Without nuclear weapons, can Russia still hold on to the world's first huge territory?

Russia's territory covers 17,098,200 square kilometers, occupying the world's first territorial power by an absolute majority. As a world power with so much territory, national security, naturally, is the top priority. Many people feel that the reason why Russia is able to hold on to such a large territory is all due to the huge nuclear weapons left behind by the Soviet Union.

While the world is now pursuing the theme of ? The world is now pursuing the theme of "peace and development".

While the world is now pursuing the theme of "peace and development", the development of recent decades still sees countries expanding their armaments, and there is even more terrorism threatening the security of different countries. Therefore, many people have raised the question: as a world power Russia, if there is really no nuclear weapons as a support, the country can really defend such a large territory?

Russia map

First of all, to analyze is the security situation around Russia, since the Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power, in fact, the security situation faced by Russia is not optimistic. To the east of Russia, there is the pressure caused by the U.S.-Japanese military alliance's missile defense system, which has been threatening Russia's vast, resource-rich but sparsely populated Siberian region.

However, in recent years, Russia has established partnerships with five neighboring countries, including China, so the eastern security issue is relatively relaxed. Of course, due to the strong development of China in recent years, India is also rising, which makes Russia's status as a great power gradually decline, once Russia slipped from the status of a great power, the neighboring small countries are bound to move, and even produce territorial disputes problems.

Russia

Russia's west and south can be said to be the two most serious security problems, as early as 1999, NATO's eastward expansion, Russia has lost more than 480,000 square kilometers of buffer zone; in 2004, NATO's eastward expansion plan to absorb the seven Central and Eastern European countries, resulting in Russia's sphere of influence to further shrink.

The massive military power of the combined NATO countries has pushed up to Russia's borders, which has extremely worsened the geo-security environment in western Russia. The problem is even more difficult in southern Russia, where there are national separatism, religious extremism, international terrorism, these three evil forces to seize natural resources, the activities of the increasingly rampant, more headaches for the Russian government. One of the? The best of the best? , is the big-name Chechnya.

Russia's strategic weapons

Secondly, while the security environment in Russia's neighborhood is for bad, the security situation inside Russia is even less optimistic. Due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has fallen from a superpower to a first- or even second-rate country nowadays, and now Russia's economic development is slow, the problem of disparity between the rich and the poor has not been solved, and the domestic political situation is corrupt, so that Russia is facing a lot of security challenges.

As far as the military is concerned, due to the country's economic regression, Russia has long been unable to maintain the extremely large military forces of the Soviet period. According to one set of statistics, between 1992 and 1999, Russia's total military strength had been cut from 2.82 million to 2.2 million, and the new military reforms intend to cut another 850,000 troops.

Russian military personnel

Russia's main purpose for such a troop reduction, apart from streamlining its military, is in fact to continue to maintain its huge nuclear arsenal. Since Vladimir Putin came to power, the new military reforms clearly stipulate the need to emphasize and inhibit the implementation of means to strengthen the input of production in nuclear weapons.

Analysis of Russia's security situation, in conjunction with Russia's military reform, these two aspects are sufficient to show that nuclear weapons are an important means of guaranteeing Russia's security, is the maintenance of territorial area is essential to the necessary weapons. If Russia does not have nuclear weapons as support, no nuclear weapons to maintain the ? balance of terror? If Russia did not have nuclear weapons as a support, without nuclear weapons to maintain the balance of terror, the country's huge territory, even if it is not considered to be precarious, but also inevitably coveted by many major powers. The countries and nations that have been invaded and annexed by Russia in the past will not give up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.