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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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 It’s another myth that it is an outdated Soviet stockpile since for the last decade it has been almost fully modernised as Russians focus greatly on their nuclear strategic triad for deterrence and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.
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