Publishing Disclaimer: In all of its publications and products, Military Review presents professional information. However, the views expressed therein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Army University, the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government.

---

 

How Hungry Is the Bear?

Assessing the Mobilizing Power of Territorial Ambitions

 

Col. Erik A. Claessen, Belgian Army

 

Download the PDF

 

Russia’s border doesn’t end anywhere.

—Vladmir Putin

First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.

—Vladimir Putin to the Russian Federal Assembly

In the spring of 2014, two US generals assessed the Russian threat against Ukraine. They came to different conclusions. According to Gen. Philip Breedlove, the commander of NATO troops in Europe, “Russia had assembled a large force on Ukraine’s eastern border that could be planning to head for Moldova’s separatist Transnistria region, more than 300 miles away.”¹ In his opinion, there was sufficient force postured for such a sudden, deep armored attack. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a completely different reading of the situation. He described Russian operations as proximate coercion and subversion. In this approach, the Kremlin combines the threat of conventional military force with a subversive campaign by surrogates, proxies, and biased media to stir up ethnic Russians who live in a contested area. “Regarding Ukraine, the Russians have employed the threat of conventional force—but only the threat,” Dempsey said.² In the end, his analysis was closest to the truth. The full-scale offensive operation Breedlove envisioned never took place. The disagreement illustrates the difficulty of assessing an opponent’s intent. A senior Defense Department official said at the time that it was “difficult to know what [Russia’s] intent is; they’re not exactly being transparent.”³

In 2022, another threatening situation needed an assessment when Russia massed 150,000 soldiers at the Ukrainian border. The French director of military intelligence, Gen. Éric Vidaud, concluded that Russia would not invade. He was proven wrong (and fired) when Russia started its “special military operation” on 24 February 2022.⁴ The French chief of staff, Gen. Thierry Burkhard, publicly regretted the shortcomings: “The Americans said the Russians were going to attack, and they were right. Our intelligence services, however, believed that conquering Ukraine would be prohibitively expensive and that the Russians had other options.”⁵

But what was Vidaud’s mistake? What did he miss? The answer to that question was given six years earlier by Breedlove. Referring to Russia, Breedlove stated that the United States “hugged the bear” for two decades and that had to change.⁶ He called for continuous vigilance based on a historical pattern of Russia’s actions: “What I would offer is that if you look at Russia’s actions all the way back to ’08—in Georgia, in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Crimea, in the Donbass, and now down in Syria—we see what most call a revanchist Russia that has put force back on the table as an instrument of national power to meet their objectives.”⁷ Continuous vigilance is a good thing but only if you know what to look for. The French based their conclusions on a cost-benefit analysis. However, when assessing an adversary’s intentions, intelligence analysts need to understand their perception of the benefit. This involves more than an estimation of the cost in blood and treasure to attain the operational objectives. These costs can only be called prohibitive when they are weighed against the perceived benefit from the perspective of the opponent, not from our own perspective. Historical analysis can contribute to this understanding. History shows that there is a strong sociopolitical motivator that renders seemingly prohibitive costs acceptable: the right of self-determination of people.

In 1945, there were about fifty independent states in the world. Now, there are more than 190.⁸ This increase occurred in waves, like the decolonization in Southeast Asia after World War II and in Africa during the 1960s, or the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The right of self-determination of people was the justification for most of these territorial and political changes, and this evolution almost always seemed to be irreversible. However, during the last century, there were two events where a different dynamic was at work: the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991. The particularity of these events was that they resulted in a situation wherein millions of individuals belonging to the dominating ethnic majority of a large country suddenly found themselves to be a minority in several newly created small countries. These peoples, respectively the Germans during the interwar period and the Russians at the outset of the twenty-first century, interpreted the right of self-determination differently. In their view, the result of the right of self-determination should not be the creation of new states, but the restauration of the old ones. The German and Russian political narratives that provided the justification for this view can be summarized in two concepts: “Heim ins Reich” (Home in the Realm) and “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World), respectively.

This article holds that the wish to belong to a superior majority in a large country instead of despised minority in a small country is a strong sociopolitical motivator that renders seemingly prohibitive costs of offensive operations acceptable. Intelligence analysts should take this reality into account when assessing the probability of such operations. To substantiate this thesis, this article first compares the demographic situation in Germany in the wake of the First World War with that in the Russian Federation after the implosion of the Soviet Union. Next, the article examines the early (1933–1938) German annexations through actions short of war and the narratives aiming to justify them. The article then compares these German actions and narratives with the Russian ones during the 2000–2022 period. Finally, it derives the implications for the assessment of the opponent’s operational intent from that analysis.

