Abstract: In the three decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse, Russia has not evolved into the liberalized democracy that the West hoped it would become. Instead, Russian foreign policy has been marked by its routine hostility and periodic military aggression. The prevailing narrative among modern American policy experts is that Russia is returning to its Soviet roots. This narrative assumes that because Russian actions appear irrational and sporadic, they indicate a concerted effort to defiantly sow chaos against the American-led international order. The question of Putin’s territorial ambition is limited to the scope of former Soviet territory. The prevailing narrative is attractive to American thinkers because it draws from the wisdom of U.S. experience in the Cold War. However, Soviet Russia was an anomaly in Russian history – a disastrous experiment. It is more likely that Russia is returning to its pre-Soviet roots; the older Tsarist-Byzantine model. In this paper, a re-evaluation of Russian grand strategy is offered. It is concluded that Russia, animated by its unique holy mission, likely has its sights set on a critical target envied by the Tsars for centuries: Constantinople. This acquisition would allow Russia to escape from its current crises while simultaneously undermining the current U.S.-led international order. Policymakers must consider this possibility if they seek to preserve America’s position as the global hegemon. Policies informed by the prevailing narrative will fail to prevent the ascendance of a New Russian Empire. Russia’s past is returning, but it is not the past that America recognizes from experience.

Introduction

Old Age and Treachery

Standing before the world’s most distinguished heads of state, the flashes of press cameras, and interrupted only by the indistinct murmur of translators, Russian President Vladimir Putin, unbound by what he calls the “excessive politeness” that defines most of diplomatic dialogue, speaks:

“…what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is [a] world in which there is one master, one sovereign… I consider that the unipolar model… itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.”[1]

The setting is the 2007 Munich Security Conference, attended by 450 international leaders. Sitting quite close to the podium is the representative of the immoral “one master”: U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, who looks on stoically as he receives the rhetorical fire of the Russian leader. When later asked by reporters if he is concerned with the sharp denouncement by President Putin, Secretary Gates will calmly reply that it was “the blunt talk of an old [Soviet] spy,” and that “one Cold War was quite enough.”[2] If Putin’s rhetoric fails to shock or unsettle the world leaders assembled before him, the events of the following year would. In the summer of 2008, Russia will launch the first inter-European war of the twenty-first century by invading its southern neighbor, the nation of Georgia.[3] Six years later, it will begin the process of invading Ukraine, leaving America to wonder whether the old specter of the Soviet Union had returned.

Secretary Gates’s dismissal of Russian dissatisfaction towards U.S. hegemony is emblematic of a larger issue in American grand strategic thinking: the notion that the alarming resurgence of Russian hostilities are troubling but manageable at best, or discomfortingly familiar at worst. As of 2019, the Russian military has swallowed up two regions of Georgia, the Crimean Peninsula, and is slowly digesting Eastern Ukraine (Figure 1). Some prominent commentators interpret these territorial moves in the light of the Cold War, postulating that America has actually seen this type of threat before. From this perspective, Vladimir Putin is just an ex-KGB operative who misses the good old Soviet days.

But America is an infant superpower. Russia has existed for over a thousand years. As a certain proverb warns, “old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” In Russia, the past is returning, but it is not the past that America recognizes. A continued reliance on Cold War thinking may fail to prevent the ascendance of a New Russian Empire.

The Prevailing Narrative

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has enjoyed its status as humanity’s first true global hegemon. In the past thirty years, its unquestioned supremacy has supported the world’s diplomatic order, facilitated stable maritime trade, built a robust international aid system, and deterred great power wars, allowing over one billion people to escape from extreme poverty.[4] It is within both the national and humanitarian interests of the United States to maintain its position as the world’s unquestioned hegemon for “as far into the future as possible.”[5] This is the “unipolar” model. However, to Vladimir Putin, accepting its status of a second-rate power is both insulting and dangerous to the Russian people and the rest of the world.

With respect to Russia’s modern ambitions, scholars insist upon one of two major themes. The first is that Vladimir Putin is attempting to sow chaos in the international system. The second supposes that Russia may have territorial desires, but they are limited to the borders of the old Soviet Union. These assumptions together create what will hereafter be referred to as the “prevailing narrative” of Russian aggression. But how do authors articulate this narrative? Is the prevailing narrative reasonable in light of Russian developments since the collapse of the Soviet Union? Is the prevailing narrative entirely wrong, or only partially correct? While it is not wholly false, it overlooks essential factors driving Russian political calculus. It is not the Soviet world that is rising again; it is the older Tsarist world.

The President of the Center for European Policy Analysis, Peter Doran, and his colleague Donald Jensen, a former U.S. diplomat who supported negotiations on various U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaties, have together concluded that Russia is pursuing a “strategy of chaos.”[6] They point to the Soviet Union’s use of chaos against the Baltics and Western Europe during the Cold War as empirical evidence of this narrative, and subsequently interpret recent events in that light. The purpose of using chaos, according to Doran and Jensen, is to prove to the world that Russia deserves to be recognized as a “great power.”

“Kremlin leaders still regard themselves as players in a great-power competition with the United States and Europe. And they harbor a grudge: They believe that the international system treats them unjustly…”

This paper agrees that Russia sees itself as a “great power,” but Doran and Jensen’s thesis that it now uses a “strategy of chaos” obscures certain historical lessons and critical strategic patterns in post-Soviet aggression.

Fiona Hill, the director of the Brookings Institute’s Center on the United States and Europe, argues that Vladimir Putin is “out to score points for Russia. He is not out to win friends in Ukraine or Europe. Nor is he out to restore a Russian empire, or build a new Moscow-centric geopolitical order.”[7] According to Hill, Putin “wants respect in the old-fashioned, hard-power sense of the word.” As she further explains,

“[Putin] has rallied the population at home with emotional evocations of Russian imperial glories, Soviet nostalgia and the idea of a unique “Russian world.” He has depicted himself as the leader of an international coalition of conservative politicians and states confronting the excesses of a decadent West. Russian history, imperial nostalgia, religion and values have all proven [to be] potent instruments for Putin to reassert Russia’s position.”[8]

Hill’s analysis on religion and the vision of a “unique Russian world” largely concurs with the findings of this paper. However, the argument of “Soviet nostalgia” poisons her overall thesis, suggesting that Russia’s Soviet era is something to be conserved, not discarded.

Finally, prominent scholarship assumes that Putin’s territorial ambitions only include former USSR territories. Ehsan Ahrari, an adjunct research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College, acknowledging Russia’s ambitions for superpower status, has written that,

“Because Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the implosion of the former Soviet Union to be ‘the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century,’ the grand strategy of his foreign policy has been to restore the Soviet Union’s past glory and superpower status to Russia.”[9]

As shall be contended, Ahrari’s assessment is mostly correct, but with one critical modification: the phrase “the Soviet Union’s past glory” ought to be replaced with “Tsarist Russia’s past glory.” Putin describes it as a “geopolitical” tragedy, not an ideological one. In other words, it was not the loss of communism that was tragic, it was the loss of Russia’s geopolitical standing – the fact that it could influence world affairs to a great extent. Therefore, a revivification of Russia’s past glory may not necessarily include the Soviet element. This nuance could create, quite literally, a world of difference.

In summation, the prevailing narrative holds some important insights. Namely, that Russia is upset at the U.S.-led order, Putin is using an appeal to the past to energize the nation, and it aspires to be recognized as a great power. It does, however, contain several troubling assumptions: that Russia’s aggression is untargeted chaos, Putin longs for the old Soviet world he knew as a spy, and Russia does not want a new empire, but if it does, it only wants land that the Soviet Union once held.

