Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/9438338
Military pay, ammunition, tanks, planes, and compensation for dead and wounded soldiers, all contribute to the GDP figures. Put simply, the war against Ukraine is now the main driver of Russia’s economic growth.
And it is a war that Russia cannot afford to win. The cost of rebuilding and maintaining security in a conquered Ukraine would be too great, and an isolated Russia could at best hope to become a junior partner entirely dependent on China.
Russia has managed to switch to war economy, that is not really good news for Europe.
The first hit on NATO-soil will change the lame economical stance of Europe. Not good news for Ukraine sadly as NATO until then will be dragging its feet. I don’t understand why.
It’s much worse news for Russia. Total war is impossible to sustain for a people, as attacker: If the home front is completely mobilised for war there’s nothing left to fight for in terms of home and culture and even politics, the only source of morale left is survival, and as the attacker Russia doesn’t have that, on the contrary it plays against them as they’d all get to survive splendidly by simply retreating to their borders.
OTOH, from the fascist’s POV it’s all so very inviting: Only war? How splendid! Then we don’t actually have to have a culture or politics, that’s nice, we don’t like that degeneracy anyway.
It seems that Putin read his Clausewitz and then thought “Oh that silly old Prussian goose, what does he know, Hitler knew better he just got too greedy”.
Also have you any idea what it would look like if the EU switched to a war economy. Fully, that is, not like into 1/2th gear (which we’re getting close to). Germany+France+Italy alone have 10x Russia’s GDP.
How long Russia can maintain it is another question. When most of your produce is intended to get destroyed in near future with nothing in return, you’re basically throwing money out of the window.
If you win the war, you can get a lot in return. That is why countries do it. Permanent access to ressources, people, strategic locations…
The difficulty is switching back though. That’s why it is so dangerous. Getting locked in a war economy requires to attack ever new targets, deepening the hole.
Russia has a shitton of natural resources they are not using. Ukraine has nothing additional to give, apart from historical lands
When most of your produce is intended to get destroyed in near future with nothing in return, you’re basically throwing money out of the window.
That’s kind of how war economy works. For me it looks more and more, like we are approaching a full on war against Russia (completely surreal to me, since I was born in Russia).
I still live in Russia and want to offer a bit of an optimistic perspective.
First of all, Putin and the officials siding with him one war or another have been fearmongering a war with Europe, the USA, or even the entire NATO for years already. Granted, they did the same with Ukraine prior to the invasion, but I doubt there’s any decision-makers left in Russia that genuinely belive they can swing at NATO and expect anything else but a swift and painful defeat: the amount of resources dedicated to the current attempts to do anything in Ukraine would make it even harder to launch a new offensive, let alone defend anything.
Arguably, fighting Ukraine, Russia is still fighting mostly Ukraine, albeit with significant aid from its allies or at least Russia’s opponents; as reluctant as the EU, the USA, or NATO (or some of their counterparts) may seem to ditch the political ratings for either coughing up more resources or even restructuring to produce them, one tendency of our species remains strong: we do act when it’s about us, when it’s seemingly too late. Ukraine, for now at least, probably doesn’t feel like an integral part of Europe or NATO, maybe some even still believe the country to be that similar to Russia, which, combined, explains the rather cautious approach in terms of providing more lethal aid.
If Russia attacks, say, Moldova or Lithuania or Estonia or Latvia or Poland or Finland or anything else (other than Belarus, perhaps), nobody is ever going to think of it as of some kind of conflict between neighbors that somehow seems more complicated than it actually is (partly because both neighbors are slavs and tend to have somewhat nuanced, rather than obvious differences, I guess), and on top of that, any doubts like whether it’s possible to wear the Russian army down by dripfeeding supplies to the ones that fight it, or whether Putin can be appeased, or whether Putin will calm down after “reclaiming actually historically Russian land”, or anything like that - all of that is going out the window and people start acting, fast, with the combined might much greater than Russia is managing to muster now through elusive contraband military imports and making use of decades-old equipment and economical manipulations.
And in a conflict like that, who’s going to side with Russia, against the much bigger dog of NATO? Anyone who joins on the Russia’s side gets at the very least sanctioned to smithereens in the event of an actual war, and neither China nor India can have that; some of the dictatorships from the middle east may try, but I doubt they’d want to give NATO a proper excuse.
Putin is a gopnik and understands only the language of clubs and stones - the powers that Putin chose to call his enemies not only have bigger and meaner clubs and stones, but have more of them, and have the means to get even more. He might have attempted something had he actually conquered and held Ukraine, but not after this kind of reality check; he’s back to being the strong wife-beating alcoholic that sits tight when a real threat looks his way.