Germany, Post-World War I

The Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War stripped Germany of sixty-five thousand square kilometers, or 13 percent, of its territory and led to the loss of about seven million people, or 10 percent of its population.⁹ Those lost territories were transferred to neighboring countries like France, Belgium, and Denmark, or they became part of newly created states like Poland and Czechoslovakia. The demographic realities in those five countries were such that the German people living in the lost territories became ethnic minorities with little to no political heft.

Although historical comparisons are never perfect, this evolution is comparable to what happened to the Russians. The Russian Federation came into being in 1991 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This resulted in the creation of fourteen new states. According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 1993,

One in every six Russians is now living outside the Russian Federation. These 25 million people—roughly equal to the entire population of Canada—represent 10% or more of the population in eight of the former republics. In some new nations, they have quickly devolved from privileged citizens of a superpower to unwanted and embittered minorities.¹⁰

Ronald Grigor Suny, a nationalities expert at the University of Michigan, prophetically stated, “This is an issue that has enormous potential for disaster … It’s like a time bomb ticking.”¹¹

The Treaty of Versailles also imposed formidable financial burdens in the shape of reparations for war damages. The new political system, called the Weimar Republic after the city of Weimar where the new constitution was written, was ineffective because of political instability and economic hardship. Taken together, all this led to a popular revanchist mentality and a desire to restore the former national greatness. Attempts to transform this revanchist mentality into political mobilization started early and took the shape of plans to reintegrate certain lost areas into Germany. In 1924, a cartographer and historian named Georg Alois Lukas depicted the idea in a map with the title “Heim ins Reich! Friedensverträge sind nur Menschenwerk!” (Home to the Reich! Peace treaties are just the work of people!).¹² Although the catchphrase “Heim ins Reich” is older than the Nazi ideology, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi movement, was quick to co-opt it. The expression summarizes the idea that the territories where German speakers live belong to Germany and that the borders must be adapted accordingly. The territories shown on the map that ought to be reintegrated in Germany were exactly those that Hitler annexed in the run-up to the Second World War: Saarland, Austria, and Sudetenland.

A particular clause of the Versailles Treaty allowed the Nazis to capitalize on this idea. Under the terms of the treaty, the Saarland, a German region adjacent to France, was placed under the political control of the League of Nations for fifteen years. At the end of that period (in 1934), a referendum had to be held to decide whether the Saarland should be part of France or Germany or whether it should remain under the control of the League of Nations. Hitler came to power in 1933 as chancellor. Although the referendum was within the Saar territory only, not a national referendum, he saw an opportunity to politically capitalize on it. His party, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party) campaigned in Saarland under the slogan “Heim ins Reich.” The national opposition made the mistake to campaign against Hitler. “Supporters and opponents of the ‘return home to the Reich’ engaged in a bitter battle. Opponents, principally Social Democrats and Communists, campaigned under the slogan ‘Defeat Hitler in the Saar.’”¹³ That choice proved to be a disaster. “On 13 January, 90.8 per cent of voters in the Saar opted to be reunited with the German Reich.”¹⁴

Hitler celebrated the victory with a military parade in Saarbrücken on 1 March 1935. With the referendum, Hitler scored a triple win: he consolidated his political supremacy at home, he showed the German minorities in the lost territories that the humiliating consequences of the Versailles Treaty could be reversed, and he proved that the German armed forces could consolidate territorial gains without firing a single shot. During the speech he gave at this event, he was very clear about his future intentions:

And this day shall also be a lesson, a lesson to all those who, ignorant of an everlasting historic truth, delude themselves that terror or violence could strip a Volk [people] of its innermost character; a lesson to those who imagine they could tear away a part of a nation to steal its very soul. May all statesmen draw one conclusion from this: that it is useless to attempt to tear asunder peoples and nations by such methods. In the end, blood is stronger than any documents of mere paper.¹⁵

