Geopolitics: Russia The Four Seas Problem
Russia and its long history have always had the massive problem of access to warm water ports and the greater Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but historically and pretty much all of Russia’s history has been contained in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.
The reason for this is for Russian fleets to access the world’s oceans; its shipping and military fleets will need to pass through multiple hostile countries to access the world’s oceans.
This significant geopolitical weakness for Russia is one of the reasons that prevented Russia from being a truly global power.
It can also be argued that during the height of Russia’s power during the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, it wasn’t an actual global hegemony equal to the United States of America.
Rather, the Soviet Union was a regional power in the Eurasian continent. In contrast, the United States had access to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
It dominated the North American continent with no rival to American power since America took out the remaining European empires in the late 19th century with the American-Spanish War of 1898.
Now we have the Ukraine war, which has been an ongoing conflict since February 2022, which is putting greater stress on Russian Federation war fleets being split in the Baltic, black sea Arctic and Pacific.
Russia’s inability to unify its naval presence across the four major seas is a bad sign for Vladimir Putin and the Russian war effort because it cannot effectively concentrate forces in each of its four Seas, hence Russia’s ‘long-standing four sea problem.
Russia’s vast swath of territory makes it a logistical nightmare to float a navy. Between the conflict in the Black Sea and the strategic loss of the Baltic Sea with Sweden and Finland joining NATO, Russia’s logistical nightmare is only getting worse.
With Russia’s economy highly dependent upon maritime shipments, finding a solution should be a top priority; however, any naval projects diverting resources away from the Black Sea could be devastating.
No matter what move the Russians make, limiting maritime power will have substantial economic impacts.
