DON’T MISTAKE THE WEST’S SOCIOLOGICAL FAILURES FOR GEOPOLITICAL WEAKNESS
NATO and the West has appeared weaker than they really are, geopolitically and economically speaking: with the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan (couldn’t even beat the Taliban, despite magnitudes greater military and economic might), unsuccessful interventions into Syria, a losing grip on influence over Africa, an internally quarreling EU, and internal culture wars leading up to the storming of Capitol Hill last year.
However, these failures are largely sociological failures, i.e. failures to understand and manage social and cultural forces, not signs of lacking economic and military prowess per se. Lack of sociological understanding has severely limited the capacity for the West, NATO, and the international community under Global North leadership to successfully intervene in different parts of the world, but it is still true that the collective powers of this larger network are much greater than those of Russia. And unlike targets like the Taliban hiding in vast mountainous terrain or goals like the creation of a new Iraqi state, Russia is a large target that can more easily and straightforwardly be resisted with conventional means.
Just for perspective, Russia roughly has a ten times larger defense budget than Ukraine, while the US defense budget in turn is about ten times larger than Russia’s, making up two-thirds of NATOs total. The NATO populations are larger, richer, better educated, and have better access to useful information (in a more “free information” system) than Russia, which means that they can find a myriad of ways of resisting even without engaging in a full-blown military conflict. So where ordinary citizens in the West are sending money and supplies, help to spread pro-Ukrainian information, hack Russian information infrastructure, boycott Russian commodities and some even join the Ukrainian army—ordinary Russians aren’t even told that there’s a war going on.
Russia is dwarfed in comparison with NATO and its partners: Russia has a population of roughly 144 million, 153 if you add its ally Belarus; NATO has 951 million, and if you add its European partners such as Finland and Sweden, and non European ones such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, it’s well over a billion — and then there’s the 40 million Ukrainians armed to their teeth ready to fight all incoming Russian invaders.
In economic terms, Russia’s economy is comparable to that of Australia (a country of 26 million), and highly dependent on the export of gas and oil, mostly sold to Europe — accounting for 30% of GDP and 50% of the government’s income. In comparison, the NATO countries make up more than half the world’s economy measured in GDP — and that’s without Japan, South Korea and Australia, the world’s 3rd, 10th and 13th biggest economies. Russia is number 11, just ahead of Brazil. Or was; after the Ruble hit the rubble last week, and with the continuation of the economic sanctions, it’s likely to be out of the top 20 this year.
In other words, the West looked weaker than it really is, which may have emboldened Russian aggression. As militaries are propped up around Europe in much larger economies and larger collective populations (with Germany taking a lead with major investments in its military that will give it the third largest military budget in the world, way ahead of Russia), the military advantage and initiative of an increasingly poorer and more isolated Russia quickly wane.
[For 9 other insights into the Ukraine-Russia war, click the link to Hanzi Freinacht’s article on Medium in the comments field]
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