Emboldened by this success, the German army marched into Austria in 1938 and occupied it with little or no resistance. In fact, many Austrians welcomed the Germans as liberators. Although this occupation was prohibited by the treaty, none of the victors of the First World War took military actions to prevent or counter them. Things came to a head when Germany threatened to invade the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia where the German minority lived. France and the United Kingdom reacted but not militarily. They decided to start negotiations that resulted in the Munich Agreement, signed on 30 September 1938.¹⁶ The agreement was supposed to put an end to the successive German annexations. By accepting the principle that German minorities had the right to belong to the German realm, the British and French negotiators hoped to limit these annexations to those territories where these minorities were concentrated, like the Sudetenland. They were wrong. In March 1939, Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Poland and many other countries of western Europe quickly followed. World War II had started despite the Munich Agreement that was supposed to halt it in its tracks.

Russia After the Soviet Union

Events in the Russian Federation between 2000 and 2022 show parallels to what happened in Germany in the 1930s. The implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 created a situation that was similar to what happened to Germany in 1919. A large and dominating country lost large chunks of its territory and millions of its inhabitants. Twenty-five million ethnic Russians were scattered around fourteen newly formed independent states.¹⁷ Some of them became stateless overnight, as was the case for Alexander P. Kostenko:

He was born and raised in Latvia, has a Latvian wife, two Latvian children and a job as a top drug enforcement agent in the Latvian police force. But Alexander P. Kostenko, an ethnic Russian in one of the most anti-Russian outposts of the former Soviet empire, is not likely to be granted Latvian citizenship anytime soon. In what Russians contend is a common bureaucratic ploy to deprive them of any shot at citizenship, Latvian authorities ignored Kostenko’s Riga birth certificate and indicated on his documents that he has been a resident only since Latvian independence in 1991.¹⁸

These millions of disgruntled Russians abroad and hundreds of million sympathizers in homeland Russia constituted formidable political potential for nationalist politicians. However, Russian politicians did not tap into this potential right away. For a very brief period—from 1991 to 1996—Russia’s foreign policy was very pro-Western. In fact, in his first speech as Russia’s president, Boris Yeltsin stated that “one of the fundamental principles of our foreign policy is Russia’s equal entry into the community of civilized states.”¹⁹ That policy did not turn out well. In the collective memory of the Russian people, the first decade of the Russian Federation is considered a catastrophic period. Not only did the disintegration of the Soviet Union leave twenty-five million ethnic Russians outside the borders of Russia, but in the eyes of common Russians, the new friendliness toward the West only led to humiliation. The democratization of the Russian political system resulted in fragmentation and paralysis. The chaotic transformation of the Russian economic system into a free-market economy created an unprecedented economic recession as well as the enrichment of a small group of corrupted oligarchs. In addition, Russia’s influence on the international diplomatic scene dwindled to zero.

Russia’s diplomatic demise became most apparent during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the nineties. While the United States successfully combined military operations with diplomatic pressure—leading to the Dayton Agreement in 1995—Russia struggled hopelessly to escape its irrelevance.²⁰ When US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sent Richard Holbrooke on a diplomatic mission to coerce the warring parties to the negotiating table, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Kozyrev tried to mimic this approach by appointing his own special envoy, Vitaly Churkin. According to Kozyrev, “Russia could influence the Serbs, while the West should put pressure on the Muslims.”²¹ It did not work out that way. Not only did Churkin fail to convince the West, but he was also ignored by the Serbs. In April 1994, the Russians demanded that Bosnian Serb forces withdraw from Gorazde and allow UN troops into the city.²² The Serbs, however, refused to do so. In a sign of frustration, Churkin “angrily denounced the Bosnian Serbs for breaking their promise to him, and to UN representatives, to stop attacking the Muslim enclave. ‘We should stop any type of conversation with them,’ he said. ‘They are dealing with a great power and not a banana republic.’”²³ The debacle in Bosnia led to a major change in Russia’s foreign policy. Kozyrev’s successor, Yevgeny Primakov, posited,

A unipolar world organized by a single global center of power (the United States) is unacceptable to Russia. Instead, Russian foreign policy should strive toward a multipolar world managed by a concert of major powers—Russia, China, and India, as well as the United States. According to this vision, Russia should not try to compete with the United States single-handedly; rather, Moscow should seek to constrain the United States with the help of other major powers and to position itself as an indispensable actor with a vote and a veto, whose consent is necessary to settle any key issue facing the international community.²⁴

