I have learned a fair bit about the foreign policy worldview, concerns, and fixations of Russian far-right ultranationalists have due to reading up on current events. I would like to talk about Tsar Alexander IV and how well or not his thinking matches the thinking of actual Russian ultranationalists. It has been mentioned before that the late Tsar Alexander IV's fixation on smashing up and keeping the Americans down is increasingly irrational and counterproductive in a time when Europe and China are rising to challenge the New Russian Empire. However, I would like to hammer the point that Tsar Alexander IV really does not actually behave like how the average Russian imperialistic ultranationalist would behave if they were granted the same massive and absurd but still limited power to smash up and reshape the world to their liking. In his obsession with and hatred of the Americans, Alexander IV ignored many actual concerns and fixations of real-life Russian foreign policy makers and ultranationalists.
Russian foreign policy has been historically focused on the potential vulnerability of Russia to land attack due Russia's lack of major geographic barriers except for rivers. To counteract the effects of this vulnerability, Russian foreign policy makers have called for the conquest of more territories and/or the establishment of puppet buffer states to put as much space as possible between the Russian core territories around Moscow and Russia's potential enemies. Powerful states and alliances that border the territories of Russia or the historical Russian sphere of influence are considered massive potential threats and should be vigorously opposed by Russia and be destroyed if possible. Russian imperialists are generally focused on destroying or dominating all potential foes in Europe or Eurasia is the key to Russian survival and success. Russian foreign policy makers are still obsessed with the idea of a sudden massive land invasion against Russia despite the existence of Russia's massive nuclear arsenal acting as a deterrence. Any powerful state or alliance system that border the territories of Russia or the historical Russian sphere of influence are viewed as potential sources of a second Operation Barbarossa regardless of the actual policies and beliefs of that state or alliance. Any state or territory that falls outside of direct Russian control or the Russian sphere of influence must be returned to the fold by force if necessary. Russian ultranationalists are either Eurocentric or Eurasianist in their concerns. Mastery and dominance of Europe or Eurasia and not the rest of the world is viewed as the key to Russian survival and success.
Alexander IV invested a lot of resources in destabilizing and smashing up many countries to establish Russian dominance over the world. However, Alexander IV did not have the power to destroy all of Russia's potential foes and he could not keep every single country that he smashed up down and disunited. The Tsar chose to invest an absurd amount of resources and personal attention to the total destruction of the United States and other North American countries into countless tiny statelets, the destruction of North American infrastructure, and then keeping the Americans down for decades later.
Alexander IV also destabilized Europe and its most militarily strong states at the same time. With the Russian military reformed to be as powerful as it is in the nightmares of NATO planners, America, Britain, and France in a state of civil war, and the other European states having previously neglected their militaries and suffering of the economic effects of the Collapse while Russia is somehow not affected, there would be no better time for Alexander IV to conquer Europe and end the threat of invasion from Europe. The New Russian Empire is so powerful that it can swiftly conquer the former Soviet republics, flip Bulgaria and Romania to Russia's sides, and then somehow fails to take Poland. Poland resisting the New Russian Empire largely alone for 50 years can only be explained as a massive mind boggling error in priorities on Alexander IV's part because the Poles estimated that their country would literally last for five days against a competently led Russian military.
In the Winter-20 wargame in early 2021, the Polish government tested the ability of the Polish military that was also armed with ordered but not yet delivered American made F-35s and HIMARS artillery systems to withstand a full assault alone by the forces of the Western Military District of Russia that assumed to be competently led and supplied. The Polish government had hoped that its armed forces would be able to resist Russia for 22 days but the wargame shown that Warsaw would be taken and Poland would collapse by day 5. If Alexander IV focused less on America and more on Europe, Poland would possibly have been crushed or at least suppressed enough to open the door to Germany. If Alexander IV could somehow still not subdue the Poles, he should have offered a Finlandization deal to Poland where Poland leaves the European Union to become a neutral buffer independent state instead of allowing the Poles to remain the EU. Surely the Polish would accept Finlandization over a several decades long struggle that would completely hollow out their country.
The failure of Alexander IV to defeat Poland prevented Russia from conquering Germany when it was still weak. I think the average Russian ultranationalist would have really liked for Russia to conquer Germany again. Conquering Germany would allow them to reenact the storming of the Reichstag building, destroy the European Union by ripping out its heart, secure the North European Plain, and end the possibility of a second Operation Barbarossa. Even when the other Western European countries eventually recovered and reunited themselves, they would be in no position to challenge Russia. Instead, Alexander IV allowed Germany, Poland, and the other remaining European Union states to recover and rearm themselves while Alexander IV was focused on North America. Now shortly after Alexander IV's death, the European Union is working on creating a true united European military. I would argue that a continent spanning union of European nations voluntarily working together to create a large standing unified European military designed to fight Russia is a bigger latent threat to Russia than a military alliance where many of its European members were complacent about their security and much of the alliance's firepower was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean as was the case of NATO.
Alexander IV also failed to keep China disunited. Some Russian ultranationalists such as Dugin have called for China to be dismantled to the maximum degree possible because China represents a massive potential land threat to Russia even if China is sometimes an ally of convenience against America. China managed to reunify and to make things worse for Russia; it is a great power again willing to intervene in world affairs again. Now, there is a country with a billion people hostile to Russian interests sharing a massive land border with Russia. China may be largely contained for the moment but that is not a sure thing. This is a security nightmare for Russia.
What would the average Russian ultranationalist think of Alexander IV's actions in America? While they hate America and certainly wouldn't mind the destruction of the United States, they would view the amount of attention that Alexander IV devoted to North America as heavily excessive. The average Russian far-right ultranationalist seems to hate the United States largely due to left over Cold War animosity, because it is a source of "decadent and degenerate" liberal Western culture, and mainly because the United States is in the way of Russia's imperial ambitions. They would be content to merely destabilize the United States to the point that the Americans retreat to isolationism and is unable or unwilling to act against Russian interests. They wouldn't be as terrified of the idea of America reunifying as much Alexander IV was. Sure, a reunified America would be a potential threat to Russia, but it is on the other side of two oceans and would be much less of a threat if Russia destroyed or subverted its old allies in Europe and Asia.
In summary, Alexander IV's thinking does not actually match the thinking of the typical Russian far-right ultranationalist. He was massively fixated on the idea of destroying America and keeping the Americans down to the point of neglecting the traditional concerns of Russian foreign policy makers and ultranationalists. The average Russian far-right ultranationalist, if given the same amount of power that Alexander IV had in the Victoria Falls lore, would be more interested in securing Russian dominance over Europe and Asia than obsessively smashing the United States into thousands of tiny statelets.