This paper will argue that these pieces of the prevailing narrative are a dangerous misreading of Russian history, Russian nationalism, and Russia’s recent acts of aggression. Most importantly, this paper maintains that the Russian Federation likely has its grand strategic sights set on a specific territorial target: Constantinople. The acquisition of this target would eliminate the economic and geographical insecurities of Russia while simultaneously laying the religious and military ground work for its ascendance to superpower status. Section one of this paper provides background on this topic. Section two will examine the deep trove of Russia’s crises and religious history in order to give insight into its long-term aspirations. The third section will lay out the immense geopolitical power Russia would gain from taking Constantinople. Section four will demonstrate the warning signs that demonstrate possible Russian interest in Constantinople. The final section shall conclude that American scholarship is ill-prepared to contain Russia’s resurgence and that the prevailing narrative must be revised. At the core of this thesis is the contention that American policymakers are currently searching for clues about Russian ambition in the wrong historical era. Sustaining America’s status as the world hegemon may require grand strategists to shake off the chains of Cold War familiarity and embrace the often mystical world of pre-Soviet Russia – the world of the Tsars.

Know Thy Enemy

The oft-quoted refrain of Sun Tzu states that the greatest general must “know thy enemy and know thyself.” However, the less-cited piece of that wisdom states “if you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”[10] This is instructive in the context of U.S. grand strategy against Russia. Even if America, knowing its own strength, is successful in extinguishing fires wherever Russia sets them, it may fail to counter Russia’s primary objective. Therefore, a nuanced and empathetic study of Russia’s ambitions is necessary to achieving victory.

But is it fair to conflate Vladimir Putin’s ambitions with those of his nation, or even to suggest that they are similar? Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, one of the premier modern authorities in military scholarship (affectionately known by the U.S. Marine Corps as the “Warrior Monk”), vocalized his concerns over Russian aggression in Eastern Europe as follows:

“There is the potential, I believe, that Putin has unleashed forces that he will be personally unable to control… I don’t think his successor could control the impulses he’s released there. It is very very hard to pull back from some of the statements he’s made about the West… right now there are people questioning, ‘Has Putin gone crazy? Is he delusional?’ and I think what we have to look at is that we have a Russia problem, not just a Putin problem. People say when Putin leaves, it will all get better. I think that’s a pipe dream.”[11]

The critical takeaway from Mattis’ insight is this: Vladimir Putin has struck a deep nerve in the Russian psyche; one that is sensitive enough to propel behavior that is seemingly irrational to the West. Understanding Russia’s internal affairs is a prior question to the external. To co-opt wording from the American diplomat Richard Haass, “foreign policy begins at home.”[12] The Russian Soul is full of hopes and fears, both of which can shed invaluable light on its ambitions towards the rest of the world.

The Russian Soul

General Mattis cited the many factors driving Russia’s current internal instability as rationale for his position that peace after Putin was a “pipe dream,” which include Russia’s poor geographical positioning and its interconnected economic-demographic fragility. Each one of these crises should be examined independently.

The Crises

Russia has been cursed by its size. From the outsider’s perspective, it would seem as though Russia is destined to be a great power given the fact that it is the largest nation on earth, and therefore must have more natural resources and opportunities for power projection than other states. But the Russian people have been relegated to a frosty and barren plain above the Eurasian steppe, which has nearly no natural defenses. For much of its history, its enemies were the nomadic groups like the Mongols, and the only way Russia found security was by conquering and controlling the eastern European and Siberian lands from which those nomads came.[13] Russia’s problems of being a massive icy land power might be mitigated somewhat if it had significant maritime access. But while Russia does have the longest national coastline in the world, precious little of it remains unfrozen throughout the year. One of Peter the Great’s most important achievements was extending Russian territory to the Baltic Sea, which is now Russia’s only direct door to the Atlantic besides its Arctic route.[14] Its northern coastline is largely irrelevant to trade unless routes can be routinely opened by icebreakers.[15] Its eastern coastline is similar, possessing only a few cold ports near the northern Japanese islands.[16] Russia needs “warm water ports” that do not freeze over during the winter months. A lack of ports drives a lack of trade, a lack of naval power, and a lack of cultural exchange. As such, when the rest of the world advances, Russia lags, resulting in embarrassing wartime losses and economic insecurity.[17]

Furthermore, the Russian people are fighting death like few other nations. A tragic combination of high male mortality rates and low female fertility rates have created what most commentators refer to as a “demographic crisis.” The economic stagnation in the years following the Soviet collapse saw economic opportunity falling far short of the West’s rosy hopes. Just to scratch the surface, extensive analysis by the Rand Corporation revealed that in 1992, there were 255 abortions for every 100 live births, as it served as the primary form of birth control, leaving a high number of women who could no longer carry pregnancies to term.[18] In 1993, a Russian man’s life expectancy was the lowest in the industrialized world at just fifty-eight years old. In 1994, the Russian suicide rate reached nearly forty-two deaths per one hundred thousand – a “very high” level for a developed nation, largely owing to excessive alcohol consumption.[19] These disasters in the 1990s have created large ripples today. Though the Rand Corporation initially concluded in 1997 that this social threat could be contained by government reform, research from the Russian Presidential Academy of Economy and Public Administration in 2015 indicates that the potential for an unbridled crisis still exists.[20] If nothing is done to reverse these trends, Russia is in danger of losing 20% of its population by 2050 – a “catastrophic” result.[21] This spells future economic doom and exacerbates the existing financial crisis.[22] But the Kremlin has made little effort to invest in social programs such as family tax benefits, healthcare, or emigration curbs. Instead, its overwhelming focus has been on military spending.

Russia cannot solve its geographic crisis through social reform – that thorn has been in Russia’s side from time immemorial. But the seeming lack of attentiveness to its demographic crises has perplexed Western observers and fed the prevailing narrative. The prevailing narrative supposes that if Russia wanted to stop the crisis, it would do what liberal democracies would do: invest in social programs. It supposes that Russia cannot afford to plan beyond its current crises, and therefore seeks no empire. Because it is not behaving like a Western liberal nation, it must be “delusional.”[23] Indeed, Doran and Jensen diagnose Russian military aggression as Putin being “reckless” as a last-ditch attempt to prove Russia’s greatness.[24]

However, the accusation of “recklessness” may hold a grain of truth: if a typical Western nation ignored an impending demographic disaster, that would be reckless because it ignores reason. Russia is not a typical Western nation. What the West might call “superstition,” Russia might call “reason.”[25] In the words of Russia’s former Deputy Chief of the Presidency, “synthesis prevails over analysis, idealism over pragmatism… This does not mean that the Russians lack analytical thinking and [that] the people in western countries [lack] intuition. The issue here is the ratio.”[26] It is possible that Russia sees another escape route that involves more religious idealism than Western pragmatism.

