>After years of economic stagnation, is Russia an easier problem to manage today than ten years ago? If the answer is decidedly negative, then why would said stagnation dramatically ease this geopolitical burden in the coming decade?
[removed]
The points on the macroeconomic stability are quite on point, but:
* What is it with the constant comparison to collapse of USSR? The USSR collapse was about its outermost republics populated by nations other than Russians becoming independent. Russian Federation is over 80% ethnically Russian and the only comparable border region would be Caucasus – which is an absolute mess of all kinds of different ethnic and religious communities without any single dominating one. What is more, Russia does not have super strong regional identities, even the language hardly has any dialects across Russia. There simply isn’t much to collapse a’la Soviet Union.
* The final paragraph suddenly jumps into very hasty conclusions based only on the macroeconomics, without mentioning Russia’s poor position in Europe or its dwindling influence among Ukrainians and Belarusians. It would have been better to simply omit that one, it diverges from the main point and isn’t really convincing.
I’m more bullish on Russia’s future. The forward looking prospectus almost writes itself:
1. unburdened by the Soviet Union resource suck,
2. importation self-sufficient (thanks to sanctions and done so successfully that the US recently threatened to take it to the WTO for making its own stuff thereby limiting sanctionable imports!)
3. insulated from the Wall Street casino (thanks again to sanctions) so it’s free to manoeuvre based on its interests rather than the interests of the market
4. it hasn’t fallen in to the trap of running the economy off of a US denominated credit card (thanks to the lessons of the SU, the current west, oh, and sanctions)
5. runs an old fashioned conservative economy focussing on goods rather than increasingly abstract and parasitical financial services (explaining why GDP comparisons with the west never match real life)
5. unlike the saturated west there’s tons of headroom for easy economic growth
6. unlike Western Europe and China there’s tons of headroom for physical grown
6. it has a very strong tradition of engineering and science education,
7. it is focussing on Eurasia for future economic trade growth (thanks again to sanctions for forcing that important decision)
8. the economic growth potential for eurasia is off the charts for the next century or more
9. Russia and China are pals, and unlike the western allies both are so strong that they’re equals rather than dependents.
Gotta get the birth rate up though.
Oh, and there’s the need for at least one successful transition of leadership – a huge test.
How many countries want Russia collapsed
It’s naive to think Putin will repeat Gorbachev, Putin is playing a role more like Starlin.
6 comments
>After years of economic stagnation, is Russia an easier problem to manage today than ten years ago? If the answer is decidedly negative, then why would said stagnation dramatically ease this geopolitical burden in the coming decade?
[removed]
The points on the macroeconomic stability are quite on point, but:
* What is it with the constant comparison to collapse of USSR? The USSR collapse was about its outermost republics populated by nations other than Russians becoming independent. Russian Federation is over 80% ethnically Russian and the only comparable border region would be Caucasus – which is an absolute mess of all kinds of different ethnic and religious communities without any single dominating one. What is more, Russia does not have super strong regional identities, even the language hardly has any dialects across Russia. There simply isn’t much to collapse a’la Soviet Union.
* The final paragraph suddenly jumps into very hasty conclusions based only on the macroeconomics, without mentioning Russia’s poor position in Europe or its dwindling influence among Ukrainians and Belarusians. It would have been better to simply omit that one, it diverges from the main point and isn’t really convincing.
I’m more bullish on Russia’s future. The forward looking prospectus almost writes itself:
1. unburdened by the Soviet Union resource suck,
2. importation self-sufficient (thanks to sanctions and done so successfully that the US recently threatened to take it to the WTO for making its own stuff thereby limiting sanctionable imports!)
3. insulated from the Wall Street casino (thanks again to sanctions) so it’s free to manoeuvre based on its interests rather than the interests of the market
4. it hasn’t fallen in to the trap of running the economy off of a US denominated credit card (thanks to the lessons of the SU, the current west, oh, and sanctions)
5. runs an old fashioned conservative economy focussing on goods rather than increasingly abstract and parasitical financial services (explaining why GDP comparisons with the west never match real life)
5. unlike the saturated west there’s tons of headroom for easy economic growth
6. unlike Western Europe and China there’s tons of headroom for physical grown
6. it has a very strong tradition of engineering and science education,
7. it is focussing on Eurasia for future economic trade growth (thanks again to sanctions for forcing that important decision)
8. the economic growth potential for eurasia is off the charts for the next century or more
9. Russia and China are pals, and unlike the western allies both are so strong that they’re equals rather than dependents.
Gotta get the birth rate up though.
Oh, and there’s the need for at least one successful transition of leadership – a huge test.
How many countries want Russia collapsed
It’s naive to think Putin will repeat Gorbachev, Putin is playing a role more like Starlin.