This reflects what former USSR naval officer Andrei Martyanov has been saying and writing books about for a long time. The West is using the wrong standards of comparison, like nominal GDP rather than national capacity. In this light, Russia and China are far stronger than the West realizes using Western-preferred metrics.
This has been brought out by industrial warfare. Pursuit of neoliberalism has apparently weakened the West's industrial capacity as factories were moved to locations of cheap labor, notably China.
The West not only misjudged the power of sanctions but also underestimated relative national capacity in relation to Russia with respect to effect on war-making. This was a double failure on the part of intelligence that amounts to a serious strategic blunder.
American Affairs
Assessing the Economic Value of Military Material
American Affairs
Assessing the Economic Value of Military Material
Philip Pilkington
7 comments:
If it were profitable to mass produce armaments, the US would lead the world. Instead, the conventional cold war military in Europe was dismantled. The 'liberation' of Kuwait was the last use of cold war heavy infantry. US forces have since been reconfigured for counter-insurgency operations.
For a nuclear power, industrial warfare should be obsolete. Nuclear powers cannot fight each other, lest it end in armageddon. Unlike the US, Russia had to rebuild its military to fight internal separatist threats, and more recently for Ukraine.
The US has no plans to institute a war economy. There's no need for it, and it wouldn't be well received domestically. The MIC is profiting handsomely from complex weapons systems that are literally hand-crafted. These weapons are destined to be sold or used in wars of aggression abroad. There is no scenario where the US requires a conventional military for self-defense.
There seems to be a misunderstanding of how the US conducts military operations. Compare what General Eric Shinseki said would be required to secure Iraq, to what Donald Rumsfeld authorized. 800,000 troops versus 100,000. The invasion was a debacle, yet Shinseki's recommendations are no longer up for discussion. That is considered cold war thinking.
Yo nat gas went below $2 this morning…
For all we know Xi is going to tell Putin to knock it off already he’s had a year and still a quagmire…
Russias oil and gas blackmail plan has been complete failure…
European bourses at all time highs and nat gas $2 at all time lows and Brandon has petroleum pinned at $70….
Russia stock market down 50% … Shanghai down 25%…
Xi probably telling him to give it up already…
If Russia doesn't finish what it started, that would be a strategic defeat.
The US has already achieved its objective.
Self-loathing westerners and fantasy war scenarists are in denial.
If they don’t leave some of the areas of Ukraine they’ve occupied then they can save face
The only value those two nations have is their wheat production…
Otherwise if they both went away tomorrow nobody would notice..,
People there are mostly all drunk corrupt criminals..,
Nevertheless, Russia's war-making ability has been shown to be pathetic despite its supposed "advantage" in the production of war materiel.
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