There is a final crisis which was oddly absent from Mattis’s list, which can help to explain Russia’s apparent apathy towards its demographic decline: the religious crisis. Since 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has reemerged (with help from the Kremlin) as the touchstone of Russian identity.[27] However, when it comes to being a major force for social morality, the ROC is “unable to satisfy the spiritual needs of the majority of Russian citizens and does not exert a significant influence on their social stance.”[28] In this sense, the state-aligned ROC is under threat of fading into social irrelevance. Polling data between 1991 and 2008 indicates that while 72% of Russians identified with the church, only about 7% actually attend more than once a month.[29] The ROC is also facing challenges abroad. The political world of Eastern Orthodox has a well-established hierarchy of recognized ecclesiastical power. The ROC has been viewed as the least important patriarchates of the five in Eastern Orthodoxy (ranking behind Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem).[30] As a general rule, Constantinople’s Patriarch Bartholomew directs the course of the Orthodox world, which has recently caused what some observers fear is the largest rift in Christendom since the “Great Schism” of 1054.[31] In October of 2018, Constantinople granted “autocephaly” to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, meaning it no longer operates under the guidance of the ROC, and may be able to gain its own patriarch. Not only did Russia technically lose 40% of its church members, but the move also symbolically granted Ukraine independence from Russia, to the fierce chagrin of Russian nationalists.[32] In response, the ROC cut its ties with Constantinople, calling the decision “illegal and canonically worthless.”[33] The New York Times’ Moscow Bureau Chief identified the rift as “the escalating contest between the Russian church and Constantinople over control of Eastern Orthodoxy.”[34] As an appendage of the Kremlin, the ROC is losing its ecclesiastical prowess at home and abroad. This is a bad omen for any attempt to morally revive a nation lost in alcohol, abortion, and suicide. Moral revival through church revivification may seem more idealistic than pragmatic, but it is plausible within the unique Russian calculus, which sees the godless Soviet legacy as the core of its national decay.

What do these crises tell the West about Russia’s fears? There are several insights to be gained. First, Russia must overcome its geographical constraints, which likely requires new conquests. Second, Russia must halt or slow its economic-demographic decline, which is either being ignored or being addressed in a way the West considers unconventional. Third, Russia has deep religious roots, and the Kremlin sees a vested interest in tapping into them. But fears are accompanied by countervailing hopes. As shall be demonstrated, the acquisition of Constantinople may be the key to reversing each of these crises. Moreover, this solution fits brilliantly into a void in the Russian Soul: Russia’s holy mission.

The Holy Mission

When Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Eastern Orthodox world was thrown on its head. The ancient seat of Christian power that stood for over a millennium was lost. Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem were all under Muslim control. If it was not the end of the world (as many within Eastern church believed at the time), then who was to take up the torch of Christendom?

High above the boisterous temporal realm, from the silent monasteries of sacred Mt. Athos in northeastern Greece, a certain monk emerged with an answer.[35] Philotheus of Pskov, in a 1510 letter to the Russian Tsar Basil III, made the following prediction:

“[The Tsar] is on earth the sole Emperor of the Christians, the leader of the Apostolic Church which stands no longer in Rome or in Constantinople, but in the blessed city of Moscow. She alone shines in the world brighter than the sun… All Christian Empires are fallen, and in their stead stands alone the Empire of our ruler in accordance with the Prophetical books. Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands and a fourth there shall not be.”[36]

In short, Rome had fallen into Latin heresy, Constantinople had fallen into the infidel’s hands, but Moscow would never fall. The gravity of such a bold and prestigious claim to divine power should not be lost on grand strategists – it certainly has not been lost on Russian nationalists. When nationalist movements have arisen in Western Europe, whether in Napoleon’s France, Hitler’s Germany, or Mussolini’s Italy, they have branded themselves as the heirs to the original Roman Empire of the Caesars.[37] Russia is different. It sees itself as the heir to the Byzantine Empire. The importance of this premise cannot be understated.

In the soul of Russia, hereditary bonds to Byzantium are in rooted in blood, faith, and toil. In 988, the Russian King Vladimir married Princess Anna, the sister of the Byzantine Emperor Basilios II.[38] In 1472, Tsar Ivan III married the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor, creating a clear “dynastic link” to the fallen empire (Figure 6).[39] The “golden days” of Russia were the centuries when it was transcribing Byzantine law and culture onto itself.[40] Constantinople is known in Russian as “Tsargrad”; “the Caesar City.” The pioneers recovering Byzantine history have been overwhelmingly Russian.[41] Russian Slavophiles have relied on Byzantine history to make their case against westernization.[42] Twentieth-century Russian historian J.A. Kulakovsky put it best when he wrote that, “Our Russian past is bound up with the Byzantine Empire by unbreakable ties; and on the basis of this union our Russian national consciousness has defined itself.”[43] His contemporary, historian Th. I. Uspenski, further stated that Russia’s “bequeathed” Byzantine heritage has given its people the will to “live, strive, and suffer.”[44] As noted by one of Putin’s favorite scholars, Nikolai Berdyaev, “Russian national thought… courses its way from the old idea of Moscow as the Third Rome…”[45] Russia’s soul has been forged from the ruins of Byzantium, and tempered by the struggle of its holy mission.

But key to Russia’s holy mission is the belief that its sacrifice for Christendom is unappreciated. When Christendom was in danger of extinction by the Turks, where did it find refuge? When Napoleon’s atheistic empire stormed across Europe leaving a trail of mass slaughter, whose capitol was torched in the effort to stop him? When the Central Powers unleashed the hell of mechanized warfare, which nation lost over nine million men to end the struggle? When Hitler threatened consume all of Western Europe, which nation sacrificed over thirty million of its people to defeat him? These rhetorical questions provide insight into the Russian Soul. Russia, in the nationalist view, has suffered more for the common cause of humanity than any other nation, yet it does not enjoy the status of a first-rate power like the United States, a nation which unceremoniously flaunts its role of being the world’s liberator. In a word, the current world order is entirely incongruent with Russia’s hopes for the future and its perception of the past.

But how is this future envisioned by Russian nationalists? Do they envision a great Russia in the mold of Byzantium or the Soviet Union? Is there an articulated method by which Russia might attain this future? If Vladimir Putin is a symptom of Russia’s modern impulses, one can begin to answer these questions by examining his most revered authors.

The Visionaries

The men that comprise Vladimir Putin’s personal pantheon of nationalist heroes (Peter Stolypin, Nikolai Berdyaev, Ivan Ilyin, and Lev Gumilev) were apostles of Russia’s divine mission (Figure 5). During Putin’s administration, he has directed his governors to read their works, has in some cases raised monuments to them, repatriated their remains from foreign lands, and drinks deeply from their philosophies in his public speeches.[46] Stolypin is remembered for his dedication to preserve Russian heritage. Berdyaev is remembered for his vision of a world with Russia as its leader. Ilyin is remembered for his warnings about modern Western intentions against Russia. Gumilev is remembered for his theory of how to dominate the world. Together, they hold priceless answers concerning Russian hopes.

Peter Stolpyin (1862-1911) was the iron-fisted enforcer of the last Russian monarchy, who hunted and hung so many communist revolutionaries that the hangman’s noose became known as “Stolypin’s necktie.”[47] In a speech before the Russian parliament in 1907, he boldly declared that, “the [communists] would like to choose the road of radicalism, the road which leads to the severance of ties with Russia’s historical past, with her cultural tradition. They want great upheavals, but we want a great Russia.”[48] As retribution for his efforts to stop Russia from falling into civil war, Stolypin was assassinated by his political enemies while he sat in a theater. He has been commemorated by nationalists as “a new heroic image” – the model of a strongman, immovably dedicated to Russian heritage.[49] Putin’s reverence for such a brutal anti-communist ought to at least give purveyors of the prevailing narrative pause.