It proved difficult for the Russians to put this theory into practice. Russia had simply become too weak. In fact, the rest of the world hardly noticed Russia’s change of course. That changed on 24 March 1999, when Primakov, then prime minister, made a bold decision. “Just after 1 P.M. [that] day, an angry Russian Prime Minister, en route to Washington for some of the most important talks of his short tenure, ordered his pilot to turn his Ilyushin airliner around and return to Moscow.”²⁵ Primakov took this decision after hearing midflight that NATO combat aircraft started operations over Kosovo. Primakov did so even though one of the main objectives of his trip to the United States was to secure a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund that Russia desperately needed to avoid default. The U-turn of Primakov’s plane became the symbol of the U-turn in Russia’s foreign policy: from integration to confrontation.

Russkiy Mir

The new president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, adopted Primakov’s foreign policy objectives, but he also understood that Russia lacked the economic and military power to attain them. Therefore, his initial objectives were modest. According to the June 2000 Foreign Policy Concept,

New challenges and threats to the national interests of Russia are emerging in the international sphere. There is a growing trend towards the establishment of a unipolar structure of the world with the economic and power domination of the United States. In solving principal questions of international security, the stakes are being placed on western institutions and forums of limited composition, and on weakening the role of the U.N. Security Council … The threats related to these tendencies are aggravated by the limited resource support for the foreign policy of the Russian Federation, making it difficult to uphold its foreign economic interests and narrowing down the framework of its information and cultural influence abroad.²⁶

Putin’s policies to strengthen Russia economically and militarily are not the subject of this article. This article focuses on Russia’s other weakness: the lack of an appealing ideology to further its international standing and to mobilize Russians at home and abroad. For decades, communism had been an inspiration for individuals, political parties, resistance movements, and military regimes worldwide. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia lacked a narrative to underpin its foreign policy.

The Primakov Doctrine holds that Russia is a sovereign actor in global politics and pursues an independent foreign policy. Within this concept, Russia’s foreign policy is based on respect for international law and inspired by a multilateral approach. Russia is opposed to an eastward expansion of NATO and intends to enforce it primacy in the post-Soviet space and in Eurasia.²⁷

To do so, Russia had to establish its “sphere of influence” in its “near abroad.”²⁸ The term “near abroad” refers to the territories outside Russia that used to belong to the Soviet Union. Lacking a worldwide appealing ideology, Putin decided to limit his ambition to influencing this near abroad.

But how could Putin hope to gain political influence in these areas? He decided to tap into the mobilization potential of the twenty-five million ethnic Russians who had become minorities in newly established states in 1991. On 11 October 2001, he gave a speech at the Congress of Compatriots:

There has long been a heated debate about who should be considered compatriots. What is difficult to measure and explain in words, we quite often try to put into legal formulas. Probably, this should be done. But a compatriot is not only a legal category. And even more so, it is not a question of status or any benefits. This is, first of all, a matter of personal choice. The question of self-determination. I would say even more precisely—spiritual self-determination. This path is not always easy. After all, the concept of the ‘Russian world’ from time immemorial went far beyond the geographical boundaries of Russia and even far beyond the boundaries of the Russian ethnos.²⁹

Therefore, the initial objective of the “Russkiy Mir” [Russian World] concept, was not to annex territories, but to gain influence with “millions of people—and not only Russians by nationality—[who] unexpectedly found themselves on the territory of new states.³⁰ According to Ulrich Schmid,

The Russkiy Mir is originally a cultural concept, which in its ideologized form, is also used to legitimize Russian influence in the post-Soviet area. It emphasizes the social ties between Russian language and literature, Russian orthodoxy, and a collective East Slavic identity. Moreover, the concept of the Russkiy Mir stresses the special role of Russia in the world and sees the country different from the so-called West, in particular from the U.S.³¹

The initial objective to gain influence in the “near abroad” was quickly broadened in the wake “of the ‘colored [sic] revolutions’ that changed the political environment in Georgia and Ukraine between 2003 and 2005.”³² At the heart of these revolutions was the popular desire in the near abroad for more democracy and closer ties with Europe. Putin needed a narrative to counter that desire.

