i’m sorry if this makes some users here feel old lol but i was a preteen and apolitical obviously when this happened so i genuinely know nothing about this situation. does it have anything to do with nato? i’m just curious to get a marxist analysis of this situation

  • dinklesplein [any, he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    warm water ports is a meme by liberal IR guys, it certainly matters but i would be careful overstressing its importance personally.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't think it's possible to overstress how vital it is for a nation to have year round access to the sea. St. Petersburg could be blockaded easily with naval mines and missiles, while Archangel is ice bound for a significant part of the year. Vladivostok is several hundred million miles from anywhere that matters and directly across the pacific from US naval bases in Hawaii and San Francisco.

      Like if you've got evidence to the contrary please by all means present it, but to the best of my knowledge year round access to the seas with high volume ports is right below energy independence and nuclear weapons on the list of vital strategic assets.

      • dinklesplein [any, he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        https://www.jstor.org/stable/44642451?seq=2

        Naval War College Review, 1993.

        The first is that Russia has always had a warm water with free access to the open ocean - Murmansk. Despite its northern latitude this port is kept ice-free year-round by the Gulf Stream

        This might seem counter to what I'm saying given the paper predicts an urge from the Russian Federation to gain warm water ports:

        The thrust of this essay is not that Russia has no interest in maritime access, but that the areas where geography allows Russia secure access to the sea with usable inland communications are exceptionally limited. Imperial Russia possessed all these areas - the Soviet Union had all of them except Finland. It is not unlikely that the Russian Federation will feel the urge, at some point, to reoccupy them.

        Crimea would certainly count as one of those but let's be real it's not the most valuable of warm water ports given the Bosphorus and a friendly Turkey isn't a guarantee if I'm a Russian policy planner. Also keep in mind that I'm contesting the idea that warm water ports have been central to the history of Russian Foreign Policy which includes both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, neither of which in reality prioritised it as much as it's been made out to be.