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), a religious philosopher, witnessed the horrors First World War. He diagnosed the horror as unbridled humanism, cultivated by the Western Enlightenment. He prescribed Russian ascendance as the cure, writing that, “Russia, occupying a place in the middle betwixt East and West, is called to play a great role in the leading of mankind towards unity.”[50] Berdyaev hoped that through the process of post-war reconstruction, Russia could guide Western Europe away from the destruction of humanism. Being (in the eyes of Berdyaev) the most pious and least hedonistic nation in the world, Russia was “called” to provide the escape from humanism “from which Western mankind tormentedly seeks a way out.”[51] The humanist philosophy of Soviet revolutionaries was condemned by Berdyaev as deeply immoral; another stinging rebuke to the prevailing narrative.[52]

Another religious philosopher, Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), defined Russia’s nationalist mission in a collection of essays titled “Our Tasks,” translated alternatively as “Our Objectives.” Ilyin defines “nationalism” as “the love of the historical image and creative acts of [a nation’s] people in all its uniqueness.” He further states that “national feeling is a spiritual fire leading a person to service and sacrifice…”[53] Ilyin believed that a united Russia was the only thing standing between the world and chaos. Russia, unlike other great empires in history, intentionally defended and preserved the tribes and nations it ruled. Rather than assimilating different peoples into a melting pot, it preserved their unique identities.[54] He wrote that, “every national identity in its own way is the Spirit of God and in its own way praises the Lord.”[55] Indeed, in Ilyin’s eyes, Russia’s unique gift was protecting neighboring peoples to preserve them as God’s unique creation. This is the heart of Russia’s task; its objective; its holy mission. But Ilyin held very firmly that Western Europe and its American allies are decidedly a threat to this mission. In his view, liberal democracy was immoral because it blurred the lines between ethnicities and dismembered protective empires like Russia, bestowing upon vulnerable peoples a liberty they could not survive.[56] To understand his position, it is helpful to consider the ethnic cleansing that ravaged the Balkans immediately after the Iron Curtain fell. Predicting such a disaster forty years before it occurred, Ilyin wrote, “Russia, as a prey, thrown into plunder, is a quantity that no one will master, at which everyone will quarrel, which will cause incredible and unacceptable dangers to life for all of humanity.”[57] This is an excellent example of why the Soviet collapse was a geopolitical tragedy, not an ideological one as the prevailing narrative suggests. The Soviet Union had no care for the holy mission, but at least it kept ethnicities intact. Ivan Ilyin believed Russia’s purpose was to preserve ethnic diversity by building its empire as a paternal shield against heretical Western liberalism. In this view, western liberalism is responsible for the immoral behavior driving Russia’s demographic crisis. For this holy mission, Russia is destined to suffer like a burnt offering.[58]

Lev Gumilev (1912-1992), the most complex of these four men, was a historian and Soviet gulag survivor that pioneered a theory of ethnic development, which he called “ethnogenesis.”[59] This theory supposed that ethnicities rise to power and fall in predictable cycles. He was deeply fascinated with the history of Eurasian steppe tribes like the Mongols, because unlike other ethnic groups such as the Romans, they grew into a dominant empire, but then faded into relative obscurity as if they had never existed.[60] He theorized that what drives ethnic groups to dominate is the “passionarity” of its leaders. The term “passionarity” describes what could be called root of human motivation to dominate. For instance, Alexander the Great knew he could not bring his spoils from India home to Greece, but he desired to conquer it anyway.[61] Passionarity, according to Gumilev’s theory, is what motivated Alexander the Great to pursue greatness for the sake of greatness itself.[62] Conversely, when passionarity runs out, ethnicities fall into the sands of time. Vladimir Putin made an explicit reference to this theory of ethnogenesis in his 2016 Address to the Russian Federal Assembly:

“Who will take the lead and who will remain on the periphery and inevitably lose their independence will depend not only on the economic potential but primarily on the will of each nation, on its inner energy, which Lev Gumilev termed passionarnost: the ability to move forward and to embrace change.”[63]

In referencing Gumilev’s theory in this highly-conspicuous setting, Putin is warning world leaders that their will to “embrace change” will determine whether they remain relevant in the future. The most important modern application of Gumilev’s work is this: ethnic ascendance requires leaders who have the raw will to dominate beyond what is merely necessary for survival; leaders who inspire their nations to follow them into the unknown.

The thoughts of these nationalists can be helpfully synthesized as follows: God created the Russian mission, Berdyaev envisioned its destination, Gumilev forged the map to get there, Ilyin foretold of its dangers, and Stolypin modeled the hero who could make the journey. Together, they provide a clear picture of the Russian path to empire.

It must be made clear that all of these men were aggressive anti-communists. Reflecting on the communist treatment of Russians, Ivan Ilyin wrote, “dark and criminal people trample his pockets and altars, forbid him to pray, beat his best people… suppress his freedom, distort his spiritual face, squander his property, ruin his economy, decompose his state, [and] wean him from free labor and free inspiration…” [64] The path back to empire may require the suffering that Western powers find irrational, but such is the divine destiny of Russia’s soul. As romanticized by Berdyaev,

“…Russia with its ascetic soul ought to become great and mighty. Not weak and puny, but strong and great it will conquer the temptation of the kingdom of this world. Only a great and strong sacrifice, only its free annihilation in this world will save and redeem.”[65]

During its time as a superpower, America has primarily dealt with Soviet Russia. Soviet politics, Soviet military doctrine, and Soviet ideology are all hazardously familiar to American policymakers. But what America “grew up” with in the Cold War was an anomaly in the grand scope of Russian history. The nationalist impulses now resurging in Russia signal a reversion to a Tsarist-Byzantine past, not a Soviet past. It is entirely understandable that American scholars who obtained their degrees and foreign policy experience during the Cold War would be inclined to see Russian aggression in a Soviet framework. But American policymakers must be prepared to face the possibility that the U.S. has misdiagnosed the enemy’s ambitions. Putin does not miss the Soviet Union. He misses what it destroyed: Stolypin’s “Great Russia.”

The Power of Constantinople

“Turkey must be expelled from Europe… the city of Constantinople and South Thrace must be incorporated into my Empire.”[66]

This demand was made in 1915 by Tsar Nikolas II – the last monarch of the Russian Empire, whose entire family would be slaughtered by the Bolsheviks just three years later. He made this demand to the French ambassador during negotiations over who would control which territories after World War I. Indeed, after the Ottomans entered the war, Russian enthusiasm soared, as they saw it as an opportunity to beat their old Turkish rival into submission, and to seize from it the beloved Byzantine capitol along with the Turkish Straits. Russian politician Pavel Mikyulov, who for years spearheaded the effort to ensure that Russia acquired this war trophy, said of the war effort in 1915,

“The participation of Turkey in the war on the side of our enemies has made it possible to put on the order of the day the solution of the age-old problem of our policy in the Near East. The acquisition in complete possession of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles [the Turkish Straits] together with Constantinople, and of a sufficient part of the adjacent shores to insure the defense of the Straits, must be the aim of this policy for the time being.”[67]

The following year, Mikylov declared before the Russian parliament that, “Our Russian interest in this war consists in the necessary incorporation of the Straits,” and that, “we cannot end it without this achievement.”[68] So heavy was the diplomatic push to secure this territory, that by 1915, Britain, France, and Italy had all agreed in writing to grant Russia this lucrative prize, contradicting decades of Western political precedent.[69] The new borders were drawn, the agreements were made (Figure 2). In November of 1917, Nikolas II was about to finally achieve the goal that eleven previous wars against the Turks were unable to obtain.[70]

Why was the acquisition of Constantinople and the Turkish Straits so important to the Russians? The answer lies in their exceptional geographical positioning. The French scholar Petrus Gyllius called the extended waterway “the strait that surpasses all straits, because with one key it opens and closes two worlds, two seas.”[71] From the time of its founding in ancient Greece (under the name “Byzantion”), those who controlled the city controlled the straits, and consequentially controlled both the gateway between Europe and Asia, and the maritime gateway between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea.[72] The only thing that has truly changed in the past two thousand years is the scale of power to be won with its acquisition. Indeed, much of the reason that the Byzantines survived for over a thousand years was due to the multi-faceted power offered by the city and the Straits.