The color revolutions, particularly the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine were seen as a failure of Russia’s policy in its neighborhood. Sergey Markov, a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations … stated that Russia lost Georgia and Ukraine because its political technologies were inferior to those of the West.³³

The Kremlin looked for a more assertive way to further its interests in the “near abroad.” The objective became to promote the idea that Russia represents a unique civilization, different from and superior to the West. Moreover, the Russian civilization is under threat and needs constant protection. This became official policy in 2008, as mentioned in the 2008 Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation:

It is for the first time in the contemporary history that global competition is acquiring a civilizational dimension which suggests competition between different value systems and development models within the framework of universal democratic and market economy principles.³⁴

Boris Mezhuev, the deputy editor in chief of the Russian Izvestia newspaper, describes this idea of a vital cultural clash between Russia and the West, stating, “If the Atlantic wins, we would live in a world described in the dystopian novels by Aldous Huxley and Anthony Burgess—a debilitated hedonistic society, one oblivious of the values of homeland, family and God.”³⁵ As such, the narrative is that Russia and the Russian civilization is under constant threat or even attack, and to avoid disaster, Russia needs to act decisively.

Russia put this Foreign Policy Concept into practice in 2014 when they annexed Crimea. In a speech before the Duma (the Russian Parliament), Putin used the argument that the annexation was necessary because the Russian people was torn asunder: “Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.”³⁶ Putin continued to say that he saw a Western plan behind the civil unrest that ousted the Ukrainian president in the 2013–2014 popular protests:

With Ukraine, our western partners have crossed the line, playing the bear and acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally. After all, they were fully aware that there are millions of Russians living in Ukraine and in Crimea. They must have really lacked political instinct and common sense not to foresee all the consequences of their actions. Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from. If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard.³⁷

The question was whether Putin would stop there. Was there anything in his speech that lifted the veil of future military actions? There was, because he continued:

Let me say one other thing too. Millions of Russians and Russian-speaking people live in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Russia will always defend their interests using political, diplomatic and legal means. But it should be above all in Ukraine’s own interest to ensure that these people’s rights and interests are fully protected. This is the guarantee of Ukraine’s state stability and territorial integrity.³⁸

The barely concealed threat was that Russia would not respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity if the country—in the Kremlin’s eyes—insufficiently protected the rights of Russians living in Ukraine. As such, political narratives and actions concerning the perceived violations of the rights and interests of ethnic Russians in Ukraine would be an indication of the Russian intent to take further offensive military actions.

Russia Invades Ukraine

Although Putin’s speech did contain indications of his intent to pursue his territorial ambitions in Ukraine, it was not immediately clear that this would lead to the full-scale invasion of February 2022. Russia annexed Crimea but not the territories in the Donbass in eastern Ukraine where separatists had taken control of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Putin refused the request of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) to be included into the Russian Federation.³⁹ The only aim of his military support to these separatists was to force Ukraine to the negotiating table on unfavorable terms for them. A number of battles in these regions, notably the near-encirclement of Ukrainian forces near the important railway and road junction of Debaltseve, forced Ukraine to sign the Minsk Agreement that would give the DPR and LPR self-governance within Ukraine.⁴⁰ However, the most important clause of the Minsk Agreements called for “constitutional reform in Ukraine with a new Constitution entering into force by the end of 2015, providing for decentralization as a key element.”⁴¹ At the moment of signing, it was unclear what this would entail. However, it became clear when the DPR and LNR published a list of proposed amendments to the constitution. One of them stated that “Ukraine does not join military blocs or alliances, maintains neutrality, [and] refrains from participating in military activities beyond its territory.”⁴² That amendment would block Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO and/or the European Union. It would also mean that the DPR and LNR would get a de facto veto over Ukraine’s foreign policy decisions.

If the purpose of the Eastern Ukraine conflict was to prevent Ukraine from signing the EU Association Agreement or from joining the EU and NATO at some point in the future, the clause declaring Ukrainian neutrality would have represented a tangible victory for Russia in the war, achieving the political objectives for which it was fighting.⁴³

Ukraine refused this amendment, which froze the conflict. So, what changes caused Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022?

