eli5 – Russia has an economy smaller than Canada or Italy. How does it continue to be a threatening, great power without going bankrupt?

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eli5 – Russia has an economy smaller than Canada or Italy. How does it continue to be a threatening, great power without going bankrupt?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

It spends a much larger fraction of its GDP on its military than Canada or Italy. The latter are rather peaceful western countries having defense treaties with the world’s most expensive military, the USA.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because its commodities are valuable, its energy supply provides political and economic leverage over the EU and its not exactly a free market so takes what it needs to get things done. Russia has invested heavily in espionage and cyber warfare/cyber corruption both massively state sponsored. Also, its strategic locations span the entire northern hemisphere and it has lots of boots/metal on the ground.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Russia spends 3x times more of it’s Budget on the military than countries with a comparable economy, so it has far more military hardware and personnel. They also have mandatory military service.

The export a great deal of hardware from guns, vehicles, tanks, and airplanes to other nations which helps justify their RnD budget.

They also have huge amounts of surplus hardware left over from the Soviet Union. A lot of hardware the Russians are using is very old and much of the new state-of-art equipment they flaunt is in very short supply.

Throughout the 90s the Russian military was crumbling and it’s only in the past decade that they are really starting to turn around their military deficit.

There F-22 killer SU-57 for example only has 2 functional examples, and 10 prototypes (most of those unserviceable).

Where the Russians excel is in their espionage and Cyber Warfare divisions. They are way ahead of the US in this regard with the State highly likely to be sponsoring, or at least turning a blind eye, to the various hacker groups operating in the country so that they can build up a pool of resources they can use in a cyber war.

That and the FSB (formerly the KGB) has always run circles around the West in terms of espionage.

The Russians aren’t competing with the West nearly as much as they used too either. Now it’s about power projection in the 3rd World. The Russians what to maintain their influence on various nations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe both to have countries to supply with arms, but also so that they can do what they want in that area without reprisal from the West.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Many of the giant world super powers have two things in common: large military and nuclear weapons

Anonymous 0 Comments

Russia has inherited most of the infrastructure of a 20th century superpower – they have the experience, the scientific capacity and nowadays the resources to continue on that inheritance. They are a great military power, scientific power, sports power, space power the list goes on…

Not to mention they are leaders in hypersonic weapons development and already have some of them in active service. They hold the biggest a and most modern arsenal of nuclear weapons. It’s another myth that it is an outdated Soviet stockpile since for the last decade it has been almost fully modernised as Russians focus greatly on their nuclear strategic triad for deterrence and strategic parity with US.

They have a formidable space force which is a nerve centre for air and space military assets. Own Global Positioning System – GLONASS.

Their focus on nuclear triad is the reason for their large modernised submarine fleet both nuclear and conventional with both strategic nuclear payload, conventional and hypersonic.

More recently their espionage and computer network hacking military divisions have been creating havoc in the west.

Indeed they are second only to US military hardware exporter with major clients such as India and China.

Russia and Putin in particular like many of his generation see Russia as a great power and an equal to US in many aspects with a duty and desire to maintain their influence in their historic lands which includes former USSR countries with large Russian ethnic minority groups. Also thanks to USSR Russia has almost fully restored bilateral relationships with all former allies of USSR to one extent or the other, giving it a foothold in those countries and regions of the world.

It’s a myth that Russian economy is a size of Italy since westerners for simplicity reasons look at nominal US$ GDP figures which are extremely misleading. Russia has biggest economy in Europe of US$ 4.5T on PPP (purchasing power parity) basis. With annual military spending of US$ 150-200B in PPP terms. PPP terms for Italy, France or UK may not make too much difference but for countries like China, Russia and India it provides significant competitive advantage due to the procurement of military hardware locally using Roubles and avoiding any need for US$ exchanges. This is beside many other military spending that are not officially mentioned by the government.

It’s a permanent member of UN Security Council – one of only five with power of veto.

Their economy is also very well shielded from sanctions and external factors such as huge foreign exchange reserves, low government debt, low unemployment rate, excellent central bank and stable if not fantastic growth. It is also in many ways self sufficient – they are a top grain exporter, energy superpower, with big precious metals reserves, diamonds and other natural resources. Economy is high-tech with leading Internet services such as Yandex and Rambler. There is also a strong civil manufacturing sector ranging from heavy machinery, trucks, cars to airplanes.

https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/05/03/russian-defense-spending-is-much-larger-and-more-sustainable-than-it-seems/

They also have many issues such as social, demographic, skilled labour availability among others.

Anonymous 0 Comments

TL;DR – nukes, a big army, and the will to use force, all funded by selling oil and commodities.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you get a chance, read the book “Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall.

Basically Russia has a lot of borders with a lot of countries, isn’t very well protected by natural geography (like mountains), and until Crimea had no ports with year round ocean access.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A s**t-ton of energy/resources, a s**t-ton of nukes, a capacity for strategic thought and a f**k-off geography that straddles and connects Europe and Asia.

Also the demi god Putin and his 1000 year reign.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The trouble nowadays is that these psychopaths like Putin and Jinping have forgotten in their hubris and relatively successful asymmetric war is that in a shooting war, both would be absolutely fucking wrecked up against the west, I hope they have people who remind them of that occasionally before we are forced to but make no mistake, it wouldn’t even be fucking close