Economic/Diplomatic

“The historical aspiration of Russia for the opening of a free exit from the Black Sea promises this time to be crowned with full success. This will open a broad prospect for the economic development of our entire South. It is just in that direction that Russia can acquire a sufficient compensation for all the great sacrifices she has made in this unbelievably hard war.”[73]

This description of the economic power to be won by acquiring the Straits was given in 1915 by the Ukrainian Minister of Finance (while Ukraine was still a Russian territory). As recognized by late-Imperial Russia, the Straits are the most important trade vein in Europe, and they have held that status for centuries.

Constantinople’s economic power partially saved it from Attila the Hun in the fifth century. From the city, Byzantine emperors had the “two worlds” and “two seas” at their fingertips, enriching them through international trade. Because Attila could not be stopped on the battlefield, the Byzantines simply paid him off in gold to stay in his own lands. Ironically, because Byzantium maintained such immense economic strength via the Straits, much of the extorted gold actually returned to the empire as the Huns started purchasing luxury goods from Byzantine merchants. Ergo, the Byzantines outlasted one of the most feared enemies of early Medieval Europe without fighting it.[74] This is the essence of what Sun Tzu called, “the supreme art of war.”

Today, in a world of exploding population growth, food is the new gold. According to the British Royal Institute of International Affairs (or Chatham House), the Turkish Straits “are particularly critical for wheat – a fifth of global exports pass through them each year, largely from the Black Sea ‘breadbasket’ region.”[75] Overall, 77% of the grain from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan transit the waterway each year, usually bound for East-Asian markets and in the future, countries in the Middle East and North African (MENA).[76] These grain exports are projected to increase in the future.[77] In the case of other trade “chokepoints” in the world, the damage of closures and restrictions can be somewhat mitigated by alternative maritime routes. However, no alternative routes exist for the Turkish Straits, which (along with rising Russian aggression) prompted Chatham House to rate its vulnerability as “very high.”[78]

Economic power is generally derived not from the actual restriction of trade, but rather from the fear of restriction. A nation is less likely to oppose its neighbor if that neighbor has the power to starve it. Conversely, the power to starve is also the power to save. Control of these trade veins would grant Russia the economic “carrots” and “sticks” it needs to advance its grand strategic goals in multiple ways (Figure 1).

First, Russia would finally be able to control its own economic fate in the Turkish Straits, as it has sought to do for centuries. Shortly after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans shut down the waterways, monopolized the regional grain trade, and fixed grain prices, all of which dealt a heavy blow to the Black Sea coastal economies and even the western inland communities along the Danube River.[79] During the late nineteenth century, when the Balkan states were intermittently revolting against the Ottoman Empire, Russian attempts to aid the nationalist rebels were ultimately aimed at regaining Constantinople and the Straits. The Turkish closure of the Straits between 1911 and 1913 cost Russia over 700 billion rubles in lost trade.[80] As Tsar Alexander I warned, the hostile Turks held “the keys to our house” – a situation which has needed a remedy since 1453.[81] If Russia aims to become a superpower, it will need to secure its own “house.”

Second, it would enable the Kremlin to lock down much of Ukrainian trade, giving Russia critical leverage to extend or end its invasion on favorable terms.[82] The successful reacquisition of Ukraine would also grant Russia immense trade power by virtue of the fact that Ukraine is a nation rich with warm-water ports and extensive shipping infrastructure, part of which Russia has already commandeered in Crimea.[83] The Straits have already been relevant in the current Ukrainian-Russian struggle. After the seizure of Ukrainian ships and sailors in late 2018, Ukrainian Admiral Ihor Voronchenko formally requested that Turkey close the Straits to Russian vessels.[84] Additionally, control of the Straits would fuel confidence in Russian agricultural exports, paving the way for a reinvigorated Russian grain industry that could replace much of the Ukrainian market share.[85]

Third, it would greatly bolster Russia’s efforts to replace the United States as the main arbiter of power in the Middle East.[86] Fear that Russia might switch off food imports would force MENA nations to think twice before defying Russian interests. This would consequently turn Russia into a regional hegemon that MENA leaders must appease in order to prevent food shortages that could trigger violent uprisings or fuel radical insurgencies.

In short, the Turkish Straits may be the key to solving the Russian geographic crisis and economic crisis by securing more warm-water ports, while also opening up opportunities for Russia to dominate Eastern Europe and the Middle East, just as its Byzantine forefathers did.

Religious/Cultural

“Among the problems brought forward by this war the problem of Constantinople has for Russia a special interest and importance. We are brought to it by all the aspects of our life. It is for us a question of our daily bread, of all our political power, and of our cultural mission; the spiritual essence of Russia is involved in this problem. The Cathedral of Sophia is precisely that pearl of the Gospel for which Russia must be prepared to give everything she possesses.”[87]

As vocalized by Russian Prince Eugene Trubetskoy in 1915, the Hagia Sophia (the Church of Holy Wisdom) is a glorious prize in and of itself – one worth extreme sacrifice. Indeed, the splendor of the Hagia Sophia is both natural and supernatural. It was for centuries the home of a vibrant Eastern Orthodox church before it was sacked and converted into a mosque by the Ottoman invaders when Constantinople fell. Though it has been a secular museum since the 1920s, it represents a deep spiritual and cultural loss within the Eastern Church, and neither the Greek Christians nor the Turkish Muslims are particularly satisfied with the “neutral” status quo.[88]

Here, there must be a brief excursus into orthodox theology. Churches do not hold the same significance in the West as they do in the East. In the orthodox world, the church sanctuary is, in a mystical sense, an icon of Christ’s eternal throne room. This is why eastern churches are intentionally exquisite, saturated with sweet incense, and exploding with rich icons of the saints and the angels. Just as church icons are considered to be “a window between earthly and celestial worlds,” the church can be understood as a rift between heaven and earth.[89] As explained by Father Steven Tsichlis, speaking to a group of believers at St. Barnabas Church in Costa Mesa, California,

“[worship is] not merely something that we do, it is something that we enter into… what we do when we come to church is to enter into the worship that is already going on around the throne of the Lamb from all eternity to all eternity. We come here to participate in that worship, and in fact, our worship here is meant to be an icon of that worship going on in the kingdom of God… it happens at every orthodox church around the world, every Sunday, and every time the liturgy is celebrated… Heaven and earth at that point intersect.”[90]

In short, the church is not just a place to gather, it is a place to be lifted by God into His presence, where the glories described by the Apostle John in Revelation are transpiring in the present. The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is the most cherished intersection point in all of the Eastern world. As the fourth-century Byzantine historian Prokopious wrote, once a pilgrim enters the Hagia Sophia, “his mind is lifted up towards God and exalted, feeling that He cannot be far away, but must especially love to dwell in this place.”[91] But the liturgy has been barred from this sanctuary for over five hundred years – an incomprehensibly tragic loss the orthodox perspective. But if it were to be restored as a Christian church, what effect would that have on Eastern Europe?

