The Russians say that they know how to survive a long hard winter. But at a certain point they snap, and with the value of oil a fraction of what Russia needs it to be to make do, let alone prosper, it is hard to see how the Russians will endure this winter of disease and poverty. So I think Marx got it wrong: The farce came first. The tragedy may come second.
I've long wondered if Russia is done fragmenting and shrinking.
But don't think that the USSR wasn't a threat despite being a Potemkin superpower as the author also writes:
During my youth I worked in places that worried about Russian power. The ability of the U.S. military to exaggerate the power of Russia is in hindsight amazing. Back then, the Soviet Union was a cripple masquerading as a great power. I see that process repeating itself, both with Russia and with China (another story).
I won't dispute that we exaggerated Soviet power. But my view is that even a Soviet Union much weaker than America could have won a shorter war against NATO with far more military potential than the USSR had because most of NATO power was American and across the Atlantic. And so the Soviets only had to advance 100 miles to the Rhine River to inflict a decisive blow against NATO:
The most important consideration in assessing the Soviet threat must recognize that the Soviets in the Cold War had one great advantage over World War II Japan: The Soviet objective was less than a couple hundred miles from their starting point.
To break NATO, the Soviets had but to reach the Rhine River and crush West Germany. Yes, Soviet military spending was at only half our level, but the Soviets had their best forces in Eastern Europe. Our superior power had to make it across the Atlantic in time to make a difference. If the Soviet fleet died buying Moscow the time to take West Germany, we'd still lose the war. And our NATO allies were a variable bunch yet held frontage in West Germany. In between high quality American, West German, and British forces there were less capable Dutch and Belgian forces.
So yeah, America today is stronger than any other country and if the war is a full mobilization and all-out general war American weight will eventually prevail. How often is that the situation? Not often. And what is the effect of nuclear weapons on preventing a war from going to that extreme?
I worry that an advance similar in distance to a hypothetical Soviet advance in Europe by China to conquer Taiwan could have decisive effects for China.
When the question is whether Russia can survive this era, perhaps we can at least stop the myth that credits Putin as a very stable genius punching above Russia's weight in international politics.
