Given The Perspective Of Yesterday's Post, Where Does Russia Stand?

What intrigues me about the Russia-Ukraine War is how it's first sent me to look at early modern history in Poland, the Baltic region, and Ukraine. But the map above is from Wikipedia and shows the Swedish Empire at its greatest extent about 1720, when the rise of Russia changed alignments. Here's the Wikipedia summary:

The Swedish Empire was a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries (Swedish: Stormaktstiden, "the Era of Great Power"). The beginning of the empire is usually taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, and its end as the loss of territories in 1721 following the Great Northern War.

. . . After the victories in the Thirty Years' War, Sweden reached the climax of the great-power era during the Second Northern War, when its primary adversary, Denmark–Norway, was neutralized by the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658 (this is when the Swedish empire was at its largest extent). However, in the further course of this war, as well as in the subsequent Scanian War, Sweden was able to maintain its empire only with the support of its closest ally, France. Charles XI of Sweden consolidated the empire. But a decline began with his son, Charles XII. After initial Swedish victories, Charles secured the empire for some time in the Peace of Travendal (1700) and the Treaty of Altranstädt (1706), before the disaster that followed the king's war in Russia. The Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava put an end to Sweden's eastbound expansion, and by the time of Charles XII's death in 1718 only a much-weakened and far smaller territory remained. The last traces of occupied continental territory vanished during the Napoleonic Wars, and Finland went to Russia in 1809, with Sweden's role as a great power vanishing as well.

Sweden is the only Nordic country to have ever reached the status of a military great power.

If you overlay the map above with a map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

you wind up with the approximate area that Russia now regards as in dispute -- militarily, it's attempting to regain control of Ukraine, but Putin has been making largely idle threats against what is effectively the full incorporation of the former Swedish Empire into NATO. Ukraine in response to the Russian invasion has applied to join the EU, would like to join NATO, but in the meantime has been concluding separate economic and defense agreements with Poland and the Baltics that look a lot like the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

All these maps in turn remind me of the map I posted Wednesday of a projected 2050 Baltic economic zone. Why is that map in particular even possible? I think it represents a return to economic and military conditions that prevailed before the rise of Russia as a modern state, especially before the late 1600s. This suggests to me that Poland, Sweden, and Finland are seizing the opportunity to expand their effective sovereignty under the NATO military umbrella, with Ukraine as a surrogate and with the endorsement of the EU.

Think about the current rhetorical meaning of the phrase "start World War III". It's been current throughout my lifetime, but actuallly most frequently in a corporate context -- "If you say that about Accounting, you'll start World War III." When we heard that in the 1970s, after Russia invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia with impunity, it was with the understanding that offending the Soviet Union was so unthinkable that it was comparable to bringing down the full authority of the CEO and the Board of Directors [i.e. the Almighty Himself] on one's own little department.

In contrast, by 2022, we have the US president quibbling with his secretaries of state and defense over the wording of highly provocative military threats against Russia, with the president complaining that if they're too strong, they'll start World War III. Except that we already know that as of 2022, the only actual result of such provocations has been to make Putin issue increasingly impotent threats. The strategic problem for the Soviet successor state is that it mustered nearly its full effective military strength against a third-rate power, which fought it to a standstill. Had it invaded even Poland, it's understood the result for Russia would have been clear disaster.

As a result, the most favorable realistic outcome for Russia given the current state of the war will be a cease-fire along roughly current battle lines, which would amount to a fairly minor extension of the borders following its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. It will not stop or negate the already enhanced alliances with the UK, Poland, and the Baltics. It would not prevent the admission of remaining Ukraine to the EU. But whether or not that even happens, the EU foreign and economic policy of integrating Ukraine will continue.

A negotiated settlement leaving Crimea, Donbas, and Mariupol out of Ukraine would not integrate these industrial areas into European economy, but Ukrainian grain and other industrial output would ship increasingly via Europe. This srikes me as a long-term trend, of which the current Ukraine conflict, and even the 2014 invasion, is just a symptom -- Russia is in a long-term decline that brings that part of Europe back to the 1600s.