As previously noted, at the core of the Russian Soul is a drive to liberate the world for Christ. When Trubetskoy describes the Hagia Sophia a question of Russia’s “cultural mission,” he is referring to this drive. Like all else in Russian history, Russia may suffer for it, possibly even giving up “everything she possesses.” But religious fervor may not be the only piece of such a calculus. There are several tangible grand strategic advantages to be gained from reclaiming the Hagia Sophia for Christendom.

First, it would almost certainly act as a hypodermic needle of adrenaline into the heart of Russian nationalism. This could begin reversing its domestic demographic and economic crises by revitalizing the church in the culture. The ROC would doubtlessly begin encouraging pilgrimages to the newly-reopened heart of Christendom, where the most glorious intersection of heaven and earth could once again occur – an impulse that would be replicated across the Eastern Orthodox world. As previously-noted, Christianity in Russia is more of a marker of national identity more than true conviction.[92] Whether restoration of the Hagia Sophia would be powerful enough to draw people back into the ROC is debatable, but the Russian people have empirically been responsive to successful foreign conquests.[93] Framed in this light, it becomes less surprising that Russia is investing in its military instead of social programs to solve the demographic crisis as Western nations would. Widespread re-engagement in the ROC would, in theory, begin to put a stopper on the “militant secularism” that is fueling the demographic crisis (suicide, abortion, alcoholism, promiscuity, etc.), which in turn is fueling Russia’s long-term economic crisis.[94] ROC Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk has publicly said that if Russia’s population is to avoid “extinction,” it will require larger and healthier families, which he noted were common in Russia before the rise of communism (yet another indication that the prevailing narrative is incorrect).[95]

Second, it would firmly establish Russian ecclesiastical dominance in the orthodox world. The ROC and the Kremlin, both of whom are losing political battles against Constantinople’s patriarch, would immediately be recognized as the religious hegemon after reversing the Ottoman conquest that shattered Christendom. This ecclesiastical power could be a critical cultural tool by which Russian imperial ascendance in Eastern Europe could be accomplished, as grateful eastern Christians may blunt general anti-Russian sentiments in their own nations (Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine, Greece, etc.).[96] Indeed, an important non-military piece of Byzantine grand strategy involved the use of missionaries and relics to achieve political goals, coercing and persuading allies and rivals alike by means of religious manipulation.[97] Especially in light of the aforementioned October 2018 “schism” over the Ukrainian church’s independence, Russia’s ecclesiastical hegemony has taken a severe hit that demands a response against the patriarch of Constantinople.

The acquisition of Constantinople would undoubtedly give Russia a potent diplomatic tool in its grand strategic toolbox, while simultaneously triggering a new religious awakening at home and abroad to reverse the damages wrought by communism. Unsurprisingly, this would fall perfectly in lock step with Russia’s view of its holy mission: pick up the torch left by Byzantium to liberate Europe from secularism and Islamism, even if it requires sacrifice.

Military/Political

“…With the cross on its chest and in its heart the Russian people will conscientiously fulfill the Imperial desire and will open to Russia the ways to the solution of the problems on the shores of the Black Sea… which were bequeathed to her by the ancestors.”[98]

The “problem” identified at the outset of World War I by former imperial parliamentary chairman Mikhail Rodzyanko refers to a problem that began in 1453: the “Turkish problem.” The memory of the Ottoman Turkish conquests into Europe is a potent nationalist fuel, particularly in Eastern Europe, where the Turks brutally suppressed Christian-nationalist revolts in places such as Serbia and Bulgaria; conflicts which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.[99] Even in Western Europe, anti-Turkish sentiments bled through the rhetoric of powerful leaders such as British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who once wrote that the Turks, “were upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view.”[100] Of course, this seething (and contextually racialized) anger against the Turks is no longer an ostensible piece of European diplomatic dialogue. However, it is worth considering that Turkey, though geographically “European,” simply does not share remotely similar heritage with the rest of Europe. It may seem that in the modern liberal international order, this can be papered over in favor of pragmatic calculation, but the passions of democratic nations are not so easily assuaged. When Rodzyanko spoke of the “problem” of Turkish people in 1915, he encapsulated what was a common interest between Russia and the rest of Europe: “Turkey,” as declared by Nikolas II at the outset of World War I, “must be expelled from Europe.” Given modern trends, this common interest may rise again.

Turkey, to say the least, has had difficulty integrating into the European “family.” Indeed, if it could be called part of the “family,” it is most akin to an ostracized child that was adopted out of political convenience. After the abolition of the Islamic Ottoman caliphate and intentional secularization by its leader Kamal Ataturk in the 1920s, Turkey proved itself to be a valuable Western ally during World War II, in which its neutrality allegedly contained Hitler’s eastward push.[101] For this (as well as its utility in containing the Soviet Union), America and Britain brought it into the European fold, and even into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.[102] Secularization and pacification effectively took care of the “Turkish problem.” But bonds forged while fighting a common enemy can be quickly forgotten. Indeed, this is the wisdom of antiquity documented by classical Greek historian Thucydides, who watched in horror as the same Greece that united to defeat the Persian empire viciously devoured itself in the Peloponnesian War only fifty years later. Just as Greek calculus changed in the interwar years, European and Turkish calculations are changing as the nostalgia of past glories are taking root in both civilizations.

In Europe, secularization is unable to fill the cultural void that Christianity once filled. As contended by European philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, the European Union’s dedication to the “religion of human rights” is replacing religion, even while jettisoning the original moral foundation for the notion of “human rights.” However, there is a “phenomenon” occurring across Europe’s younger generations which is, as Sir Scruton puts it, “the search for the old God of the continent.”[103] But faith is only one facet of the phenomenon. It is also fueled by concerns over loss of national sovereignty as the European Union grows, economic stagnation as the Eurozone crisis rolls on, and cultural transformation as liberal immigration policies import Middle Eastern and North African refugees. To be sure, the rise of European nationalism has not yet been cataclysmic, and existing data indicates that a “search” for the lost European heritage (if it exists) is in its infancy.[104] But assessments across the board generally agree that current trends are disquieting for supporters of the existing international order. As the director of the London School of Economics’ research institute has warned, “The backlash, one suspects, still has a long way to run.”[105]

In Turkey, resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism has been occurring for decades. As it turns out, the draconian enforcement of secular law has met resistance in the Muslim-majority nation. Kamal Ataturk’s choice to turn Turkey into a “modernized” nation began a process of suppressing Islamic impulse, rather than reforming it. Islamic fundamentalist political parties began picking up steam in the 1970s and 1980s but were constantly suppressed by both the gun and the gavel. However, a rebranding of party motives occurred in the 2000s, in which Islamists adopted more pro-Western rhetoric and platforms in order to gain power. By the 2010s, current Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s party (the AKP) had managed to erode both the military and judicial strength of the secular state. Now, under Erdoğan’s leadership, the new Islamist government is pursuing a gradual “soft Islamization.”[106] The desire for the Islamic caliphate never fully disappeared after the collapse of the Ottomans – it was merely swept under the rug. According to the Brookings Institute’s Shadi Hamid, nationalism is indeed rising in Europe, but in Muslim-majority nations such as Turkey, it looks different:

“…seeking a deeper sense of belonging in one’s own community – whether that’s a sect, tribe, or nation – often means casting out those who aren’t quite the same. This longing… tends to take a different form in the Middle East and other Muslim-majority contexts. For societies that have suffered one tragedy after another, nostalgia offers and opportunity for escape. The memory of the last caliphate lingers… the call to Islam, and an idealized notion of sharia, evokes a more just, equitable order – something that has been in short supply for much of the modern era.”[107]

The future of European-Turkish relations will likely become more hostile in the future as both parties revert to the romanticized models known in the nineteenth century. This presents Russia with an exceptional opportunity to exploit fissures in the American alliance network. A renewed conquest of Constantinople would, in several ways, pigeonhole America and Europe into making extremely tough choices about which civilization they will choose to defend.