The situation started to escalate in May 2021 when the Ukrainian president initiated the draft Law on Indigenous Peoples. The document defined an indigenous people as an “ethnic minority within the Ukrainian population that possesses a distinctive language and culture; has traditional social, cultural, or representative structures; considers itself native to Ukraine; and does not have its own state entity beyond Ukraine [emphasis added].”⁴⁴ This gave Putin the occasion to mobilize the Russian people for a drastic escalation of the conflict. In June, the Russian Parliament issued a statement condemning the legislative initiative. “With a stroke of the pen, millions of Russians (17.2% of the population, according to the latest census), hundreds of thousands of Belarusians (0.57%), and Moldovans (0.54%), who are among the three largest national minorities in Ukraine, are deprived of the right to consider themselves indigenous peoples.”⁴⁵ The Duma called everyone to “condemn the attempt made in Ukraine to divide its population into ‘indigenous’ and ‘non-indigenous,’ which can have the most serious consequences for the very existence of Ukraine as a state.”⁴⁶ The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) adopted the law anyway on 1 July. This prompted Putin to publish an essay in which he contested the borders and the existence of Ukraine and stated,

The most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.⁴⁷

He concluded by stating,

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. … Today, these words may be perceived by some people with hostility. They can be interpreted in many possible ways. Yet, many people will hear me.⁴⁸

During the months that followed, Russia started a massive troop deployment on Ukraine’s eastern borders and in Belarus. Three days before the invasion, Putin addressed the nation. After a long overview of Russia’s and Ukraine’s history, he concluded, “In this regard, I consider it necessary to take a long overdue decision and to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.”⁴⁹ With that decision, he renounced the Minsk Agreements and opened the path to war. In the assessment of Russia’s operational intent concerning their massive troop deployments, Russia’s political actions and narratives between May 2021 and February 2022 are key. When they are read and interpreted against the historical backdrop of the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991, these political actions and narratives contained clear indications of the Russian intent to invade Ukraine. It was possible to see how hungry the Russian bear had become in the second half of 2021.

Conclusion

The self-determination of the people is a strongly resonating narrative. Its use to mobilize a nation to go to war requires a nationalistic interpretation of history. In most cases, this leads to the creation of new states. However, in two cases (Germany after the First World War and Russia after the implosion of the Soviet Union), the right of self-determination was invoked to restore old states. These two cases show parallels in the combination of mobilizing rhetoric and military offensive preparations. In Germany and Russia, the wish to belong to a superior majority in a large country instead of despised minority in a small country was captured in two simple resonating and mobilizing concepts: “Home in the Realm” in Germany and “Russian World” in Russia. These concepts hold that the territories where minorities live belong to the motherland and that the borders must be adapted accordingly. Political narratives and actions that use these concepts—and the nationalistic interpretation of history they are based on—can alter the cost-benefit calculus of military action. Military intelligence communities must take this into account. Objective elements like troop deployments and other preparations for armed conflict must be supplemented with the interpretation of political narratives addressed to the domestic population in order to determine the adversary’s intent.

---

Notes

• Epigraph. “Russia’s Border Doesn’t End Anywhere, Vladimir Putin Says,” BBC News, 24 November 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38093468.
• Epigraph. Associated Press, “Putin: Soviet Collapse a ‘Genuine Tragedy,’” NBC News, 25 April 2005, https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057.

