west (speaking of the TTIP, Germany’s agriculture minister just said “We can’t protect every sausage” referring to the TTIP) to east?
Considering just whose interests are represented by the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, we won’t be holding our breath.
One quibble, yes, the russians did lose in World War I. They lost every major battle the germans simply didn’t much care about occupying russia. They could have done so had they wished. The russians were no threat to them by 1917 and the germans said, “great, now we can move troops over to France. I’m not sure how you have your society collapse as a result of the pressure of a war, lose every significant engagement in it and yet you say you haven’t lost. I’d also dispute that the claim that the germans didn’t hold any russian territory.
One further note on the Russians and world war I, they entered the war to keep up their pact with Serbia to protect them. They utterly failed to protect them. Victory?
Fight Russia? Pack a lunch and come prepared to fight. Half measures like Iraq andAfghanistan won’t work. Besides we the risk reward ratio is not good.