First, and most importantly, it would potentially destroy the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO was forged in a common desire to contain Soviet aggression and has been the primary threat to Russian expansionism in the twenty-first century. It consists of most Western European nations, the United States, and Canada. Deriving its strength from a covenant of mutual defense in its founding charter, the alliance relies on trust. Each member state must believe that the promise of mutual defense is unwavering. More importantly, Russia must believe in that promise, otherwise NATO provides no credible deterrent. Turkey’s membership as a NATO state theoretically protects it, but the increasing despotism of the Erdoğan regime is causing trust to waver. Most pro-Western Turkish military officers were ousted in response to the failed coup against the administration in 2016, causing considerable damage to both Turkish military readiness and ties with NATO.[108] The coup also triggered a crackdown on both the free press and the independent judiciary, prompting Freedom House to categorize Turkey as “not free.”[109] If there is a weak link in the NATO alliance, it is Turkey.[110] A Russian attack on an increasingly Islamic and authoritarian Turkey would force Europe to either abandon its NATO ally or allow the nightmarish scenario of open war with Russia to unfold. Which European power would be willing to open Pandora’s Box? If NATO chose the former option, it would be a clear signal to the world that faith in NATO is dead. But the end of an alliance may be preferable to the beginning of a third world war. In short, Constantinople may be the anvil upon which Russia can finally break the chain that is NATO.

Second, it may even lure current American allies to Russia’s side. During the Cold War, communism failed to capture the hearts and minds of either the Russian people or their allies.[111] Communist ideology ultimately undermined the Soviet alliance network, including its holdings in Eastern Europe. But communism was an insurgent ideology, not an organic one. Anti-Turkish sentiment blended with orthodox Christianity is organic to Eastern Europe. Another Russo-Turkish conflict may force America’s Eastern European allies to reconsider where their political loyalties lie – with the rising Islamic power with questionable U.S. support? Or with the rising Christian power that has a clear will to dominate? Greece, for instance, has had a history of bitter enmity against the Turks, ripe for exploitation.[112] The Balkan states suffered harsh repression under Turkish rule between 1453 and 1924, with hardships cresting in the latter half of the1800s. During this repression, Tsarist Russia repeatedly branded itself as the liberator of the Balkan people, pushing Europe to intervene to stop Turkish brutality, and threatening to unilaterally invade if Western powers refused to defend the Balkan nationalists. [113] It would be very easy for Putin or his successor to replicate this narrative in the event of a Russian conflict against Turkey over the orthodox home city. The seizure of Constantinople would capitalize on organic grievances in Europe, pulling Eastern Europe out of America’s alliance network and into Russia’s. It would avoid the grand strategic mistake that crippled the Soviet Union: the failure to make and keep allies.

Third, Russian control of Constantinople and the Straits would quickly make Russia a Mediterranean naval power. This was Great Britain’s primary fear in the 1800s when Russia was constantly fighting the Turks, because as soon as Russia controlled the Straits, it could lead its own fleets in and out of the Mediterranean Sea as it pleased.[114] It would also turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake, effectively placing all Black Sea militaries under indirect Russian control (Figure 1). This would be the “hard power” element that could lock down Eastern European allegiances. Furthermore, it would bolster Russia’s ambitions in MENA nations (such as supporting pro-Russian proxies) by giving it an uninterrupted path to its naval base in Syria and guaranteeing access to potential new bases throughout the Mediterranean.[115] This unrestrained naval access would, so to speak, thin the ice upon which international stability rests, forcing all nations with military and economic interests in the Mediterranean to tread more softly or else risk provoking Russian hostility.

For Russia, the economic, religious, and military advantages of taking Constantinople are clear, and it would radically change the world’s balance of power while answering the holy mission of the Russian Soul. With this in mind, it is obvious why Tsar Nikolas II insisted so heavily upon claiming the city after World War I. But what prevented him from obtaining it? The answer is quite simple: the rise of communism. Vladimir Lenin painted the leaders of the push for Constantinople as “allies… with French and English billionaires,” and “representatives of the capitalists, and capitalists want the seizure of foreign territory.”[116] The treaty to obtain the city was cancelled by the March Revolution.[117] In 1917, the Tsar’s last push to diplomatically obtain the city ended with the November Revolution.

The most important takeaway from this episode of history is this: Imperial Russia was on the verge of fulfilling its destiny and solving its long-lasting crises, but the chaos of the communist revolution snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, dooming Russia to seventy years of state terror followed by two decades of international humiliation. Communism was an infection of the Western Enlightenment that destroyed Russia. Vladimir Putin is likely resurrecting the Russian Soul – picking up where the Tsars left off.

Warning Signs

If America and its allies misunderstand the Russian Soul, they are likely to misinterpret what Vladimir Putin is doing in the world today. Under the prevailing narrative, the West is likely to miss the critical warning signs of Russian ascendance. The bear, looking to the Black Sea, is reaching its right paw around the eastern coast and its left paw around the western coast, positioning itself to devour its prey beyond the sea: Constantinople.

Since 1991, Russia has engaged in two outright wars against European nations. Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. In both cases, it has retaken territory lost in the Soviet breakup, acquiring two Georgian areas known as South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and two Ukrainian areas known as the Crimean Peninsula and Donbass. The prevailing narrative interprets these two conquests as an attempt to reclaim Soviet territorial possessions. As summarized by the Brookings Institute’s Fiona Hill, “…Putin has laid out his view that all the states that emerged from the USSR are appendages of Russia. They should pay fealty to Moscow.”[118] This plays to the thesis of the prevailing narrative, supposing that Russia is seeking homage and respect from its former USSR serfs. While this is an attractive interpretation, it assumes that the old Soviet intentions are still motivating factors in Russian policy. CEPA president Peter Doran interprets both of these wars as efforts by Russia to prove that it can be “disruptive.”[119] Again, this assumes that Putin’s goal is to create chaos. By taking a more nuanced look at what Russia has gained from these land seizures, one can begin to see how these conflicts have laid the groundwork for further targeted conquest.

