By opening the Syrian-Mediterranean front in 2015, Russia bypassed the whole military network that NATO and the United States had placed along the Russian Federation's Western land borders.
Peter the Great was the ruler of a landlocked nation. The Baltic was practically a Swedish lake and the Black Sea belongpd entirely to the Turks. For nearly two hundred years the policy of obtaining, maintaining, and increasing a seaboard has been consistently followed. If that policy was inaugurated by Peter the Great, it was nevertheless absolutely due to the operation of irresistible natural forces.
A great nation must seek a seaboard corresponding in extent to its needs, and Russia could no more be restrained in her seaward expansion than could the United States in overflowing the Rocky Mountains in their march to the Pacific. The policy thus forced upon Russia by the conditions of her being has involved many wars and great sacrifices. The methods adopted have been various, and, in common with those which have commended themselves to all nations, have not been wholly blameless; but only the curious inability of the British people to realise the necessities of others can blind us to the fact that Russian expansion was as inevitable as our own. To the fifty millions of Great and Greater Britain free access to the sea is the breath of national life; by the eighty millions of Russia the same vital need is instinctively felt.
Read Full Article »