1. Carol Morello and Karen DeYoung, “NATO General Warns of Further Russian Aggression,” Washington Post, 24 March 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-general-warns-of-further-russian-aggression/2014/03/23/2ff63bb6-b269-11e3-8020-b2d790b3c9e1_story.html.
2. Jim Garamone, “Dempsey Discusses Russian Tactics in Ukraine,” American Forces Press Service, 20 May 2014, https://www.dvidshub.net/news/506094/dempsey-discusses-russian-tactics-ukraine.
3. Morello and DeYoung, “NATO General Warns of Further Russian Aggression.”
4. Al Jazeera Staff, “‘No Other Option’: Excerpts of Putin’s Speech Declaring War,” Al Jazeera, 24 February 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/24/putins-speech-declaring-war-on-ukraine-translated-excerpts. President Vladimir Putin called the invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation” in his address to the citizens of Russia on 24 February 2022.
5. AFP, “Le chef du renseignement militaire français remercié” [The head of French military intelligence has been dismissed], Le Point, 31 March 2022, https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/ukraine-le-chef-du-renseignement-militaire-francais-congedie-31-03-2022-2470329_24.php. Original text translated by author: “Les Américains disaient que les Russes allaient attaquer, ils avaient raison. Nos services pensaient plutôt que la conquête de l’Ukraine aurait un coût monstrueux et que les Russes avaient d’autres options.”
6. Jim Garamone, “EUCOM Commander Seeks New Approach to Russia,” DOD News, 5 January 2016, https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/639951/eucom-commander-seeks-new-approach-to-russia/.
7. Garamone, “EUCOM Commander Seeks New Approach to Russia.”
8. “Founding Member States,” United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, updated 3 February 2026, https://research.un.org/en/unmembers/founders. There were fifty-one founding members in 194, and 193 by 2026.
9. Rens Steenhard, “Treaty of Versailles Centennial: Territorial Changes,” Carnegie Foundation Peace Palace Library, 20 June 2019, https://peacepalacelibrary.nl/blog/2019/treaty-versailles-centennial-territorial-changes.
10. Sonni Efron, “Case Study: Russians: Becoming Strangers in Their Homeland,” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 1993, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-06-08-wr-791-story.html.
11. Efron, “Case Study.”
12. Georg Alois Lukas, Heim ins Reich! Friedensverträge sind nur Menschenwerk! [Home to the reich! Peace treaties are just the work of people] (Alpenland Buchhandlung Südmark, 1924), https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/6780021.
13. Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent, 1889–1939, vol. 1 (Random House, 2016), 495.
14. Ullrich, Hitler, 495.
15. Max Domarus, The Complete Hitler: A Digital Desktop Reference to His Speeches and Proclamations, vol. 2 (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2007), 644, https://www.tadalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/English%20Volume2.pdf.
16. Mark Cartwright, “Munich Agreement,” World History Encyclopedia, 4 November 2024, https://www.worldhistory.org/Munich_Agreement/.
17. Strobe Talbott, “Managing the Russian Connection,” Time, 25 November 1996, https://time.com/archive/6730025/managing-the-russian-connection/.
18. Efron, “Case Study.”
19. Boris Yeltsin 14 February 1992 speech on Russian television, cited in Suzanne Crow, “Russian Federation Faces Foreign Policy Dilemmas,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report 1, no. 10 (1992): 15–19.
20. “In November [1995], Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, and Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Herzegovina met at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The agreement provided for an independent Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina comprised of two states: the Muslim and Croat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the West and the Serb Republika Sprksa in the East. The agreements were signed on December 14, 1995.” “Conflicts in Former Yugoslavia Timeline,” William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, accessed 16 March 2026, https://www.clintonlibrary.gov/research/dissolution-yugoslavia-topic-guide.
21. Helen Womack, “Kremlin Set to Ditch Serb Ally,” Independent, 20 April 1994, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/kremlin-set-to-ditch-serb-ally-1371209.html.
22. Sonni Efron, “The Bosnia Dilemma: Yeltsin Warns Serbs to Stop Attacks: Russia: The Kremlin Leader’s Sharply Worded Statement Shows Shift in Attitude Toward Longtime Allies,” Los Angeles Times, 20 April 1994, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-04-20-mn-48234-story.html.
23. Womack, “Kremlin Set to Ditch Serb Ally.”
24. Eugene Rumer, The Primakov (Not Gerasimov) Doctrine in Action (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2019), 4, https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/Rumer_PrimakovDoctrine_final.pdf.
25. John M. Broder, “Conflict in the Balkans: The Russians; A Phone Call from Gore and a U-Turn to Moscow,” New York Times, 24 March 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/24/world/conflict-balkans-russians-phone-call-gore-u-turn-moscow.html.
26. The Kremlin, The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation (The Kremlin, 28 June 2000), 2–3, https://www.bits.de/EURA/russia052800.pdf.
27. Marc Franco, “Russian Grand Strategy and How to Handle It,” Security Policy Brief no. 133 (Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations, January 2021), 2, https://www.egmontinstitute.be/app/uploads/2021/01/spb-133-marc-franco-final-april.pdf?type=pdf.