War with Georgia

The August 2008 invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia lasted only five days, but it destroyed the international assumption that Russia was too weak to contemplate the use of military force to achieve its objectives. Earlier that year, in April, NATO held a summit to invite Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance at some point in the future. The summit made the mistake of signaling clear support for Georgia’s entrance into NATO, while postponing that entrance to an undetermined date. This was the “turning point” that invited Russia’s territorial conquest.[120] Had the two nations become NATO members, they would have enjoyed mutual defense under Article V of the NATO Charter, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all. Russia, seeing its window of opportunity to invade without NATO’s retribution closing, built up its forces along the Georgian border, and attacked. Technologically inferior and logistically chaotic, Georgia suffered a “humiliating defeat,” as Russian troops were at one point less than twenty miles from its capital city (Figure 4).[121] The U.S. Army War College’s Col. Robert Hamilton (ret.) describes the ensuring war as the “first step in Russia’s campaign to overturn the rules-based order and replace it with an order led not by rules and principles, but by a concert of great military and economic powers.”[122]

Russia dealt with this territorial gain as proponents of the holy mission may have expected: it seized a piece of its former empire, claiming to protect its unique ethnic groups under the paternal Russian banner. The annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was followed by a series of agreements in 2015 to extend protective Russian citizenship to their respective ethnic groups, while recognizing them as independent states.[123]

The lasting impact on Georgia has been threefold. First, its hopes for NATO membership have effectively vanished for the foreseeable future. Second, it has forced Georgia into the undesirable position of being reliant on defensive military aid from Western nations. If it were able to fully defend itself, military aid would end, along with the symbolic support of Russia’s enemies. Consequently, for its own good, it must maintain a status of weakness relative to Russia.[124] Thirdly, Georgia has been placed firmly upon Russia’s plate.[125] Though its economy and government have recovered from the 2008 war, it cannot realistically prevent Russia from consuming the remainder of its land in a renewed conflict especially given the disturbing rapidity of Russian military modernization.[126]

But why did Russia not simply seize all of Georgia in 2008? The answer may lay in psychology. In the heat of invasion, the will to resist the enemy is usually high. But if the invader proves its superiority (as Russia clearly did), yet withdraws, the victim state is left believing that it exists at the mercy of their adversary. This is what has happened to Georgia. According to Hamilton:

“Russia’s disinformation and intimidation campaigns, combined with the West’s perceived ambivalence about Georgia, are having an effect. Georgian political scientist and government official Lasha Dzebisashvili observes that a ‘nihilistic sentiment’ has taken hold among a portion of the Georgian population. These Georgians saw Russia’s willingness to use force in Georgia and have decided that no amount of military preparation or Western integration can save the country.”[127]

Sometimes, hearts and minds are not won – they can instead be taken prisoner. Vladimir Putin is evidently attempting to convince Georgia that its end is inevitable, and therefore cooperation is its least disastrous option. In a word, he is destroying their will to resist.

Russia now enjoys several concrete grand strategic advantages from this conflict. It has contained NATO’s expansion, tightened its grip on the Caucuses, and acquired the ability to remove the only buffer state between itself and eastern Turkey. One particularly notable benefit is that Abkhazia is a mere sixty miles from one of the region’s most important trade veins: the port city of Batumi on Georgia’s Black Sea coast (Figure 3). So valuable is this location that Joseph Stalin attempted to trade it (and two other provinces) to Turkey in exchange for more favorable access to the Turkish Straits in 1921.[128] With its deep-water harbor, railway infrastructure, oil terminals, and rising cargo turnover capacity, it is one of the most important cities in the region and has held that status since deep antiquity.[129] Its waters are deep enough to accommodate warships, which would allow Russia to extend its naval power much closer to Turkey’s borders if it took Batumi. Three major oil pipelines run from the Caspian Sea to Batumi (and the nearby town of Supsa), making the city a uniquely lucrative prize if one is looking to confront Turkey, which directly depends upon those pipelines.[130]

Putin did not merely force the old Soviet possession to respect him in 2008. He placed forward-deployed troops within striking distance of a vital Turkish economic and military nerve. He now has the plausible option of erasing Georgia from the map with little fear of meaningful Western retaliation. The entire eastern Black Sea coast is effectively under his control. This is not chaos. This is calculation.

War with Ukraine

The 2014 annexation of the Crimea Peninsula and subsequent war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region require less in-depth examination, given that it did not shock the world as heavily as did 2008. It gave Russia fairly straightforward advantages in terms of its navy. The peninsula juts out into the middle of the Black Sea, creating a natural base for power projection, and indeed the port city Sevastopol has been turned into a major base of Russian naval operations over the past five years. According to Harvard’s Dmitry Gorenburg, “from Sevastopol, the Russian navy can pretty much control all approaches and dominate the region vis-a-vis Turkey.”[131] The acquisition allowed Russia to begin building up its naval forces, which is essentially uncontested by modern scholarship.

However, is Russia’s war with Ukraine an end in itself? Or is a means to an end? Hill says that the war in Ukraine war merely an effort to score political points, and that “With no endgame in sight in Ukraine, Putin is now focusing on the European arena.”[132] Hill’s analysis supposed that the war already served its purpose: prove that Russia cannot be ignored. While partially correct, the statement that there is “no endgame” is a dubious assumption. Norwegian strategic scholar Jökull Johannesson has made a strong case that the true goal in Ukraine is to build up the Russian military by seizing the Ukrainian defense industry, writing that,

“The Russian control of Crimea added 13 Ukrainian defence companies to Russia’s toll and 18 defence companies located in Luhansk and Donetsk are now in Russia’s hands. Little evidence is in existence of what Russia has done with the defence companies in the Donbass but, one eyewitness accounts tells of a total evacuation to Russia of the manufacturing equipment of defence company manufacturing rifle magazines in Luhansk.”[133]

In common terms, Russia is essentially stealing the Ukrainian military. As Johannesson exposits, Putin’s military modernization goals cannot be achieved unless he builds up Russia’s capacity to build weapons and increases the skilled laborers to do the building (especially when the domestic workforce is being eaten up by the demographic crisis). Both of these things are offered by conquest of Ukrainian territory.[134] In this view, Ukraine is a stepping stone to a more lethal Russian military. Johannesson’s conclusion, however, stops short of the possibility that Russia sees Ukraine as a necessary stepping stone for further invasions. But the weapons Russia has secured in its annexation are highly relevant to fighting modern conventional wars as opposed to low-sophistication insurgencies. Air-to-air missiles, ballistic missile components, advanced fighter jets, personnel carriers, artillery, communication systems, and heavy armor are all included as military hardware that Russia either has gained or stands to gain.[135] The military flexibility provided by this type of modernization increases the ability for Russia to engage in offensive actions and build a robust conventional deterrent against other nations.[136] Furthermore, if Johannesson is correct that Russia’s war efforts will follow the industrial centers, that path will inevitably lead to the immense naval infrastructure on Ukraine’s southeastern coast; a treasure trove for the expansion of naval power.[137]

Overall, there is more to the war in Ukraine than merely scoring political points or sowing chaos. More nuanced analysis indicates that the war is aimed at building up an offensively-oriented military posture. Given the evidence already presented concerning Russia’s offensive intentions, the question of a future Russian conflict against Turkey should not be removed from the discussion, as Russia is acquiring the means that would make such a conflict a reality.

Conclusion

It is highly unlikely that Russia, with Vladimir Putin at the helm, is seeking to challenge the “unipolar” international order through Soviet-era political calculations. Resurgent nationalist philosophy is incompatible and diametrically-opposed to both Soviet thought and modern Western thought. Russia’s internal crises demand a combination of territorial expansion, new economic leverage, and moral revival. The empirical, multi-faceted, and emphatic interest in Constantinople and the Turkish Straits as an imperial target demonstrated by the last of the Russian monarchy should be disquieting, particularly in light of the fact that the target is becoming more valuable over time while the alliance network to defend it is fraying. Whether Putin specifically planned his wars against Georgia and Ukraine as stepping stones towards Constantinople is certainly debatable, but Russia is far better-positioned to take the city now than it was when Robert Gates dismissed Putin’s hostility at the 2007 Munich Conference. Europe’s geopolitical winds are shifting, and they do not favor the U.S.-built order of the Cold War. Over the course of this century, the continent may (politically speaking) look like it did in the 1800s and relying on thinking forged in the 1900s is doomed to fail. American scholars and policymakers ought not ignore these troubling developments, lest they be blindsided by a New Russian Empire that the prevailing narrative failed to anticipate.

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