Americans have a habit of greatly overestimating their major
rivals. Perhaps it goes along with the perennial
worry that America’s best days are over, and that we are in terminal decline.
Now there is a great deal of public anxiety about the moves Russia, under
President Putin, are making in the Ukraine.
There is no doubt that Russia is a major regional power. Nor
is there any doubt that Putin can – and probably will - continue to make things
troublesome around Russia’s borders and in the UN Security Council. And of course Russia still has a significant
nuclear capability. But is Russia really an existential threat to us as a super power, or even to
Western Europe? I think not.
The reason is the same as in my last post: “It’s the economy,
stupid”. Russia simply doesn’t have enough
of an economic base to sustain a major conflict. In fact, it is quite likely
Putin recently pulled his troops back from massing on the Ukrainian border in
part because he couldn’t afford to keep them there very long. Russia, in fact,
is on the verge of a major recession – they were there before the current sanctions
were put in place, and even the very minor sanctions that Europe and America put
in place have tipped the Russian economy closer to recession. Serious sanctions
would quickly – within weeks or at most months – put the Russian economy into
free fall, a fact which Putin certainly knows and which is no doubt restraining
his hand in the Ukraine.
Indeed, I suspect Putin also knows his economy really couldn’t
sustain a prolonged war in the Ukraine if he did invade. And it would be a long war. The Ukrainians, at
least in the Western two-thirds of the nation, are pretty angry with Russia
now, and although the Russian army could certainly capture the territory pretty
quickly, I suspect they understand that the guerrilla war that would follow
would probably be as bad as their experience in Afghanistan, if not worse. In fact, there are already signs that Russia
is having some trouble, and some public opposition, with the high costs of supporting
the moribund Crimean economy, now that they have annexed it.
At the moment, the economies of America and its allies are
FIFTEEN times as big as the Russian economy. Nor is there any real prospect of
Russian’s economy getting significantly stronger in the foreseeable future, because
it is so culturally enmeshed in endemic corruption, from the lowest traffic cop
to Putin himself. And because it is currently largely an extractive economy,
based on exporting oil and gas – the Russian manufacturing base and
infrastructure are still largely the same inefficient and antiquated ones inherited
from the old Soviet system, and for the most part Putin has not attempted to
update them to make them competitive in the world markets.
Russia can certainly afford to design and build and show off
a small fleet of advanced fighter planes, or a few pretty advanced ships for
its navy. But they can’t afford to give
them the continuous and intensive training that America gives its fighting men and
women. Nor to build and maintain the immense logistics system a modern armed
forces needs to project its power beyond its own borders. Which is probably why
Russia is depending mostly on its well trained but small cadre of special
forces to surreptitiously lead so-called “popular rebellions” in Eastern Ukraine – it’s
all they really can afford to do, though that does seem to be enough to keep the Ukraine in
turmoil.
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