28. Franco, “Russian Grand Strategy and How to Handle It,” 3.
29. Speech by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin at the Opening of the Congress of Compatriots, Moscow, 11 October 2001, http://old.nasledie.ru/politvnt/19_44/article.php?art=24. Text translated by the author: “Уже давно идет горячий спор о том, кого считать соотечественниками. То, что трудно измерить и объяснить словами, мы довольно часто пытаемся уложить в юридические формулы. Наверное, это нужно сделать. Но соотечественник – категория далеко не только юридическая. И уж тем более – не вопрос статуса или каких бы там ни было льгот. Это, в первую очередь, вопрос личного выбора. Вопрос самоопределения. Я бы сказал даже точнее – духовного самоопределения. Этот путь – не всегда прост. Ведь понятие “русский мир” испокон века выходило далеко за географические границы России и даже далеко за границы русского этноса.”
30. Speech by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin at the Opening of the Congress of Compatriots.
31. Ulrich Schmid, quoted in Alexander Meienberger, “The Concept of the ‘Russkiy Mir’: History of the Concept and Ukraine,” Euxeinos 13, no. 35 (2023): 16, https://gce.unisg.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/HSG_ROOT/Institut_GCE/Euxeinos/35/Euxeinos_Issue_35_Meienberger.pdf.
32. Oleksiy Bondarenko, “‘Russkij Mir,’ Between Diaspora and Public Diplomacy. Russia’s Foothold in Central Asia,” Il Politico 81, no. 3(243) (September-December 2016): 91, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45426839?seq=1. “Color revolution” refers to mass demonstrations that led to regime change in the former states of the Soviet Union and the Balkans. Examples include the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, and the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution in Ukraine.
33. Marlene Laruelle, The “Russian World.” Russia’s Soft Power and Geopolitical Imagination (Center on Global Interests, May 2015), 10, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344222398_The_’Russian_World’_Russia’s_Soft_Power_and_Geopolitical_Imagination_Center_for_Global_Interests_Papers_May.
34. The Kremlin, The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation (The Kremlin, 12 January 2008), http://en.kremlin.ru/supplement/4116.
35. Boris Mezhuev, “The Russian World Is Coming to Europe,” Valdai Discussion Club, 22 April 2014, https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the_russian_world_is_coming_to_europe/.
36. Vladimir Putin, “Address at the Occasion of the Crimea Annexation,” 18 March 2014, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603.
37. Putin, “Address at the Occasion of the Crimea Annexation.”
38. Putin, “Address at the Occasion of the Crimea Annexation.”
39. See Richard Galpin, “Ukraine Rebels Hold Referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk,” BBC News, 11 May 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27360146. The Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic declared their independence after referendums held in May 2014.
40. On the Russian involvement in the Battle of Debaltseve, see Roger McDermott, “Russia’s Role in the Fall of Debaltseve,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 12, no. 34 (24 February 2015), https://jamestown.org/russias-role-in-the-fall-of-debaltseve/.
41. A. V. Zakharchenko and I. V. Plotnitskiy, “Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements,” United Nations, 12 February 2015, https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/default/files/document/files/2024/05/ua150212minskagreementen.pdf.
42. “Donetsk, Luhansk Propose Amendments to Ukraine’s Constitution,” Jamestown, accessed 2 March 2026, https://jamestown.org/donetsk-luhansk-propose-amendments-to-ukraines-constitution/.
43. Alya Shandra and Robert Seely, The Surkov Leaks: The Inner Workings of Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine (occasional paper, Royal United Services Institute, July 2019), 54, https://static.rusi.org/201907_op_surkov_leaks_web_final.pdf.
44. Ianda Fremer, “Ukraine: New Law Determines Legal Status of Indigenous People,” Library of Congress, 2 August 2021, https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2021-08-02/ukraine-new-law-determines-legal-status-of-indigenous-people/.
45. State Duma, “The State Duma Condemned the Exclusion of Russians from the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine,” Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, 8 June 2021, https://perma.cc/7JL8-2ZVL. Original text translated by the author: “Росчерком пера права считать себя коренными народами на территории Украины лишаются миллионы русских (17,2 % населения, по данным последней переписи), сотни тысяч белорусов (0,57 %) и молдаван (0,54 %), входящих в тройку самых крупных национальных меньшинств на Украине.”
46. State Duma, “The State Duma Condemned the Exclusion of Russians from the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine.” Original text translated by the author: “осудить предпринятую на Украине попытку разделить ее население на «коренное» и «некоренное», которая может иметь самые серьезные последствия для самого существования Украины как государства.”
47. Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” The Kremlin, 12 July 2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181.
48. Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
49. Vladimir Putin, “Address by the President of the Russian Federation,” The Kremlin, 21 February 2022, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828.

 

 

 

Back to Top

May-June 2026